COP27 Sharm el-Sheikh Climate Change Conference

Sharm el-Sheikh Climate Change Conference – November 6-18 2022
UN Conference on climate change COP21 Paris & aftermath
CO2 levels rise to highest point since evolution of humans (13 May 2019)
What’s the difference between global warming and climate change?

Delivering for people and the planet
From 6 to 18 November, Heads of State, ministers and negotiators, along with climate activists, mayors, civil society representatives and CEOs will meet in the Egyptian coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh for the largest annual gathering on climate action.
The 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – COP27 – will build on the outcomes of COP26 to deliver action on an array of issues critical to tackling the climate emergency – from urgently reducing greenhouse gas emissions, building resilience and adapting to the inevitable impacts of climate change, to delivering on the commitments to finance climate action in developing countries.
Faced with a growing energy crisis, record greenhouse gas concentrations, and increasing extreme weather events, COP27 seeks renewed solidarity between countries, to deliver on the landmark Paris Agreement, for people and the planet.

13 December
Can COP keep up with an evolving climate effort?
Emily Carlton and David G. Victor
(Brookings) Another United Nations climate conference (COP) has come and gone, leaving the world to scratch its head over what was accomplished. The annual conference has ballooned over the years into a massive climate festival: nearly 50,000 people — an all-time record — taking part in the rituals of formal diplomacy and, in parallel, a flashy climate change expo. So what came of it?
If you ask people who paid attention only to the formal negotiations, the answer is not much. Meetings were frustrating and adversarial, focused on broken promises and eking out small, hard-fought victories. When they finally ended — two days after the formal deadline had expired — there was a sense of relief that consensus had been reached, but bewilderment about its content. Most visibly, parties agreed to set up a new funding mechanism to compensate developing countries for the “loss and damage” caused by climate change. But the fund was empty of money.
What the celebrated agreement really does is lay out a process for future negotiations on a slew of issues where governments don’t much agree — including who will pay into the fund and how the money, if it ever appears, will get spent.
Those who focused more on the other things happening around COP27 have a different and more encouraging story to tell. That story is full of examples of implementation —small groups of governments and firms working together to transform key industrial sectors. Too often, these examples of productive cooperation and practical action get overlooked because they happen largely outside the negotiating room. (The New Way to Fight Climate Change –Small-Scale Cooperation Can Succeed Where Global Diplomacy Has Failed)

23 November
V20, G7 Launch Initiative to Address Climate Risks in Vulnerable Countries
The Vulnerable 20 Group (V20) of Finance Ministers and the Group of Seven (G7) launched the Global Shield against Climate Risks – “an initiative for pre-arranged financial support designed to be quickly deployed in times of climate disasters.”
The Global Shield, launched during the Sharm El-Sheikh Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 27) on 14 November 2022, addresses weaknesses in the financial protection structure in climate-vulnerable economies through pre-arranged finance disbursed before or just after disasters happen.
The first recipients of Global Shield packages are Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Fiji, Ghana, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Senegal.
UNICEF’s ‘Today and Tomorrow’ initiative is an integrated climate change finance solution combining “funding for immediate climate resilience and risk prevention programmes for children today with an innovative use of risk transfer finance provided by the insurance market for cyclone disasters tomorrow,” whose “tomorrow” portion is supported by the German and UK Governments under the Global Shield

Climate reparations are insanity. They will hurt poor nations most.
By Marc A. Thiessen
Climate change is real. But forcing developing countries to abandon fossil fuels — and denying tens of millions the opportunity to join the nascent global middle class — will cost more lives. And no amount of reparations could ever make up for that.
(WaPo) The Brookings Institution reported in September 2018 that humanity had reached a stunning milestone: … More than half of the world’s population — some 3.8 billion people — now earned enough to be considered “middle class” or “rich.”
What made this transformation possible? The collapse of the Soviet empire, the worldwide turn away from socialism, and the U.S.-led global expansion of free trade and free enterprise — fueled by access to cheap, reliable sources of energy
We should be doing everything possible to accelerate this progress, so millions more can join the ranks of the middle-class majority. Instead, climate activists are advocating policies that would deny poor nations access to inexpensive, abundant fossil fuels they need to develop their economies — which would ultimately leave tens of millions of people in poverty and more vulnerable to climate-induced disasters.
Now,…wealthy nations have agreed to pay poor nations reparations for costs of natural disasters supposedly caused by the industrialized world’s use of fossil fuels.
This is insanity. The reason poor nations suffer disproportionate damage from natural disasters is poverty. When Hurricane Ian hit Florida in September, it caused lots of damage but relatively few deaths. Power was restored and bridges swiftly rebuilt. By contrast, a similar storm hitting poor countries could kill thousands and disrupt the economy for years because better infrastructure does more to save lives than cutting emissions.

