Cop27 president announces first comprehensive plan for adaptation

The president of Cop27, Sameh Shoukry, has announced the first comprehensive plan to help the world adapt to the impact of climate change.

The Sharm el-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda calls for countries to undertake 30 actions to “address the adaptation gap and achieve a resilient world by 2030”. The agenda’s focus is on reducing the impacts of climate change on the 4 billion people living in countries most vulnerable to it.

These actions are intended to reduce the threat of climate change to several areas of society, including agriculture, urban areas, and coastlines. They include halving food waste, adopting climate-resilient agricultural methods such as growing heat-resistant crops, installing early warning systems to alert people to oncoming climate disasters, and investing $4 billion in the restoration of mangrove forests that protect coastlines from flooding. They also include providing electricity access to 679 million people currently without access, and improving water infrastructure to reduce leaks.

Shoukry described the agenda as “a critical step at Cop27, the implementation Cop”.

As climate change progresses, limiting its damage increasingly involves adapting to the warming that has already happened.

A report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in February, showed that even if the world achieves its goal of limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, by 2030 nearly half of the world’s population will be at severe risk from the impact.