Climate Watch: Group asks UN to address disinformation ahead of COP27

Despite directly impacting our communities, health and livelihood, climate-related reports usually take a back seat to dominant news beats like politics and business. Climate Watch aims to ensure you never miss important stories on climate change and actions being taken towards limiting its impact.

Here is a round-up of last week’s climate stories:

• Following the celebration of World Oceans Day on June 8, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), a non-governmental organisation, has asked that companies polluting Nigeria’s oceans and ecosystem, especially in the Niger Delta, must be made to pay for their sins. Commemorating the day which annually aims to remind the world of the role the oceans play in everyday life, Nnimo Bassey, HOMEF director, said polluting the ocean is a direct threat to humanity. Read more here. 

• As nations are gathered in Bonn, Germany, for the annual UN climate change conference, to set the pace for the upcoming COP27 in Egypt, campaigners from developing countries have complained of a move by negotiators from rich and developed countries to block real progress on the issue of financing for loss and damage. At the start of the conference, nations set out to focus on key areas of mitigation, adaptation, support to developing countries — particularly finance — and loss and damage. According to Pan African Media Alliance for Climate Change (PAMACC), developments at the conference show that poorer nations are frustrated by visa denial for their negotiators and an attempt to delay negotiations on financing for loss and damage. The frustration is said to be further aggravated by the fact that developing countries have not started receiving the $100 billion promised by developed countries. 

• A new report released by the United Nations at the conference showed that women experience the impact of climate change more severely than men. The report was presented to conference delegates to remind them that while climate change affects everyone, it does not affect everyone equally. It highlighted issues such as land rights, gender-based violence and child marriage as part of the challenges that women face in coping with climate impacts. It advised that an inclusive governance and a gender-responsive approach should be adopted in developing climate policies.

• As misinformation continues to bedevil the media space and intentionally try to cloud accurate information, issues on climate change are not left out. As a result, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and the 20+ member coalition, climate action against disinformation (CAAD), in a new report, raised the alarm over the increasing level of climate denials and greenwashing peddled by “pundits and political actors” to undermine the drive towards tackling the global problem. The group has, therefore, called on the United Nations, European Union, science bodies, social media companies and policymakers to address climate disinformation with concrete steps ahead of the COP27 negotiations.

• A report by Vulnerable Twenty (V20), a group of finance ministers from the Climate Vulnerable Forum, has shown that climate change has eliminated one-fifth of the wealth of the vulnerable countries. It found that affected countries have lost up to $525 billion to climate change in two decades. According to the report, 55 vulnerable countries have been made poorer due to climate change’s temperature and precipitation patterns. The report indicated that these vulnerable countries would have been 20 percent wealthier if not for climate change and the losses it incurred for poor and vulnerable economies. It added that economic losses cut GDP growth in vulnerable countries by one percent each year on average, which averaged 3.67 percent in 2019 across the vulnerable economies.