COP27 ended in tears and frustration, writes Camilla Hodgson from the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. After fraught, late-night negotiations, the nearly 200 nations failed to progress beyond the pledges made at last year’s summit to phase down coal power and fossil fuel subsidies. (Financial Times/paywall)

21 November
COP27’s ‘loss and damage’ fund for developing countries could be a breakthrough – or another empty climate promise
Adil Najam, Professor of International Relations, Boston University
(The Conversation) Developing nations were justifiably jubilant at the close of COP27 as negotiators from wealthy countries around the world agreed for the first time to establish a dedicated “loss and damage” fund for vulnerable countries harmed by climate change.
It was an important and hard fought acknowledgment of the damage – and of who bears at least some responsibility for the cost.
But the fund might not materialize in the way that developing countries hope.
I study global environmental policy and have been following climate negotiations from their inception at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Here’s what’s in the agreement reached at COP27, the United Nations climate talks in Egypt in November 2022, and why it holds much promise but very few commitments.
Progress was made at COP27, but more is needed, says climate activist
I’ll be honest that as much as we might have some critiques about the failings of this COP to really step up to the plate and have the guts to finally talk about phasing out all fossil fuels … the fact that we made this leap on the issue of loss and damage does really give me hope.
(CBC Radio The Current) I think it’s important to note that on both of these key issues…, Canada actually showed up at COP27 much more constructively than it ever has before. And that’s particularly true on the issue of loss and damage.
Canada … provided $7 million in funding to a project called Global Shield, which is linked to issues of loss and damage.
So what Canada needs to do is to keep being that constructive player and to think about how to bring real money to the table. $7 million isn’t a whole lot to deal with these kinds of crises, so we’re going to have to figure out how to increase that funding.

