With a month left before Cop27, is the Middle East on track with its climate goals?

For the next two years, the Middle East and North Africa region will host the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s “Conference of Parties” – or Cop – the world’s premier climate change conference. Cop27 will be held in Egypt, and Cop28 in the UAE, making this a pivotal time to shed light on the region’s climate ambitions and its path towards low-carbon and zero-carbon pathways.

The expected outcomes from Cop27 entail four main items that are to be agreed upon: climate finance; adaptation; loss and damage; and increasing ambition. On climate finance, there is hope that developed countries will commit the previously agreed-upon $100 billion a year to developing countries, which hasn't been fully realised since the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Adaptation, as well as loss and damage, are key points since Egypt’s Cop is an African Cop, with the most vulnerable countries on this continent at risk of inundation and eradication of land and biodiversity. Therefore, an agreement on the mechanism to deal with loss and damage is necessary.

The fourth agenda point, of increasing ambition, requires more political will from the global community. A February 2022 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that global temperature increases need to remain below 1.5°C to avoid a climate disaster, and that we have only 10 years remaining until our “carbon budget” is used up entirely. By 2030, moreover, emission levels should be halved in order to maintain a 1.5°C course. This means that we have less than 10 years to take strong action and reduce our emissions globally.

Countries have committed to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in order to curb their emissions. An NDC is a climate action plan to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts with an emission-reduction target in mind. The Glasgow Climate Pact in 2021 assessed that, if all NDC targets pledged in Paris were implemented, we would still head towards 2.4°C of global warming, with a worst-case scenario of 2.8°C if not all pledges are implemented, and a best-case scenario of 1.8 °C if all new actions in Glasgow are implemented. This is still above the 1.5 °C warming mark needed to avert disaster. Therefore, it was agreed in Glasgow that, by the time of the Egypt conference, all countries would increase their ambitions and place new pledges to reduce their emissions. This is where universal political will is needed the most.

The National