PM Shehbaz Sharif will participate in UN climate conference COP27 on November 7

By; Asghar Ali Mubarak).

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PM Shehbaz Sharif will participate in UN climate conference COP27 on November 7

By; Asghar Ali Mubarak)…

The United Nations’ Annual Global Climate Conference COP27 is being held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt from November 6 to 18. The Prime Minister of Pakistan Shahbaz Sharif will participate in the COP 27 climate conference on November 7 .

Pakistan has pinned its hopes on the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, known as COP 27, in which polluting countries will be obliged to pay damages to countries affected by climate change. The COP 27 will be the 27th conference of the United Nations, which will be held from November 6 to 18, 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. It was announced that the Egyptian President and the Chairperson of the COP 27, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, has invited Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif to Round Table Conference with the Prime Minister of Norway.

World leaders, think tanks, heads of government and international financial institutions will participate in the UN-sponsored conference on climate change and the need for sustainable solutions. Pakistan received this honor from the 193 countries of the United Nations due to Prime Minister Shehbaz’s strong voice on global and regional forums about the environmental crisis and the need for practical measures.

The Secretary General of the United Nations has said that in Cop27 (COP27) there will be urgent concrete steps to be taken on ways to deal with climate change problems that are commensurate with the scale of the problem, so will the world leaders be able to do it? COP is the largest and most important annual climate conference in the world.

In 1992, the United Nations held a ‘Earth Conference’ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in which the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was approved and a liaison office was established. What we now know as the ‘UN Climate Change Secretariat’ was done.

In the agreement, countries agreed to “moderate the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to prevent dangerous interference by human activity in the climate system.” So far, 197 parties have signed it. .

After the conclusion of this agreement in 1994, the United Nations organizes global conferences on climate issues every year in which almost all the countries of the world participate. These conferences are called ‘COP’ which is short for ‘Conference of Parties’.

At these meetings so far, countries around the world have negotiated a number of additions to the basic agreement to legally curb greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the Paris Agreement of 2015 are prominent examples of this, in which all countries of the world strive to limit global warming to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial Earth temperatures. And agreed to increase efforts to make this possible and to provide financial resources against climate change.

This year, the 27th such annual conference is being held, hence the name COP 27. Last year’s COP26 (one year not counted due to the Covid19 outbreak), five years after the Paris Agreement, culminated in the ‘Glasgow Climate Pact’. As the British presidency said at the time, ‘the pact maintains the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, but progress towards that goal will be slow’.

To fully operationalize the Paris Agreement, amendments were made to finalize the details of its practical implementation, also known as the ‘Paris Rulebook’.

At COP26, countries agreed to make stronger commitments for 2022, including new national plans with more ambitious targets. However, only 23 countries out of 193 have submitted their plans to the UN so far.

A number of commitments were made during and outside of the Glasgow negotiations to achieve the net zero goal, protect forests and finance climate change, among other initiatives.

According to a statement issued by the conference presidency on the future course of action, COP 27 will aim to transition from negotiations and “implementation planning” to the implementation of all these commitments.

Egypt has asked for complete, timely, comprehensive and substantial practical measures in this regard. According to the experts, in the upcoming conference, apart from reviewing the method of implementation of the Paris Rulebook, there will also be discussions on some points that could not be fruitful even after the Glasgow conference.

These include the provision of financial resources for ‘damage and recovery’, which aims to help countries directly affected by the crisis to cope with the effects of climate change that they may not be able to cope with. These points also include meeting the pledge of $100 billion a year by developed countries to help low-income countries cope with the effects of climate change.

The talks will also include discussions on technical issues such as determining how countries can practically measure their share of greenhouse gas emissions. In this way, measures to deal with climate change can be made fair for all countries. More than 20 lakh children are still waiting for the restoration of their schools after the devastating floods in Akistan. The worst floods in the country’s history have partially or completely damaged nearly 27,000 schools. Millions of children in Pakistan have lost their family members, homes, personal security and education facilities overnight in extremely painful conditions. They now face the uncertainty of whether they will be able to return to school, even though the school closures they faced due to the pandemic were one of the longest in the world, and their futures are now even more uncertain. There are dangers. “Two months after the devastating floods affected most areas of Pakistan, some parts of the roofs of the schools submerged in the flood water have started to be seen. Estimates suggest it could still take weeks or months for the floodwaters to fully recede.

In addition to education, schools play an important role in providing children with access to health care, psychological support, and immunizations. Increasing the duration of school closures will increase children’s risk of dropping out. Apart from being forced into labor and early marriages, there is also a fear of increasing the chances of exploitation and abuse.

The districts most affected by floods are already among the most vulnerable areas in Pakistan. Even before the current emergency, one-third of boys and girls in flood-affected areas were out of school and 50 percent of children were malnourished. Prolonged school closures can further exacerbate these deprivations.

Even during the peak of the pandemic, schools across Pakistan were closed in whole or in part for 64 weeks between March 2020 and March 2022. Now, less than six months later, school children have once again lost their education thanks to the devastation caused by severe floods. Severe damage to infrastructure, including electricity and internet connectivity, has also made remote learning largely inaccessible.

 To deal with this situation, UNICEF has set up more than 500 temporary education centers in the most affected districts of the country and started providing education to teachers and children. UNICEF is training teachers in psychosocial care and health monitoring to promote children’s mental and physical health, and ‘back-to-school’ and admissions activities in schools that have been cleaned and rehabilitated.