The 27th session of the UN conference of parties on climate change mitigation in the Egyptian seaside city of Sharm-el-Sheikh intersects a time when the high table of global diplomacy grapples with the Ukraine war and the energy supply constraints in its wake. Even if it chastens the ambitious tone of the 26th Cop held at Glasgow last year, it would be a bit stretched to say that around 45,000 participants, including 120 heads of states and governments, are attending the meet under a shadow of the Eurasian conflict. Amid the usual faultlines of the development divide, the meet is set to be more concerned with matters of execution than those of formulation.
The moderate expectations can also help in having a realistic look at the roadmap to meet the Paris Agreement objectives. At the Glasgow meet last year, the UN’s Climate Action programme described the challenge of coming up with a blueprint for execution as “the Paris rulebook – the operational details for the practical implementation of the Paris Agreement”. The ongoing meet at Sharm-el-Sheikh seems to have prioritised this over the broad sweep of proposals made in the earlier summits. No wonder that Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian foreign minister and President of Cop27, has called this conference as the “implementation Cop”.
