Swedish observer calls for increasing ambition in remaining days of COP27

Alma, Observer from Sweden, Master’s Student in Political Science at Stockholm University

What is the significance of this year's Climate Change Summit?

I think that it is a very important summit. This is the year of the “implementation COP”, and as an observer, I think it is very important that the politicians that are present fulfill their pledges of actually starting to implement the Paris Agreement.

How do you see the Egyptian organization of the activities of this summit?

I think it has been very well organized in many ways. I think that the COP venue is very thought through and everything has worked quite well, although I think that there has been some issues with the inclusion of especially younger observers and civil society, mainly because the prices of accommodation have been very high and it hasn’t been very accessible to a lot of especially young civil society activists that are here participating as observers, so that is an issue that I would mention.

What are the proposed solutions to solve the problem of climate change?

I think that the main solution that I would propose is to drastically scale down the search for new fossil fuels. I think that is really essential.

Moving towards a green environment and implementing sustainable development requires some mechanisms of success and continuity. From your point of view, what are the factors we need in this file?

Although the Paris Agreement work program is actually finished, we still need to put stronger structures in place, and I think the work needs to continue on that.

It is known that this summit is called the implementation summit. Do we see decisions that obligate the major industrial countries to support climate change financing?

So far, I’m not really seeing such decisions. I really do think that especially civil society needs to work even harder to really make sure that major industrial countries are increasing their pledges in climate financing. I think that we still have a long way to go during these remaining three days at COP.

What is your last message to all participants in this event?

I think that we need to work very hard these last few days to increase ambition and to really work hard to achieve decisions in the loss and damage question, which is very relevant to so many actors here, especially observer actors and civil society actors, that are pushing for loss and damage to achieve climate justice, and I think that’s very essential.

How do global conflicts such as the war in Ukraine and the food crisis affect international climate action?

What I see right now as a civil society observer is that the politicians are kind of beginning to use the war in Ukraine a little bit as an excuse to decrease their ambition; that politicians are kind of using the energy crisis due to Ukraine and using it as a way of decreasing their ambitions instead of focusing more on renewable energy investments, which I think would be a better way to go.

What do you think of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi's call to stop the Russian-Ukrainian war?

I agree with the Egyptian president’s call to stop the Russian-Ukrainian war. I think that’s very central to all of this. Democracy and climate justice goes hand in hand.