UNFCCC COP27

COP27 was the second time Rotary International had an official delegation which I was privileged to lead in my role as Dean of Rotary Representatives Network to the United Nations and International Agencies. The 31 Rotary Representatives represent Rotary at 22 UN and other agencies. COP conferences are organised by UNFCCC and the host government. The Rotary COP27 delegation was comprised of President Jennifer Jones, Judith Diment, Dr Chris Puttock, co-founder of ESRAG, Mohamed Delawar Rotary Representative to the Arab League and Keith Madden, Rotary staff Manager for Environment.

Rotary has had Observer status since the formation of the UN in 1947. COP27 was hosted by the Egypt Government and attended by 100+ country delegations and 1600 IGOs and NGOs. The conference was organised in two areas a Blue Zone and a Green Zone. The Blue Zone held the governments’ plenary sessions and the Delegations Pavilions and individual Government and NGO meetings and was open to registered delegates only. The Green Zone was open to the public and included exhibitors from business and NGOs. Rotary’s role included hosting three events and participating in the events taking place in the Delegations’ Pavilions in the Blue Zone and Green Zone.

President Jennifer Jones attended the Opening Ceremony on November 7^th, 2022, one of 30 NGO delegates out of 10,000 attending COP27. I attended the keynote address by President Biden on November 13^th. Keith Madden attended the national statements by President Macron (France) and Prime Minister Mia Mottley (Barbados).

After 13 days of intense negotiations, COP27 concluded on Saturday 19th November 2022 with every Party at COP27 – representing almost 200 countries – with a breakthrough agreement to provide “loss and damage” funding for vulnerable countries hit hard by climate disasters. Set against a difficult geopolitical backdrop, COP27 resulted in countries delivering a package of decisions that reaffirmed their commitment to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The package also strengthened action by countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change, as well as boosting the support of finance, technology and capacity building needed by developing countries. Creating a specific fund for loss and damage marked an important point of progress, with the issue added to the official agenda and adopted for the first time at COP27.

Because of the scale of the conference and the small size of the Rotary delegation it was essential to have a clear focus based on existing relationships in order to achieve anything meaningful. My main focus was with the Rotary delegation from Egypt and the 56 countries of the Commonwealth, UN agencies ad NGOs building on engagement over the last eight years with the Commonwealth Secretariat and High Commissioners, and maximising the opportunity as President Jennifer Jones is from Canada, one of the largest Commonwealth countries.

I had five priorities:

High Level Engagement of the Rotary International President
Strengthening relations with delegates from UN and UN agencies
Creating opportunities for action by developing environment service projects with partners.
Giving young people a voice
Giving Rotary in Egypt a platform to create awareness

We achieved:

High Level engagement of the Rotary International President with government Ministers and heads of NGOs and business – achieved by working with the Rotarians from Egypt on two side events on nature based solutions, building on the Round Table discussion on mangroves at COP26. Our evening Side Event in the Blue Zone with Jennifer Jones, enabled by Paul Desenkar UNFCC, was entitled Nature Based Solutions: Mangroves and Beyond. A number of governmental and non-governmental organizations and people were engaged in our meeting. This meeting gave us new connections for the mangrove projects, and planning ideas for COP 28 in the United Arab Emirates. It was a very good time to catch up with friends from last year’s COP. Chris Puttock also pitched for Adopt-a-River (our United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Pollinators.
President Jennifer did seven interviews on Egyptian TV Channels including Egypt TV Channel # 1, dmc TV and ON TV as well as videos for social media.”
Strengthening relations with delegates from UN and UN agencies, including UNFCC (Rotarian Paul Desanker), UNEP, UNESCO, key governments, and other international Agencies and NGOs – achieved by attending many side events and one-to-one meetings, including:

Side event on Indonesia mangroves attended by Ministers and Heads of NGOs on preserving and restoring wetland habitats including mangroves, Discussions were had on potential partnership with Dr Herlina Hartanto, Konservasi Alam Nusantara Indonesia.