20 November
‘Not enough for people and planet’: Critics denounce COP27 deal
While a climate fund for poorer nations was established, ‘no progress’ was made to reduce emissions and abandon fossil fuels.
(Al Jazeera) For the first time, the nations of the world decided to help pay for the damage an overheating world is inflicting on poor countries, but they finished marathon climate talks without further addressing the root cause of those disasters — the burning of fossil fuels.
Early Sunday, delegates approved the compensation fund but failed to deal with the contentious issues of an overall temperature goal, emissions cutting, and the desire to target all fossil fuels for phasedown.
What are the key outcomes of Cop27 climate summit?
From loss and damage to 1.5C goal and World Bank reform, the takeaways from Sharm el-Sheikh
Cop27 agrees historic ‘loss and damage’ fund for climate impact in developing countries
Deal is hailed as potential turning point that acknowledges vast inequities of climate crisis
Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, told exhausted delegates as the gavel was brought down on the final deal at 7am, after an all-night negotiating session: “It wasn’t easy at all. But this outcome will benefit the most vulnerable around the world.”
But he warned that time was short to take action on the targets agreed, and there was “no room for backsliding”. He said the national plans that countries had submitted on cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 were not enough to meet the vital goal of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, in line with scientific advice. “The [national plans] just don’t add up,” he said. “Keep your eye on 2030. That is our horizon.”
Poor countries and climate campaigners rejoiced. Sir Molwyn Joseph, minister of health, wellbeing and the environment of Antigua and Barbuda, and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said: “Today, the international community has restored global faith in this critical process that is dedicated to ensuring no one is left behind.
1.5C
The 2015 Paris agreement contained two temperature goals – to keep the rise “well below 2C” above pre-industrial levels, and “pursuing efforts” to keep the increase to 1.5C. Science since then has shown clearly that 2C is not safe, so at Cop26 in Glasgow last year countries agreed to focus on a 1.5C limit. As their commitments on cutting greenhouse gas emissions were too weak to stay within the 1.5C limit, they also agreed to return each year to strengthen them, a process known as the ratchet. At Cop27, some countries tried to renege on the 1.5C goal, and to abolish the ratchet. They failed, but a resolution to cause emissions to peak by 2025 was taken out, to the dismay of many.
Gas
The final text of Cop27 contained a provision to boost “low-emissions energy”. That could mean many things, from wind and solar farms to nuclear reactors, and coal-fired power stations fitted with carbon capture and storage. It could also be interpreted to mean gas, which has lower emissions than coal, but is still a major fossil fuel. Many countries at Cop27, particularly those from Africa with large reserves to exploit, came to Sharm el-Sheikh hoping to strike lucrative gas deals.
Fossil fuels
Last year at Glasgow, a commitment to phase down the use of coal was agreed. It marked the first time a resolution on fossil fuels had been included in the final text – some would say, incredibly for 30 years of conferences on climate change. At Cop27, some countries – led by India – wanted to go further and include a commitment to phase down all fossil fuels. That was the subject of intense wrangling late into Saturday night, but in the end it failed and the resolution included was the same as that in Glasgow.
World Bank reform
A growing number of developed and developing countries are calling for urgent changes to the World Bank and other publicly funded finance institutions, which they say have failed to provide the funding needed to help poor countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis. Reform of the kind widely discussed at Cop27 could involve a recapitalisation of the development banks to allow them to provide far more assistance to the developing world. Nicholas Stern, a climate economist and peer, has calculated the developing world will need $2.4tn (£2tn) a year from 2030. But this is only about 5% more than the investment they would require anyway, much of which would go into high-carbon infrastructure. The World Bank could provide about half of those funds, he estimates.
Adaptation
Building flood defences, preserving wetlands, restoring mangrove swamps and regrowing forests – these measures, and more, can help countries to become more resilient to the impacts of climate breakdown. But poor countries often struggle to gain funding for these efforts. Of the $100bn a year rich countries promised they would receive from 2020 – a promise still not fulfilled – only about $20bn goes to adaptation. In Glasgow, countries agreed to double that proportion, but at Cop27 some sought to remove that commitment. After some struggle, it was reaffirmed.
Tipping points, the IPCC and health
Since Cop26, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has published the key parts of its latest vast assessment of climate science, warning of catastrophic impacts that can only be averted by sharp and urgent cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. The IPCC was set up by the UN to advise on science, yet some countries wished to remove references to its latest findings from the final text. Instead of that, a reference to the key finding of “tipping points” was put in – a warning that the climate does not warm in a gradual and linear fashion, but that we risk tripping feedback loops that will lead to rapidly escalating effects. These include the heating of the Amazon, which could turn the rainforest to savannah, transforming it from a carbon sink to a carbon source, and the melting of permafrost that releases the powerful greenhouse gas methane. Also inserted was a reference to “the right to a clean healthy and sustainable environment”. Medical professionals have begun to play a much more prominent role in climate talks, and in climate protests, drawing a clear link between global heating and health.

19 November
Last minute objections threaten historic UN climate deal
(AP) — A last minute fight over emissions cutting and the overall climate change goal is delaying a potentially historic deal that would create a fund for compensating poor nations that are victims of extreme weather worsened by rich countries’ carbon pollution.
Several cabinet ministers from across the globe told the AP earlier Saturday that agreement was reached on a fund for what negotiators call loss and damage. It would be a big win for poorer nations which have long called for cash — sometimes viewed as reparations — because they are often the victims of climate disasters despite having contributed little to the pollution that heats up the globe.
However, the other issues are seemingly delaying any action. A meeting to approve an overall agreement has been pushed back more than two-and-a-half hours with little sign of diplomats getting together for a formal plenary to approve something.
If an agreement is accepted it still needs to be approved in a unanimous decision late into Saturday evening. But other parts of a deal, outlined in a package of proposals put out earlier in the day by the Egyptian chairs of the talks, are still being hammered out as negotiators head into what they hope is their final session.

