What is COP 27- who, what, when, where, why?

Do you know that there is a meeting held every year in a different country just to help climate change and damage that is caused by it? This meeting is called COP 27; the number is the anniversary of this organization. COP stands for Conference of the Parties or United Nations Climate Change Conference which is UNFCCC. This year’s meeting is held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, which is one of the prettiest resorts in Egypt and has an extreme amount of tourism. This meeting started being held on November 6 and ended on Nov 18. Over 100 world leaders went to this meeting including Joe Biden (U.S President), Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the United States House Representatives), Emmanuel Macron (French President), Ursula Von der Leyen (president of the European Union), Rishi Sunak (Britain’s prime minister), and many more.

Current Concerns

Nations and countries are concerned about climate change and global warming. They say that all the rich countries have gotten rich because of burning fossil fuels. What does fossil fuels have to do with climate change? When you burn fossil fuels that releases major amounts of carbon dioxide “a greenhouse gas” which gets into the air. The greenhouse gas traps heat in the atmosphere and that is what causes global warming, and causes climate change. Countries are trying to get rich and build an economy, but the bad side is that they affect our climate.

Who does it affect?

This climate change doesn’t only affect a certain amount of people but a large amount of countries. Here are 10 most affected countries by climate change:

1. Afghanistan               6. Malawi
2. Bangladesh                7. Niger
3. Chad                          8. Pakistan
4. Haiti                           9. Somalia
5. Kenya                       10. Sudan

These 10 countries are the top 10 countries affected by climate change. That does not mean that other countries aren’t affected, it just means they aren’t affected as much. There are 195 countries in the world that are affected by this climate change even if it was little. Over 100 world leaders went to this meeting because of how important it is, and because we might not directly feel climate change right now, but it will deeply affect us later.

What should we do?

The only way humans can help climate change is by burning less fossil fuels. That is by burning oil, natural gas, and coal to generate energy; which we use for many things such as cars and planes. If humans burn less fossil fuels, that means that less carbon dioxide will be in the air, and that would slow down global warming. Too much carbon dioxide in the air might cause  death and illness from increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms and floods, the disruption of the food system, and many more. That is why the COP 27 meeting is so important; because they discussed all these topics in their meeting, and ways they can help save our climate. Let’s try to save our climate, by doing the littlest things; because those little things have a big effect on our climate.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/07/climate/cop27-attendees-egypt.html – Par 1

https://www.clientearth.org/latest/latest-updates/stories/fossil-fuels-and-climate-change-the-facts/#:~:text=What%20is%20the%20link%20between,our%20atmosphere%2C%20causing%20global%20warming. – Par 2

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/cop27-begins-as-world-leaders-up-urgency-of-climate-crisis#:~:text=More%20than%20100%20world%20leaders,the%20richest%2C%20most%20polluting%20nations. – Par 3

https://www.concern.net/news/countries-most-affected-by-climate-change – Par 3

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health – Par 4

https://www.clientearth.org/latest/latest-updates/stories/fossil-fuels-and-climate-change-the-facts/ – Par 4

https://earth.org/data_visualization/what-would-happen-if-we-stopped-using-fossil-fuels/- Par 4

Climate Breakdown