Side event on civil society interventions then met with people from the Civil Society booth, including Prof. Salah Elhaggar and Professor Sherine Fahmy, American University Cairo, and others. Professor Salah Haggar, American University Cairo also interested in working with Rotary on mangroves.

Judith attended the keynote address by President Joe Biden. He urged world leaders to accelerate programs to reduce CO2 emissions.

Chris Puttock., Terrell Erikson (Wetlands Specialist accompanying Chris), and I attended the COP27 Cultural Evening at the stunning new Sharm el Sheikh Museum. Moving presentations were made from groups of indigenous people on the need for sustainable policies to protect their future. And the speech by Andrew Potts, Coordinator of ICOMOS Climate Change and Heritage Working Group. Chris met Andrew for the first time on the flight from Istanbul to Sharm el-Sheikh.

Commonwealth meeting on intergenerational dialogue with Secretary General of the Commonwealth Baroness Scotland and Maldives Minister of Environment Aminath Shauna; Met with Commonwealth Blue Charter (CBC) team to progress working with governments in Commonwealth countries on mangroves.

Side event in Green Zone on the role of women and youth in climate change. H.E. Dr Maya Morsy, President of National Council for Women Egypt, spoke first, talking specifically about the important role of women in Africa, as they produce 70 percent of agricultural crops in the countries across the continent. The second speaker, Rotarian Dr Mayan Rashan talked of the millions of young people who are affected by climate change—some studies show 90 percent of youth do not know or understand the nature of the problem. Ms. Sanarya Al-Saffar spoke of her experience in Sweden. Eng. Motaz spoke with feeling about the need to engage young people, as they are the heart of the action and need money and encouragement to find environmental solutions and start a new green change movement to replace those people not changing. There we met with the Ambassador from Canada for Egypt and discussed possible funding for the Sharm el Sheikh mangroves projects as they have aid budget to spend on projects in Egypt. Mohamed Delawar is following up with him and the UK Ambassador in Cairo.

Chris and I visited the Bahrain booth. They have a goal to quadruple the number of mangroves in Bahrain by 2035. They are planning nurseries to grow one million seedlings per year, from their current 10,000.

We visited many booths in the Blue Zone, including the Canadian, British, India and other state booths.

We attended the Global Stocktake Dialogue event attended by President of COP27 and President Elect of COP28. The Global Stocktake was initiated in Glasgow and will be reported on at COP28. Delegates were invited to answer three questions to prioritise actions and to share these with our members and report back by March 2023. Chris has circulated these to ESRAG members.
Creating opportunities for action by developing environment service projects with partners.
We visited NABQ mangroves with President Jennifer Jones and Chris Puttock initiated a new $100,000 mangroves project working with the Rotary Club of Sharm el Sheikh, Rotary Club of Cairo and Rotary District in Egypt, local government official, ESRAG, and Rotary Club of Honolulu and others.
These mangroves are at the southern end of Nabq National. We considered fostering a mangrove project that could enhance the livelihoods of the Bedouin people living at Nabq. Chris created a global grant template for the project with the RC Sharm el-Sheikh and gathered the names of host members and international partners, each bringing that day $15,000-20,000. This indicated keen and immediate interest in restoring mangroves and working with the Bedouin people to manage a plant nursery on the seashore. The first nursery will need about 20,000 seedlings per year. When these plants grow to about one metre, they will be outplanted into restoration sites in Nabq.
We also visited Ras Muhammad mangroves, a National Park at the southern extreme end of the Sinai Peninsula, overlooking the Gulf of Suez on the west and the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, and the Mangroves Research Centre and Museum with President of Rotary Club of Sharm el Sheikh, Ahmed Faraw Omran, and Sara Salah, Secretary of the club. Jean-Pierre Heim, French architect and artist gave a talk on the museum and there was an exhibition of his drawings of scenes from the desert in Egypt. Also attending was the Italian journalist and author Albitito Silirto, Greek photographer Vassilis Pitoulis and Ukrainiam model and photographer Alena Vezza. Vassilis took photographs of Alena to be used as an icon of the mangroves. We then visited two areas of mangroves where the Rotary Club of Sharm el Sheikh will work on restoration projects. We also collected plastic rubbish which had been blown onshore from the Red Sea, highlighting the plight of our oceans.

