Cop27, Fuzzi: Science isn’t being listened to, the environment matters to everyone

Eduardo Giribaldi – Vatican City

The annual United Nations Climate Change Conference COP27, from November 6-18 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, is an opportunity to propose and discuss rapid and collective solutions to the most pressing environmental issues. The goals that the conference intends to achieve fall into four categories: mitigation, adaptation, financing and cooperation. On the latter aspect, there is more to be done, says Sandro Fauzi, director of research at CNR in Bologna and at the Institute for Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC), who asserts that “without a common and agreed political will it is difficult to achieve results” .

Emissions never go down

During his academic career, Fuzzi has participated in several drafts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the state of the climate. Therefore, his view is a distinctive one, which can confirm that over the past 20 years, the emissions responsible for global warming have never decreased. “Science has highlighted these problems for 30 years now – Fawzi notes – but society and politics have not taken them sufficiently into account.” Among the causes of the climate crisis, we can not ignore the lack of efforts to preserve the agreements concluded between the member states of the United Nations in Paris, in 2015. Above all, keeping the global temperature rise by no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. end of this century.

global context

Regarding the upcoming COP27 conference, Fuzzi admits that there is still no “united global picture”. The European Union intervenes, but it must be remembered that it accounts for only 9% of global emissions. The situation in the United States is different. “The interval between Trump’s presidency has been, in my opinion, very negative from an environmental point of view – Fawzi admits – but with the current presidency new resources have been allocated to reduce emissions of climate-changing gases.” If the conflict in Ukraine is added to this already complex situation, it is clear that the conference will not start “under better auspices”.

Resources and Sustainability

Resources are needed to set the sustainability mechanism in motion. But too often, the UN member states did not honor the agreements that provide for the allocation of capital for the benefit of developing countries. “It must be said that the Paris Accords also provided for mobilizing $100 billion annually towards the poorest countries and therefore without the resources and technologies to reduce their emissions,” explains Fawzy, but “this was only done in a very small part.”

From oil to renewable sources

The solutions that can be found and applied can be summed up in one concept: “Rapid transition from an economy based on the consumption of petroleum products to an economy based on renewable resources.” The technologies are there, but the political will is absent, but the environmental problem is one that affects everyone without exception. Fuzzi concludes that “a ton of CO2 emitted in Italy has the same weight as that emitted in China”. “Without joint and agreed action and political will, it is difficult to obtain results.”