17 November
Rich countries are trying to hit pause on climate summit’s key issue
The past week has given the world a glimpse of what climate-vulnerable countries have long known: while rich countries bend over backwards to pledge their support for climate action, they are far less enthusiastic when it comes to forking over the cash.
At the UN’s COP27 climate summit, the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom are united against establishing a new fund this year to help the world’s developing nations — which have contributed little to the climate crisis — recover from climate disasters.
Developing a so-called loss and damage fund is a key issue at COP27, and “the litmus test for success” of the summit, said Erin Roberts, a climate policy researcher and founder of the Loss and Damage Collaboration. (CNN: This has quickly become the key issue at COP27 – and the most difficult to resolve)
Climate talks are wrapping up. The thorniest questions are still unresolved.
(NPR) Global greenhouse gas emissions are still rising. The Earth is on track to blow past temperature targets that could rein in the most extreme weather events. And the countries most vulnerable to climate-driven disasters are still largely on their own to pay for catastrophic damage.
Negotiators are entering the most intense period of the two-week meeting, known as COP27. Talks are supposed to wrap up on Friday. But those who have attended past annual meetings say it’s likely that delegates will miss that deadline, given their many areas of disagreement.
“The Parties remain divided on a number of significant issues,” said United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, in a speech Thursday. “There is clearly a breakdown in trust between North and South, and between developed and emerging economies.”

16 November
COP27 negotiators still far apart on strong climate deal
By Dominic Evans, Aidan Lewis and Jake Spring
G20 leaders expressed support for climate action
Lula boosts COP27 with ‘Brazil is back’ message
But countries struggle for climate deal in Egypt
(Reuters) Countries were far from agreeing the contours of a climate deal at the COP27 summit in Egypt on Wednesday, with the host country urging negotiators to resolve their differences ahead of a weekend deadline.
An official close to the talks said divisions remained over issues including whether rich nations should set up a fund to cover irreparable damage being wrought by climate change, language addressing fossil fuel use and whether 1.5C should remain the explicit targeted limit for planetary warming.
The outcome of the conference in Sharm el-Sheikh is a test of world resolve to tackle global warming as other crises, ranging from Russia’s war in Ukraine to consumer inflation, distract international attention.
Greeted like a rock star, Brazil’s Lula promises to protect Amazon
– Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva received a superstar welcome at the COP27 summit in Egypt on Wednesday as he pledged to recommit the rainforest nation to tackling the climate crisis and offered to hold future U.N. climate talks.
“I’m here today to say that Brazil is ready to come back,” Lula said, drawing cheers from the crowd of delegates at the international climate summit in the seaside resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Behind the scenes: How COP27 reached a deal that supports better monitoring of oceans to curb climate crisis
Anya M. Waite, CEO and Scientific Director, Ocean Frontier Institute; Professor and Associate VP Research, Dalhousie University
(The Conversation) Tabled by the representatives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the World Meteorological Organization, the agreement would help improve and support the observation of the global climate system, including the oceans that control the climate.
The nations were prepared for these negotiations after COP27’s Earth Information Day event, which I moderated, but there was one hold up: The differences with a handful of nations for whom observation implied scrutiny on hard-to-manage emissions imposed by nations that caused most of the climate damage. It was frustratingly unclear whether the global goal would pass. The UNFCCC negotiators returned to the drawing board — working into the wee hours.
Such unseen and often unglamorous efforts underpin the critical work to move nations to agreement at COP27.
The following day, they emerged in weary triumph with an agreement on global observation.
Global climate finance leaves out cities: fixing it is critical to battling climate change
Astrid R.N. Haas, Fellow, Infrastructure Institute, School of Cities, University of Toronto
(The Conversation) Climate finance …is a key theme of the COP27 conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
The current architecture of the institutions and funds that provide climate finance is, however, not designed to work at a sub-national level. Therefore across the globe, cities are being left out.

