COP 27: "Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish” UN Secretary General Guterres told delegates

Picture credits: Wired Italy

The UN Climate Summit has taken place this year in the second half of November. We are coming from a UK-led COP26, whose premises were a “warning invite” by Lord Attenborough and his so-called “tipping points” world climate leaders were kindly invited not to pass. [1]

Background featuring UN COP27 this year was not the best at all. Climate disasters in the kermesse preceding summer around the World warned leaders, institutions and enterprises too that the climate change issues are wedging on the edge of perilous standards now. The first (perhaps most relevant) hot issue is the vacant posts left by climate wise heavy-polluting countries (i.e. China, India and Russia). [2]

Despite this controversy, UN-led climate works continued in Egypt, with several agreements on policies addressing: first, a deadline to end deforestation, second, National Determined Contributions and Loss and third, Damage Mechanisms. While the first topic, deforestation, needed only a confirmation of goals and committment, NDCs were bound to be discussed by COP27 participants as much as there was a need for reassessment of Loss and Damage mechanisms, especially supported by the EU [3].

Looking at the conclusions of the climate summit, we can state that the most touched topic was sustainable finance. If, on the one hand, enterprises are still committing to the EU-wide targets set out in the Green Deal, there are still some arguments on sustainable financing instruments. While the newsapapers are signalling the first little ‘stop’ to sustainable finance and ESG investing [4], the Climate Bond Initiative is pinpointing that the global debt issuance of green, social, sustainability, transition and sustainability-linked bond has hit record high reaching 1 trillion USD in 2021 [5] what investment bankers [6] predict is that the next ‘sustainable debt issuance instrument’ are going to be the ‘blue bonds’ that currently look only as a subcomponent of ‘green bonds’ but will sooner have a proper, indipendent label - analysts say. [7]