In news– The United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC)2022 — COP27 is being held from 6 November until 18 November 2022 at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egyptian with the aim of ensuring full implementation of the Paris Agreement adopted in 2015.
COP27-
- COP stands for the annual ‘Conference of the Parties’ to the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997, or the Paris Agreement.
- The meetings review the progress made by countries in the fight against climate change and in the implementation of decisions taken in earlier COPs.
- The COP meets every year, unless the parties decide otherwise.
- The first COP meeting was held in Berlin, Germany in March 1995. COP27 marks 30 years since the adoption of the UNFCCC.
- The venue for the COP meeting rotates among the five UN-identified regions: Africa, Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Caribbean, and Western Europe and Others.
- The countries in the region propose a candidate, and a host is usually decided at least two years in advance.
- If no country agrees to be the host, Bonn, where the UNFCCC secretariat is headquartered, steps in as host.
- The rotation cycle has not been followed very strictly. The first and second COPs were held in western Europe (Berlin and Geneva), and so were the fifth and sixth (Bonn and the Hague).
- After the 2012 COP in Doha, the event has not yet returned to Asia.
- India, the third largest emitter, hosted the 2002 COP in New Delhi, much before climate change became a big thing.
Note: Sharm el-Sheikh, often called just Sharm, is a resort town in Egypt, situated at the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula where the Gulf of Aqaba joins the Red Sea.
About UNFCCC-
- The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change established an international environmental treaty to combat “dangerous human interference with the climate system”, in part by stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
- The Convention has near universal membership (198 Parties) and is the parent treaty of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
- The main aim of the Paris Agreement is to keep the global average temperature rise this century as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
- The UNFCCC is also the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
- The ultimate objective of all three agreements under the UNFCCC is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system, in a time frame which allows ecosystems to adapt naturally and enables sustainable development.
Source: The Indian Express
