Namibia welcomes outcomes of climate COP27

WINDHOEK, Nov. 27 — Namibia has welcomed the decisions taken at the just-ended 27th session of Conference of the Parties (COP27) on climate change, an official said Sunday.
The climate change conference took place in Sharm El-Sheikh Egypt earlier this month negotiated on a wider range of issues, from global reporting on national climate change efforts, and how to finance such efforts, Namibia’s Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism spokesperson, Romeo Muyunda said in an update statement.
“Namibia was represented adequately at both political and technical levels,” he said, as he highlighted some of the decisions Namibia is pleased with.
According to Muyunda, the landmark win agreement on establishing the first-ever dedicated fund for loss and damage is one of the decisions welcomed by Namibia.
“The fund will assist developing countries with financial and technical support to rescue and rebuild the physical and social infrastructure of developing countries devastated by extreme weather events including climate-related emergencies, sea level rise, displacement, relocation, migration, insufficient climate information, and data, or the need for climate-resilient reconstruction and recovery,” he added.
New pledges, totalling more than 230 million U.S. dollars, were made to the Adaptation Fund at COP27, a small sum given the scale of the needs in developing countries. Despite efforts made on the financial pledges to the Adaptation Fund, the COP27 also urged developed countries to lay down a clear roadmap on mobilizing 100 billion U.S. dollars per year by 2024/5, Muyunda said.
Furthermore, Muyunda said the decision to double adaptation finance was reached and the COP27 called for urgency on developed countries to scale up and mobilize financial support to the developing countries to implement their nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
Muyunda said the mitigation work program was established to halve the current emissions by 40 to 50 percent by 2030 with the developed countries taking the lead.
“It was also decided that the work program shall function in a manner that is consistent with the procedures and timelines for communication of successive NDCs established in the Paris Agreement, and that the scope of the work program should be based on broad thematic areas relevant to urgently scaling up mitigation ambition,” he said.
Meanwhile, Muyunda said parties agreed to initiate the development of a framework for the global goal of adaptation to be undertaken through a long-term structured approach under the Glasgow-Sharm el-Sheikh work program in 2023 with a view for the framework being adopted at the next COP. COP28 will convene from November 30 to December 12, 2023, in the United Arab Emirates.
The COP is the global decision-making body of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. (Xinhua)