CSOs urge govt to take a strong negotiating position at Cop27, lamenting past weakness

A group of civil society organisations (CSO) has urged the government to formulate a strong negotiating game plan to achieve its goals at this month's UN climate talks, attributing many past failures to the lack of specific strategies.

The Center for Participatory Research and Development (CPRD) organised a press conference on Thursday at the National Press Club in the capital, where 25 organisations jointly released a paper outlining their position on the upcoming Cop27 climate talks, and made suggestions to the government for strong negotiations.

The Cop27 event will be held 6-18 November in Egypt, and a key feature would be demands by developing countries like Bangladesh made to the developed world, for climate reparations and green transition assistance.

At the press conference, Saber Hossain Chowdhury, chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on Environment, Forest and Climate Change Ministry, said Bangladesh has always regretted its limited achievements in climate negotiations.

"However, we must not forget that without a specific strategy at the UN talks, we cannot achieve anything significant from the negotiations," he said, adding that the latest CSO position paper will assist this month's negotiations.

He said there is adaptation gap, mitigation gap, and finance gap, but the greatest gap is in mutual trust among world leaders.

CPRD chief Md Shamsuddoha strongly demanded that the Cop27 make binding commitments to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions and limit global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels to rescue the earth from an all but assured catastrophe.

He also demanded the mandatory global phase-out of coal by 2030, and all fossil-fuels by 2040. Shamsuddoha called for setting up a separate global funding facility to address climate loss and damages, new and need-based finance mechanisms, grants-based adaptation finances, and instituting human rights in all aspects of the climate change fight.

Shaheen Anam, executive director of Manusher Jonno Foundation, said we expect our government to play a significant role in communicating our demands to the world at Cop27. "We have often seen that many countries spend trillions of dollars on wars but climate-prone nations like ours hardly get any financial assistance from them for climate adaptation and mitigation purposes."

As opposed to their developed peers, developing economies have barely contributed to the current level of greenhouse gas emissions but are still set to suffer most of the impact.

"We must raise our voices to save the world's climate-afflicted communities and to minimise the emissions and this could ultimately put pressure on key global leaders to take drastic steps to combat climate change," Shaheen added.

Farah Kabir, country director of ActionAid Bangladesh, said, "We have so far failed to convince developed nations regarding the intensity of the problems created by climate change. We urge setting a new limit for emission reduction and to make a commitment to provide sufficient financial assistance for adaptation."

"Bangladesh was a leading country to propose the 1.5 degrees Celsius target at the 2015 climate talks in Paris. And yet, we are already experiencing the climatic effects of global warming by 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels," said Saber Hossain Chowdhury.

The UN has warned that the failure to implement strong climate actions in time will put the Earth on a track for 2.8 degrees Celsius warming by the end of this century, which would be catastrophic.