What is COP27 and what is the main issue.

2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference.?Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, or?COP27?is the27th?United Nations Climate Change conference?and is being held from 6 November until 18 November 2022?in?Sharm El Sheikh,?Egypt. It will take place under the presidency of Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs?Sameh Shoukry, with more than 90 heads of state and representatives of 190 countries expected to attend.

The conference has been held annually since the?first UN climate agreement in 1992. It is used by governments to agree on policies to?limit global temperature rises?and?adapt to impacts?associated with?climate change.

30 years ago to bring all the countries together to act collectively and face up to the humanity's biggest threat - to stop dangerous human-induced planetary climate change.

How does COP work?

Over 190 governments and states have signed up and are committed to act. The countries who have signed up are referred to as "Parties" to the framework convention.

Once a year these parties assemble somewhere in the world at a huge meeting called a "Conference of the Parties" or COP for short.The aim at these meetings is to assess progress on global climate action, and pile on the pressure for countries to do more.

The goal of COP27 however is still in dispute, The issue, is that wealthy countries say they want to focus on helping developing nations to move on from fossil-fuels to transition to renewable sources of energy. But the developing countries say they are already experiencing the impacts of climate change. They want to focus instead on getting financial compensation for the climate change impacts that they did not cause.

The money that poorer countries are demanding is for the likes of having to move villages and towns away from the sea or from flood-prone regions to protect the lives and livelihoods of people.

The so-called Global South - a term used to describe the poorer and most vulnerable nations - have spend years banging the table to get rich countries to pay for the economic losses associated with weather-related disasters and other climate impacts that they are already experiencing.

Apart from this issue of compensation for loss and damage, the richer developed nations gave a firm commitment at a COP meeting in 2009 to provide $100bn in funding per year to help less developed nations adapt to, and overcome, the challenges and impacts of climate change.

But 13 years on since then the funds allocated are far short of the $100bn funding target.?

So ,the issue is what will the focus,?of COP27 be on this year??

1. Will the real focus of COP27 end up being the need for financial reparations to be paid to developing nations or?
2. Will it instead turn out to be about helping developing nations to transition away from fossil fuels.?

We will have to wait and see.