Giving young people a voice

Commonwealth Secretariat interested in working with Rotary on intergenerational Blue Charter projects launched at COP27 and Rotary offered a side event at Commonwealth Ministers Meeting in Pakistan in January to include environment initiative.

Keith attended 3 different side-events relating to the topic of how to channel climate funding more directly to communities, cooperatives, and in-country alliances who work closely with the land or sea (rather than having foreigners manage the money for them). It was interesting to see how best practice philosophy around environmental finance has evolved quickly even if implementation challenges remain. Many reflections for how to work well at the grassroots and how to move money in a way that aids or complements (instead of crowding out) capable local actors and understands things on their terms. One of these events was partially coordinated by the Ford Foundation. Another one involved the Global Network of Territorial Communities with representatives from Mexico, Africa, and SE Asia. Rotary may have some interesting things to contribute to such discussions in the future.
Attended multiple events on nature-based solutions since this is a concept we’ve adopted as a main feature of Rotary’s environmental portfolio and comms at these types of events, including one focused on the climate stabilization importance of the Congo Basin, also wetlands, seagrass, mangroves. Interesting points of reference for Rotary’s current and potential work on NBS.

Keith connected with Kristen Patterson, one of the Directors at Project Drawdown. Drawdown has been an ongoing partner with ESRAG in terms of communicating effective ways to work on climate
To give Rotary in Egypt a platform to create awareness achieved by working with Rotary Representative Mohamed Delawar on the side event in the Green Zone and hosting a reception in honour of President Jennifer Jones, The evening Presidential reception with Jennifer as host was a great success, attended by more than 60 delegates including the Governor of South Sinai, many federal government, and local dignitaries and by three Egypt Government Ministers: Minister of Culture Nivine Youssef Mohamed Al-Kilany, Minister of Youth Ashraf Sobhy and The Minister for Social Solidarity Nivine El-Kabbag who announced in her speech that she would have her agency donate $50,000 to the Nabq mangrove project.

The second side event in the Green Zone included high-level government officials and delegates from NGOs and academia., Jennifer, Chris, Mohamed, Keith, and I were the panellists for Nature-based Solutions: Egypt. Over 100 delegates attended. There the Egyptian delegation, showed a dozen nature-based solutions from clubs around Egypt presented in a comprehensive video. Our Rotary COP delegation presented the mangrove projects ESRAG and the need to collect data through iRotree. Reem Abdel Meguid and Jennifer announced Sharm el-Sheikh global grant of $100,000+ , and how Rotary – People of Action, can get things done in hours and days. We are now also scoping out a new project on the west side of the Red Sea at El-Gouna with the Egyptian delegation, who have been fantastic.

We met a number of people from corporates including Mattie Yeta Chief Sustainability Officer CGI IT. I have arranged to meet her in London to discuss CSR opportunities.

The three Rotary events attended by President Jennifer Jones had in total over 200 delegates attending.

COP27 allowed Rotary to build on the progress made at COP26. I received numerous comments from delegates how pleased they were to see Rotary participating and many requests to work with Rotary going forward. The importance of partnerships and involving civil society was mentioned in most meetings I attended. We can build on it for COP28 in Dubai by working with the local Rotarians in Dubai and Mohamed Delawar Rotary Representative to the Arab League.

Judith Diment MBE

Dean of Rotary Representatives Network to the UN and International Agencies

Dr Chris Puttock

Lead of Mangroves Team and ESRAG