I COP27: Facts, Figures, And Key Issues

Sustainability

COP27: Facts, Figures, And Key Issues

COP27 begins this month, with the 27th edition of the UN’s Climate Change Conference due to be held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2022. Here’s what you should know.

• What is COP?

The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the main decision-making body of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. It meets annually to assess progress in tackling climate change and aims to deliver action on several issues, from cutting greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to climate change to delivering on commitments to finance climate change mitigation in developing countries.

The event brings together heads of state, and government and negotiators, along with climate activists, civil society representatives, and CEOs. Its presidency and venue rotate among five UN regions: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and Eastern Europe, and Western Europe and others. The first UN Climate Change Conference was held in 1995 in Berlin, Germany. This year’s summit will be the first in Africa since COP22 was held in Morocco in 2016. • What to expect

COP27 will kick off with a world leader’s summit for two days, followed by eight days of discussions: finance day, science day, youth and future generations day, decarbonization day, adaptation and agriculture day, gender day, water day, ace and civil society day, energy day, biodiversity day, and solutions day.

The conference is expected to set the overall tone on what is needed to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement and keep the 1.5°C global warming temperature limitation within reach, as well as make progress on climate finance. The UN is set to present an action plan to ensure that all countries are protected by early warning systems within five years.

• Climate change in numbers

Over the next 50 years, unchecked climate change could cost the global economy $178 trillion unless countries unite in a systemic net-zero transition, according to Deloitte’s Global Turning Point Report. However, the global economy could gain $43 trillion over the same period by rapidly speeding up the transition to net zero.

The number of people affected by environmental disasters has almost doubled, from an average of 1,147 per 100,000 per year between 2005 and 2014 to 2,066 from 2012 to 2021, according to a UNDRRWMO joint report. Annual clean energy investment needs to more than triple by 2030 to over $4 trillion to put the world on a net zero trajectory by 2050, according to a 2021 report by the International Energy Agency.

• Key investment commitments

In 2021, 137 countries committed to halting forest loss and land degradation by 2030, a pledge that is backed by $12 billion in public and $7.2 billion in private funding. Leaders from South Africa, the EU, the U.S., France, Germany, and the U.K. vowed in the same year to support South Africa—the most carbonintensive electricity producer— with $8.5 billion over the next three-five years to push for a transition away from coal to a low-carbon economy.

On the corporate level, 130 banks holding $47 trillion in assets made commitments to climate action and sustainability in 2019. In 2021, 22 asset owners with $1.2 trillion in assets pledged to cut the carbon emissions of their portfolios to net zero by 2050 or earlier, taking the total to 37 investors, managing a total of $8.5 trillion in assets.

Some important past decisions

1997

COP3 saw the establishment of the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in industrialized countries. The protocol entered into force on February 16, 2005.

2009

At COP15, developed countries committed to mobilizing $100 billion per year by 2020 for climate mitigation and adaptation in developing countries.

2015

COP21 delivered the Paris Agreement, a legally binding global treaty on climate change, committing 196 parties to keep global warming to well below 2°C, preferably to 1.5°C, compared to preindustrial levels. COP21 also extended the goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion through 2025.

2021

At COP26, countries agreed for the first time to end new global finance for fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022 and steer spending into clean energy instead. This could shift more than $24 billion of public funds per year away from fossil fuels and into clean energy.

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Girls Belong Here

Pelin Incesu, Area Vice President, Middle East and Africa, AstraZeneca, explains why gender equality is close to her heart, and how her company is nurturing a new generation of female leaders.

When I was a young girl in Izmir, I never thought that I would someday become the area vice president of a multinational pharmaceutical company, leading a team of more than 2,500 colleagues who are making health happen for hundreds of millions of people.

I loved science and eagerly pursued my medical degree, qualifying as a psychiatrist. But it was only after I joined AstraZeneca in 2000 that I realized what women could achieve in the boardroom. Back then, the pharmaceutical industry was male-dominated and I was the first Turkish woman to become an AstraZeneca country president in Türkiye in 2014 – a glass ceiling I was proud to break.

Twenty years on, and AstraZeneca is a very different place. More than 50% of our global workforce are women. Women now make up 38% of our board of directors, 42% of our senior executive team, and 48.1% of senior middle management roles and above. We are on track to achieving gender parity at all levels across the organization by 2025.

These figures are industry leading but there is still so much more that needs to be done to make girls and women feel that they belong in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers.

Despite the fact that girls generally achieve better grades in STEM subjects than boys, less than 30% of STEM researchers are women. We know that women and girls are not held back by their abilities, but rather by social attitudes and inequitable access to education – a situation made worse by the coronavirus pandemic.

To mark the International Day of the Girl on October 11, AstraZeneca proudly joined the global #GirlsBelongHere campaign, developed by Plan International, our partner in the Young Health Programme. The #GirlsBelongHere annual call to action was launched to tear down barriers of discrimination and prejudice that continue to hold girls back. It brings young women and girls into the boardrooms of companies around the world and provides them with a platform for their voices to be heard. Over the first two weeks of October, girls and young women stepped into senior leadership roles at AstraZeneca offices across the Middle East and Africa and spent time engaging with our leadership team. They participated in meetings, manufacturing site visits, mentoring sessions, and workshops, experiencing what it’s like to work at AstraZeneca.

As a science-led company, supporting the next generation of women and girls in STEM is a responsibility we are proud to carry. More than 500 colleagues across MEA have already enrolled in the AstraZeneca Women in Leadership Programme, which helps to build the capabilities of the next generation of female leaders and supports careers with lasting impact. Through initiatives like these, I hope we can inspire more young women to pursue STEM careers, making the field all the richer for it.

Pelin Incesu, Area Vice President, MEA, AstraZeneca www.astrazeneca.com