SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) — The Latest on COP27, this year’s annual UN summit on climate change.
In a departure from the criticism that rich countries have so far endured from many developing nations’ leaders at this year’s international climate meeting, the president of Malawi praised leaders present in Egypt for simply showing up.
“The temptation to abstain from COP this year was great,” President Lazarus Chakwera said, referring to the talks by their U.N. acronym.
“It was also tempting for each of you to abstain from this COP because of the great and unprecedented economic hardships your citizens are suffering in your own nation,” he said. “But you resisted this temptation and chose the path of courage.”
Still, Chakwera said that courage would also be tested by leaders’ ability to deliver “climate justice for the most vulnerable nations.”
“It is a test of our capacity to work together as a global community that is sailing into the same storm in the same boat,” he said.
Chakwerea said any agreements forged at the two-week meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh should recognize the different abilities of developed countries like the United States and high-productivity nations such as China on the one hand, and developing countries like his own on the other.
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Speaking on behalf of his and other small island nations, Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, targeted fossil fuel companies that make $3 billion a day in profits and demanded that some of that money be used as reparations for poor vulnerable nations hit by floods, droughts, storms and other climate disasters.
“While they are profiting the planet is burning,” Browne said.
“It is about time that these companies are made to pay a global carbon tax on their profits,” Browne said. “Profligate producers of fossil fuels have benefited from extortionate profits at the expense of human civilization.”
And if the small islands can’t get a global tax on fossil fuel profits, Browne suggested going to international courts to get polluters to pay for what they’ve done. A group of scientists from Dartmouth College calculated specific damages for all the world’s countries and how much was caused by other nations, saying it would work well in international court cases.
Browne also quoted William Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ in sharing his frustration with lack of action.
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death,” Browne said.
Despite 27 climate summits “tomorrow has not come. Governments and corporations come to the COP each year delivering grand statements with lofty commitments. But these commitments are only partially honored.”
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS:
— Leaders push for climate action, fossil tax at UN talks
— U.N. chief, Gore, others give heated warnings in climate talks
— Their lagoons languishing, precious Spanish wetlands go dry
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Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa urged leaders at the U.N. climate summit on Tuesday to lift “the albatross of illegal economic sanctions” to help the country achieve their climate goals.
“We demanded the immediate lifting of these unwarranted and punitive sanctions,” he said.
Sanctions by the U.S., the European Union, the United Kingdom and others target top Zimbabwean officials and prevent the country from getting support from the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.
The sanctions call for the government to respect human rights, democratic rights and have accountable government financial management.
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GENEVA — The head of the U.N. human rights office is calling for the immediate release of a prominent jailed activist who is leading a hunger and water strike in Egypt amid concerns about his health.
Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said the activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah, “is in great danger. His dry hunger strike puts his life at acute risk.”
Rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani relayed Türk’s comments at a U.N. briefing on Tuesday and said that all activists and others affected by climate change should “have a seat at the table” at the U.N. climate conference that opened a day earlier in the Egyptian seaside resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh.
“We are very concerned for his health,” Shamdasani said, insisting on the need for Abdel-Fattah “to be urgently, immediately released.”
The U.N. rights office last raised its concerns about his health with Egyptian authorities on Friday, she said.
The rights office said Abdel-Fattah was repeatedly arrested over more than a decade for his activism against alleged human rights violations by Egyptian security forces and the use of military courts to try civilians.
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LONDON — Environmental activists blocked traffic on England’s busiest highway on Tuesday, demanding an end to fossil fuel use as world leaders confront the growing threat from climate change at a UN-sponsored summit in Egypt.
National Highways says there are currently delays of 60 minutes on the M25, with congestion causing traffic jams that stretch for five miles in some parts of the highway that circles greater London.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said protesters from the campaign group Just Stop Oil have a point in the sense that society must “bear down on the use of fossil fuels.”
But he said protests shouldn’t block streets and roadways as it disrupts traffic, delays emergency vehicles and forces police to get involved.
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The family of a prominent jailed activist on a hunger and water strike has become increasingly concerned about his health.
Alaa Abdel-Fattah’s mother, Laila Soueif, called for world leaders, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, to pressure the Egyptian government to release her son.
“The Egyptian authorities are your friends and proteges not your adversaries. If Alaa dies you too will have blood on your hands,” she said in a video message on Facebook.
Sunak said he raised Abdel-Fattah’s case in his meeting Monday with President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt. Sunak said he would continue to “press for progress” in Abdel-Fattah’s case, according to Downing Street.
Soueif, a university professor, said she waited Monday outside the prison where Abdel-Fattah is being held for a letter, but received nothing. She planned to go to the prison Tuesday to receive proof that her son is alive.
Meanwhile Abdel-Fattah’s sister, Sanaa Seif, is in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh to raise the case of her brother and other jailed activists. She is scheduled to speak about Egypt’s human rights record in an event on Tuesday along with the Secretary General of Amnesty International Agnes Callamard.
___ More than 55,000 people fleeing drought and conflict in Somalia arrived in Kenya in the past two months, straining the humanitarian needs in Africa’s largest refugee camp, a global charity said Monday.
The International Rescue Committee warned more refugees are expected to arrive at the Dadaab refugee camp, in eastern Kenya near Somalia borders by early 2023, as Somalia was hit by the driest drought in decades, driven by climate change.
IRC’s director in Kenya, Mohamed El Montassir Hussein, called for the international community to scale up and accelerate support and funding to the camp to avoid a serious hunger crisis.
“Hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees will struggle to find life-saving assistance by fleeing to Kenya this year unless urgent steps are taken,” he said.
Some Somali refugees have been living in Dadaab in eastern Kenya for more than 20 years, since Somalia descended into chaos following the 1991 ouster of longtime dictator Siad Barre by warlords who then turned on each other.
Thousands of others have fled drought and conflict in recent months, with the IRC expected a total of 120,000 refugees to arrive in Dadaab in the next few months.
The United Nations warned in September that “famine is at the door” in Somalia with “concrete indications” famine will occur later this year in the southern Bay region.
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World leaders are making the case for tougher action to tackle global warming Tuesday, as this year’s international climate talks in Egypt heard growing calls for fossil fuel companies to help pay for the damage they have helped cause to the planet. The U.S. mid-term election were hanging over the talks Tuesday, with many environmental campaigners worried that defeat for the Democrats could make it harder for President Joe Biden to pursue his ambitious climate agenda.
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