COP 27, challenges & opportunities

The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres has appealed to the international financial institutions and G 20 countries to provide debt relief to Pakistan to help its post-flood reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts. While addressing a joint press conference along with Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, the UN Secretary-General proposed a debt swap, exchanging the payment of debt with investment in the rehabilitation of the flood-affected people of Pakistan. According to Antonio Guterres, Pakistan was a middle-income country and was not given the kind of debt relief and concessional funding it needed to tackle the adverse impact of climate change.

The Sharm El-Sheikh Climate Implementation Summit kicked off on Monday which provided a unique opportunity for global leaders to deliberate on the ways and means to address the global environmental challenges across the world. COP 27 will be a make-or-break opportunity for the international community to turn ambitions into actions and pledges into a reality in respect of the global climate agenda. Besides nations across the world, private businesses, giant corporations, International Banks, philanthropists, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) need to take part in global efforts to overcome the collective challenge.

Ironically, the developed nations are shedding their responsibility and are reluctant to implement their pledges, and do not ready to invest their resources in climate change projects in developing nations in Asia and Africa while several western leaders are in a delusion that global warming is a problem of developing nations, which is a fundamentally wrong perception. Climate change is an existential threat to all living organisms including human beings, animals, and other creators in the universe. Today, the global community has collective woes and a shared fate. Although western nations do not face droughts but they confront food insecurity, usually floods do not occur in Europe however hurricanes, global warming, and glacier melting are badly affecting most parts of Europe and North America.

Presently, no nation is secure from the disastrous impact of global warming, and the risk deepens every single day. In fact, fighting global warming is everybody’s job, each individual must play his role by adhering to the policy of zero contribution to environmental pollution, ensuring cleanliness, and tree plantation. The ongoing COP 27 would clearly illustrate the seriousness, commitment, unity, and collective wisdom of the global community against their collective enemy, while the hopes of serval climate-hit nations are also linked with the outcome of this summit.