12 November
UN climate talks reach halftime with key issues unresolved
(AP) — It’s half-way time at the U.N. climate talks in Egypt, with negotiators still working on draft agreements before ministers arrive next week to push for a substantial deal to fight climate change.
The two-week meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh started with strong appeals from world leaders for greater efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and help poor nations cope with global warming.
Negotiators are trying to put together a mitigation program that would capture the different measures countries have committed to in order to reduce emissions, including for specific sectors like energy and transport. Many of these pledges are not formally part of the U.N. process, meaning they cannot easily be scrutinized at the annual meeting. A draft agreement circulated early Saturday had more than 200 square brackets, meaning large sections were still unresolved. Some countries want the plan to be valid only for one year, while others say a longer-term roadmap is needed.

9 November
What happened on the third day of Cop27 in Egypt?
Negotiations move behind closed doors and China confirms ‘informal’ talks with US
(The Guardian) After the leaders’ speeches of the first couple of days, most of the negotiations have now moved behind closed doors. The big discussions today were all around finance, and there does appear to have been some movement on this, as Damian Carrington reported (‘Significant’ moves on climate disaster funds lift Cop27 hopes), with positive momentum potentially starting to build on a pivotal issue as the UK said it would allow some debt payment deferrals, while Austria and New Zealand put forward funding for loss and damage.

Meanwhile:
Dry in the desert: Cop27 delegates get a taste of food and drink scarcity
Conference attenders in Sharm el-Sheikh ate ice-cream as food stalls and water fountains ran dry (See Comment below)

Investors have trillions to fight climate change. Developing nations get little of it
(NPR) One of the thorniest issues at the United Nations’ annual climate negotiations in Egypt is how to get money to low-income countries to help them cope with climate change.
Governments of industrialized countries, whose emissions have largely driven global warming, have pledged help. But public funds alone can’t cover the trillions of dollars developing countries need to deal with rising temperatures.
Many private investors see big opportunities to propel — and profit from — the fight against climate change. Yet little of their money is going to poorer nations, which already bear the brunt of extreme weather despite contributing little of the pollution that fuels climate change.
Show us the money: Developing world at COP27 seeks finance details
Finance Day at COP27 puts focus on banks, investors, insurers
Emerging markets demand more help to pay for transition
U.N. experts flag dozens of climate projects worth $120 bln
In an effort to answer the argument by private sector financiers that it’s too risky to invest more in emerging markets, the experts, who help the COP host-governments engage with business, pulled together a list of projects that could be funded more quickly.
African insurers take up climate change fight with $14 bln pledge
At COP27, Building Emissions Loom Larger
Cleaning up the carbon-intensive construction industry and reducing energy consumption in buildings have emerged as major topics at the UN climate summit.
(Bloomberg CityLab) The built environment has always played a major role in the climate crisis — a much-shared stat suggests that roughly 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions can be traced to constructing and maintaining buildings. But the building sector hasn’t commanded a commensurate amount of attention at international climate conclaves.
At COP27 — the UN climate change conference now being held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt — that’s starting to change: More than 140 events across the nearly two-week gathering focus on real estate and construction.

6 November
World in crisis a grim backdrop for UN climate talks
(AP) — Envoys from around the globe gathered Sunday in the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for talks on tackling climate change amid a multitude of competing crises, including the war in Ukraine, high inflation, food shortages and an energy crunch.
Notching up a first small victory, negotiators agreed after two frantic days of preliminary talks to formally discuss the question of vulnerable nations receiving money for the loss and damage they’ve suffered from climate change. The issue has weighed on the talks for years, with rich nations including the United States pushing back against the idea of climate reparations.
In an opening speech, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Hoesung Lee, said countries have “a once in a generation opportunity to save our planet and our livelihoods.”
Cutting emissions is only part of the task, however. Scientists and campaigners say the world also needs to do more to adapt to those effects of global warming that can’t be avoided anymore.
The head of the U.N. migration agency urged the international community Sunday to mobilize human and financial resources to address growing climate migration.
António Vitorino told The Associated Press that millions of people across the world “are already suffering in their daily lives because of the impacts of natural disasters and climate change.”

4 November
The New Way to Fight Climate Change
Small-Scale Cooperation Can Succeed Where Global Diplomacy Has Failed
By Arunabha Ghosh, Artur Runge-Metzger, David G. Victor, and Ji Zou
(Foreign Affairs) Over the last three decades, diplomats from around the world have convened 26 times at the annual Conference of the Parties to plot out their fight against climate change. On Sunday, they will begin the latest such gathering, COP27, in Egypt. It is well timed, coming in the middle of an active hurricane season and after a summer when heat waves broke records across the world, a drought in Africa put 22 million people at risk of starvation, and floods submerged one-third of Pakistan.
Cooperation will certainly be essential to curtailing emissions coming from the global economy. But curtailing emissions doesn’t have to hinge on global consensus. Many activists and some governments have begun to adopt a new theory of climate collaboration that avoids seeking consensus across all the nations—nearly always a recipe for the lowest and slowest common denominator.

1 November
COP27: An opportunity to get serious about climate migration
Reva Dhingra and Elizabeth Ferris
(Brookings) Although it may come up in discussions about adaptation and loss and damage as a result of climate change, climate migration is not on the agenda for next week’s U.N. Climate Change Conference, known as COP27. This is deeply troubling. The first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990 recognized that migration would be one of the main consequences of climate change. This migration is already happening. Some 20 million people are displaced every year by natural disasters, mainly weather-related events. All signs point to even more people forced from their communities by disasters that are more frequent and extreme because of human-made climate change. Slow-onset catastrophes like drought and sea-level rise will lead even more people to move. The World Bank projects that without serious efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions, 216 million people will migrate internally because of climate change by 2050 (not including the Middle East, North America or Europe).

13 September 2021
World Bank: Climate Change Could Force 216 Million People to Migrate Within Their Own Countries by 2050
The World Bank’s updated Groundswell report released today finds that climate change, an increasingly potent driver of migration, could force 216 million people across six world regions to move within their countries by 2050. Hotspots of internal climate migration could emerge as early as 2030 and continue to spread and intensify by 2050. The report also finds that immediate and concerted action to reduce global emissions, and support green, inclusive, and resilient development, could reduce the scale of climate migration by as much as 80 percent.
Millions on the Move in Their Own Countries: The Human Face of Climate Change

11 October
The COP of No Return
Sameh Shoukry, COP27 President-Designate and Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The human cost of climate change is making headlines almost daily. In a world of rising geopolitical tensions and daunting economic challenges, how can we seize the opportunity the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference offers to inspire an approach to mitigation and adaptation that is based on trust, justice, and equity?
Some fear that this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference – to be held here [Sharm el-Sheikh] on November 6-18 – will be an unintended casualty of the geopolitical tensions and economic challenges the world is facing. I believe the opposite: COP27 represents a unique and timely opportunity for the world to come together, recognize our common interests, and restore multilateral cooperation.
Heatwaves account for some of the deadliest disasters and are intensifying, warn the IFRC and the UN humanitarian relief agency ahead of COP27
Record high temperatures this year—which are fueling catastrophes in Somalia, Pakistan and around the world—foreshadow a future with deadlier, more frequent and more intense heat-related humanitarian emergencies, a new report warns.

6 October
Four weeks to COP27 — key issues and challenges
(EU Observer) Among those are: access to climate finance, loss and damage in developing countries and transforming energy systems. All will be high on the agenda.
But negotiations will take place amid escalating geopolitical tensions and widespread mistrust in the developing world as green finance promises remain unfulfilled.
Now, the war in Ukraine, the global energy crisis and domestic gas bills have become the focus of attention. Nevertheless, Africa’s water stress, deadly floods in Pakistan, Europe’s droughts, and hurricanes hitting Caribbean countries have kept climate action on the to-do list.
…developing countries are likely to keep pushing to create a concrete financial facility for loss and damage — a proposal from the G77 and China raised during last year’s COP26 that was rejected by the EU and US. … But there is a much broader discussion over the international financial system reform, led by Barbados with its so-called Bridgetown Agenda.
Barbados has argued that one in five countries is experiencing fiscal and financial stress, adding that there would be deepening hardship, debt defaults, widening inequality, political upheaval and a delayed shift to a low-carbon world if this issue is left unaddressed.