Climate change poses the greatest threat to humankind - but the most vulnerable and marginalized, particularly communities in the global South and people living in poverty, are most impacted. Yet they are often the ones contributing the least to climate change.
This is particularly evident in the host region of the COP27, Africa, where the climate crisis has recently triggered or exacerbated prolonged droughts in the Horn of Africa and caused famine in Somalia, devastating cyclones in countries such as Mozambique, Malawi or Madagascar, and torrential rains in Nigeria and Niger. But other parts of the world are not exempted. While the conference was being prepared, two-thirds of Pakistan were under water as a result of what the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres qualified as a “climate carnage”.
Loss and damage is a daily reality for too many people due to the lack of mitigation and adaptation action (and its financing) mainly by the richer and more powerful countries and populations on this planet. Women and girls are affected the most, yet they are often marginalized from conversations on how to prevent and respond.
The solutions we need are mostly already known. Governments must make COP27 a game-changer with decisive actions in response to the near-apocalyptic and interlinked crises the world experiences in 2022, with the most vulnerable bearing the brunt of suffering.
Read CARE's demands for COP 27: