Talks on a deal to allow countries to trade carbon credits to help them hit their climate targets are set to drag on beyond the COP27 summit in Egypt as issues, including how to keep track of the credits, are unresolved, observers and a negotiator said.
Creating such a market is considered crucial to helping move money from richer, polluting countries to their developing country peers, and was called for in Article 6 of the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement.
Yet it might be years before countries can, on a large scale, offset their emissions with credits based on emissions-reducing projects such as in renewable energy or forestation based elsewhere, after differences emerged on technical detail.
“The Article 6 texts are all open at the present time,” said Andrea Bonzanni, International policy director at the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA).
A draft document of around 60 pages, published on Wednesday, outlined how inter-country carbon trading might function, but many sections are up for debate.
Pedro Barata, carbon markets specialist at the Environmental Defense Fund, said he was impressed by the size of the draft document, but it was clear it was not leading to a decision in Sharm El-Sheikh.
“(The draft) gives an increased sense of urgency throughout the year to further negotiate and clear this very long – but fundamental – text, so that substantial progress can be locked in at COP28 in Dubai next year,” Barata said.
Issues to be resolved include the extent to which countries’ registries, or digital ledgers of carbon trades, might be exposed to outside scrutiny, what constitutes a carbon removal project and how to integrate existing credits already traded in private markets.
DRAFTS FOR SOME ARE A REASON FOR HOPE
Late on Thursday, another draft text was released dealing with how countries’ registries might interact with the private, so-called voluntary carbon market, and laid out technical steps to be clarified over the course of 2023.
While companies and others are already trading credits in the voluntary market, agreeing how it will mesh with the country-level system is seen as crucial to unlocking many billions of dollars for carbon projects across the globe.
Calling the publication of the drafts and a plan for further action in 2023 “a step forward”, a negotiator who declined to be named added: “I don’t know that it’s (the) big jump that was probably needed.”
Matt Williams from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit said he was worried about transparency and the potential for double-counting the same credit in two countries.
Slow progress in the carbon market discussions mirrors a struggle to agree on other climate issues ahead of the scheduled end of the COP27 summit on Friday, including that of whether to set up a fund to help poorer countries after climate disasters strike.
For some that drafts had emerged at all was cause for optimism.
“After years of negotiations about whether carbon markets under the Paris Agreement would actually exist, now they are at the stage of actually setting them up,” said Jonathan Crook, policy analyst at the non-profit Carbon Market Watch.
CAIRO — The family of imprisoned Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah said that they were allowed into the prison and saw him on Thursday and that his condition has “deteriorated severely” following a dramatic hunger strike.
The news of Abdel-Fattah was posted in a tweet by Abdel-Fattah’s sister, Mona Seif, after a visit to the prison by the activist’s mother, aunt and his other sister. It was their first time seeing him in nearly a month.
Abdel-Fattah is one of Egypt’s most prominent pro-democracy campaigners. The detained activist had intensified a hunger strike and halted all calories and water at the start earlier in November of the U.N. climate conference held in Egypt, to draw attention to his case and those of other political prisoners.
Concerns for his health intensified as the family was barred from seeing him. Last Thursday, prison authorities began an unspecified medical intervention on Abdel-Fattah — prompting thought that he was being force-fed.
Then earlier this week, Abdel-Fattah informed his family in handwritten notes that he first started drinking water and then also ended the hunger strike.
Abdel-Fattah’s mother, Laila Soueif, received two short letters in her son’s handwriting, on Monday and Tuesday, through prison authorities.
The first letter, confirming Abdel-Fattah had started drinking water again, was dated as being written on Saturday, while the second letter, confirming he had ended his hunger strike was dated Monday.
“News from the visit are unsettling,” tweeted Andel-Fattah’s sister Mona, adding that her brother had “deteriorated severely in the past 2 weeks.”
She said the family would share more information later in the day.
Abdel-Fattah, who turns 41 on Friday, has spent most of the past decade in prison because of his criticism of Egypt’s rulers. Last year, he was sentenced to five years in prison for sharing a Facebook post about a prisoner who died in custody in 2019.
Abdel-Fattah rose to fame during the 2011 pro-democracy uprisings that swept through the Middle East, toppling Egypt’s long-time autocratic President Hosni Mubarak. He has been imprisoned several times, and has spent a total of nine years behind bars, becoming a symbol of Egypt’s sliding back to an even more autocratic rule under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — European Union ministers threatened to walk out of global climate talks here Saturday, with officials blaming China and Saudi Arabia for weakening the deal.
“All ministers, as they have told me — like myself — are prepared to walk away if we do not have a result that does justice to what the world is waiting for,” EU climate envoy Frans Timmermans told reporters, escalating tense talks that have already run into overtime.
Flanked by the 13 EU ministers still present at the talks, Timmermans told a pack of reporters on Saturday that the EU is “worried about some of the things we have seen and heard” in recent hours, which he said jeopardizes the global goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“A good decision means that we remain on track to keep 1.5 alive,” he said. “We do not want 1.5 Celsius to die here.”
Ireland Environment Minister Eamon Ryan said the stakes of the talks crystallized Saturday morning when ministers read an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that said an additional 420 million people would face extreme heat and 270 million would endure water scarcity if the world warmed 2 degrees Celsius instead of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“We’re on a very tight timeline. And we have to be faster now. But not fast towards a bad result,” Ryan said, as venue staff packed up the conference around the media scrum. “Not fast in terms of accepting something that we then spend years regretting — that every year afterwards we say ‘If only we had held the line in Sharm El-Sheikh.’ ”
In the early hours of Saturday morning, EU negotiators were invited to review a draft of the final COP27 deal by the Egyptians leading the talks.
Timmermans said the deal, as proposed, “stepped back” from earlier agreements.
Dutch Climate Minister Rob Jetten said that across the board their suggestions for bolstering efforts to cut dangerous greenhouse gas emissions had been rejected.
One phrase, read out to reporters by an EU official, would, if accepted, block a program meant for driving emissions cuts from ever resulting in pressure for higher national climate targets, or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC).
“The most crucial thing is that all countries commit themselves to updating NDCs, making sure that you actually showcase that your NDC is also helping us to keep one and a half degrees alive,” Jetten told POLITICO.
Egyptian COP27 President Sameh Shoukry defended the text in a Saturday press conference, saying it has “minor” amendments and is an attempt to accommodate various parties. He said the text keeps the 1.5 degree Celsius goal within reach.
EU climate envoy Frans Timmermans speaks to reporters in Sharm El-Sheikh | Karl Mathiesen/POLITICO
One European official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, accused the Egyptian presidency of working on behalf of a coalition of developing countries that included China and Saudi Arabia. Two others confirmed China and Saudi Arabia were blocking.
Timmermans said that the EU has done more compromising than any nation at the two-week-long negotiations. The EU offered a vision this week for steering money to vulnerable countries suffering from irreversible effects of a warming planet, breaking with past resistance to the idea.
Now it’s time for others to move, Timmermans said.
“Remember where we were only a couple of months ago — nobody even wanted this on the agenda,” Timmermans said. “Now we are talking about … establishing a fund. And that is a movement that came from us. And I think that should be reciprocated by the other side.”
The fight over those payments, known as loss and damage, has taken center stage at the talks in Egypt.
The EU’s broadsides amounted to a veiled shot at China and a group of developing countries it negotiates with. Those nations have backed a separate concept that would send payments to all developing countries, while the EU proposal focuses on the most vulnerable. It also would expand who pays into the fund, meaning countries that have grown wealthier in recent decades may be expected to contribute.
Rich economies like the EU have garnered little goodwill. An Egyptian official argued this week that the EU and other rich countries bore responsibility for the lack of will among poorer countries because they had failed to match their own financial pledges from last year.
Ryan told reporters that the goal of the EU’s proposal was not to divide. “The definition of vulnerability is not just limited to any one category or group of countries,” he said. “There are medium- and high-income countries who will on occasion be in need of that fund.”
The U.S., another longtime holdout on paying countries for climate damage, has warmed to the idea, according to a draft text of a proposal that has not yet been formally submitted to the U.N.’s Egyptian presidency.
Timmermans said the U.S. has played a “constructive role,” adding, “I have to say, I have no complaints.”
As small island developing states make their case for climate awareness at COP27 in Egypt, one member of the group is reconsidering a historic act of preservation it undertook two years ago. Lee Cowan reports.
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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) — She has pedaled thousands of miles from Sweden to Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to deliver a simple message: Stop climate change.
The trip took 72-year-old activist Dorothee Hildebrandt and her pink e-bike — which she fondly calls Miss Piggy, after the temperamental character from The Muppet Show — more than four months. She crisscrossed Europe and the Middle East until she arrived in Sharm el-Sheikh, at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula.
Her mission is to raise awareness and urge world leaders gathered at the annual U.N. climate conference known as COP27 to take concrete steps to stop climate change, she said. Greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and scientists say the amount of heat-trapping gases needs to be almost halved by 2030, to meet temperature-limiting goals of the Paris climate accord of 2015.
Since her arrival a week ago, Hildebrandt and her e-bike have become a fixture at the summit. From a friend’s place where she is staying, some 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the conference center, she bikes to the COP27 venue every day, meeting other activists and attending events. Many are keen to take photos with her around the conference venue.
“They really have to stop climate change,” Hildebrandt says of the world leaders. “Even if it is uncomfortable.”
“It was uncomfortable for me … this long ride,” she told The Associated Press. But she wanted to show that if there’s a will, “you can do it,” she said.
Past climate talks have traditionally seen very large protests at the end of the first week of the two-week summit, often drawing thousands. This year has been mostly muted, with sporadic and small demonstrations during the first week. Activists have blamed the high cost of travel, accommodation and restrictions in the isolated Egyptian city for limiting the numbers of demonstrators.
The largest demonstration so far was on Saturday, a day after U.S. President Joe Biden made his stop at the summit. Hundreds of protesters chanted, sang, and danced in an area not far from where the negotiations were taking place amid tight security.
Born in the town of Kassel in central Germany, Hildebrandt says she got her first bicycle at the age of 10 and never stopped pedaling. In 1978 she moved to Sweden to marry her ex-husband.
She retired in 2015. Her activism and biking, which she documents on social media, is for the children and further generations of the world, she says. A sign on her bike reads, “Biking for Future and Peace.”
In her hometown of Katrineholm, 150 kilometers (93 miles) southwest of Stockholm, the Swedish capital, she founded “GrandmasForFuture – Katrineholm” in the town. The group focuses on raising awareness on climate change among other things.
Hildebrandt says she also wants Western industrialized nations to pay for the destruction they have caused so far — an issue called loss and damage, about reparations from big polluters to the global south that have been hurt the most.
Unhappy with results from the previous climate conference, COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, she saw her chance in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Starting out on July 1, Hildebrandt cycled through 17 countries, covering 8,228 kilometers (5,112 miles), averaging about 80 kilometers (49 miles) a day. Her Facebook posts got thousands of views and she says she received positive feedback both from followers and people she met along the way.
In the Turkish coastal city of Antalya, her bike broke down. A cyclist, who works in tourism in the city, took Hildebrandt and her bike to a mechanic for repairs, and she was able to continue on.
And in Lebanon, she took taxies from the port city of Tripoli to Beirut for her safety. She then had a mandatory guide with a vehicle and a driver to travel to the Jordanian border through Syria.
“I could have used my bike throughout Syria, but the costs would have been too high for me,” she said.
Even in Sinai, local authorities barred her from cycling from the port of Nuweiba to Sharm el-Sheikh, apparently for her safety, she said.
Still, she is confident she has gotten her message across.
On Thursday, she was invited to cycle with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, an avid cyclist. She asked the president about the lack of large protests, compared to previous summits. She said el-Sissi said protests are not barred in Egypt.
“Everyone is allowed to demonstrate everywhere in Cairo and Sharm el-Sheikh” he told her, Hildebrandt says.
COP27 has turned a spotlight on a yearslong crackdown on dissent in Egypt, where most public protests are effectively banned by authorities.
After the summit ends Nov. 18, Hildebrandt will bike to Cairo, then on to the Mediterranean city of Alexandria before going to Israel’s port of Haifa and from there, on to Greece.
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SHARM EL-SHEIKH — Global climate talks in Egypt headed into their second half on Monday with plenty of uncertainty left over whether there’ll be a substantial deal to combat climate change.
Tens of thousands of attendees, including delegates from nearly 200 countries, observers, experts, activists and journalists, returned to the conference zone in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh after a one-day break.
The U.N.’s top climate official appealed for constructive diplomacy to match the high-flying rhetoric heard during the opening days of the talks.
“Let me remind negotiators that people and planet are relying on this process to deliver,” U.N. Climate Secretary Simon Stiell said.
“Let’s use our remaining time in Egypt to build the bridges needed to make progress,” he added, citing the goals of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) as agreed in the Paris climate accord, adapting to climate change, and providing financial aid to vulnerable nations trying to cope with its impacts.
What happens at the G-20 in Bali, as well as at a meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping on the sidelines, will be crucial to what happens at the climate summit. If the G-20 makes progress on climate, it will be easier in Egypt, but if they backslide, especially on the 1.5 goal, it will undermine the climate summit, said Alden Meyer, a long-time observer of U.N. climate meetings with the environmental think tank E3G.
“What the two presidents decide in Bali will play directly into the endgame here in Sharm El-Sheikh,” he said.
A handshake between Biden and Xi was already noted positively by negotiators at COP, who are also looking to see whether the U.S. and China can resume formal talks on climate.
A key issue is whether the G-20 reiterate their commitment to the 1.5-degree climate goal that they made last year, when they declared it to be a G-20 goal as well. If there’s a push to drop it, it would be a setback for climate change fighting, Meyer said.
Last past climate conferences, COP27 is to put together a “cover decision,” an all-encompassing document that lays out the political goals and often gets name for the conference venue, like the Glasgow Climate Pact. But discussions on the cover decision have started late, Meyer said. Some nations don’t even want one, while others are pushing for a strong one, he said.
“The negotiators’ job is to not make any concessions until ministers come,” he said.
Some delegates were already talking about the possibility of a walkout by developing nations unless key demands for more aid to poor countries are met during the talks.
A major theme at the COP27 meeting has been a call for wealthy nations who benefited most from industrialization that contributed to global warming to do more to help poor countries who have contributed little to global emissions. Their demands include compensation for loss and damage from extreme floods, storms and other devastating effects of climate change suffered by developing countries.
“Now rich countries need to play their part,” said Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“So this is going to be the litmus test of success at this COP, at COP27, that we get this loss and damage finance facility agreed here and that it’s up and running in two years,” Cleetus said at a press briefing.
The Group of Seven leading economies launched a new insurance system Monday to provide swift financial aid when nations are hit by devastating effects of climate change.
The so-called Global Shield is backed by the V20 group of 58 climate-vulnerable nations and will initially receive more than 200 million euros (dollars) in funding, mostly from Germany. Initial recipients include Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Fiji, Ghana, Pakistan, the Philippines and Senegal.
Ghana’s Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta called it “a path-breaking effort” that would help protect communities when lives and livelihoods are lost.
But civil society groups were skeptical, warning that the program should not be used as a way to distract from the much broader effort to get big polluters to pay for the loss and damage they’ve already caused with their greenhouse gases.
Poorer, vulnerable nations also want financing to help them shift to clean energy and for projects to adapt to global warming.
The Global Shield has “some useful elements but it’s not a substitute for a loss and damage finance facility,” Cleetus said, noting that rich countries have contributed millions of dollars, but developing nations need billions to deal with a hotter planet.
India made an unexpected proposal over the weekend for this year’s climate talks to end with a call for a phase down of all fossil fuels.
The idea is likely to get strong pushback from oil and gas-exporting nations, including the United States, which promotes natural gas as a clean ‘bridge fuel’ to renewables.
Two diplomats who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the proposal was yet to be officially debated said India could be trying to get payback for last year’s meeting, when it was publicly shamed for resisting a call to “phase out” coal. Countries compromised by calling for a vaguer “phase down” instead, which was nevertheless seen as significant because it was the first time a fossil fuel industry was put on notice.
The talks are due to wrap up Friday but could extend into the weekend if negotiators need more time to reach an agreement.
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AP Science writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this report.
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Health official says three chidren among those killed when a minibus overturned on a highway and fell into a canal.
At least 21 people have been killed when a minibus fell into a canal in northern Egypt’s Nile Delta region, the health ministry said.
The bus was carrying some 35 people when it derailed on a highway on Saturday and fell into Mansuriya canal in Aga town, in the northern governorate of Dakahlia, according to security sources.
Dr Sherif Makeen, a health ministry official, said three children were among the dead.
Egyptian media outlets reported the accident was caused by a malfunctioning steering wheel, without elaborating.
Traffic accidents are common in Egypt where roads are often poorly maintained and driving rules flouted.
In 2021, approximately 7,000 people were killed on the roads of the Arab world’s most populous country, according to official figures.
In July, 25 people died and 35 were injured in central Egypt when a bus crashed into a truck parked on the side of the road.
Contributing to the growing momentum around food and agriculture at COP27— and in a groundbreaking moment for the Conference of the Parties— Egypt (in its role as COP27 Presidency) and the World Health Organization have launched the Initiative on Climate Action and Nutrition (I-CAN), an initiative to integrate the global delivery of climate change adaptation and mitigation policy action and nutrition and sustainable food systems to support bi-directional, mutually beneficial outcomes.
The groundbreaking event took place on November 12th 2022— Adaptation and Agriculture Day at COP 27 in Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt following a full day of food systems and climate-related events including the launch of the Food and Agriculture for Sustainable Transformation Initiative (FAST).
I-CAN is a multi-stakeholder, multi-sectoral initiative that will be implemented with the support of UN agencies and partners including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and emphasizes pillars of action that consist of implementation, action and support, capacity building, data and knowledge transfer, policy and strategy, and investments.
The launch of the Initiative for Climate Action and Nutrition at COP27
Daphne Ewing-Chow
Dr Maria Helena Semedo, Deputy Director General, of FAO referred to the initiative as a “win-win” for each of the sectors— agriculture, adaptation and nutrition.
Commitments pertaining to climate and nutrition are scarcely included global climate policies and Nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
Worldwide, less than 12% of national policies consider climate, biodiversity and nutrition, while only 32% of National Action Plans (NAPs) include adaptation actions related to food safety and nutrition.
“By working together including through action during the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition, we can deliver healthy diets and a resilient agri-food system,” said Semedo.
Globally, 30% of all people are facing micro-nutrient deficiency; 828 million people are undernourished, and 676 million are obese. Vulnerable groups are disproportionately impacted. Climate change exacerbates these impacts by threatening global crop productivity from the perspective of both yields and losses (with spillover effects of food prices and calorie intake) and the nutritional quality of crops. Conversely, food systems also contribute to climate changes through the release of greenhouse gases (e.g., CO2, methane and nitrous oxides) and through land degradation.
“The relationship between nutrition and climate change is a challenge, but it is also an opportunity… We must implement the Initiative on Climate Action and Nutrition for a healthier, safer and greener future for our children and grand children,” said Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization in remarks delivered via video feed.
The framers of the initiative indicate that a shift towards sustainable, climate-resilient, healthy diets would help reduce health and climate change costs by up to US$ 1.3 trillion while supporting food security in the face of climate change.”
Drought and plagues caused by climate change are one of the causes of malnutrition (ORLANDO … [+] SIERRA/AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
Government representatives from Egypt and other nations, including Sweden, Netherlands, Bangladesh and Canada, stressed their commitment to the initiative and its objectives. The representative from Cote d’Ivoire called for the inclusion of the I-CAN launch in the final outcome document from COP27.
Dr Naeema Al Gasseer, Representative of the World Health Organization in Egypt confirmed that “Nutrition and health are very critical to any environmental policy decision.”
Dr Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, Egypt Minister of Health and Population confirmed that “The government of Egypt is committed to an integrated approach to nutrition and climate change.”
Dr Yasmine Fouad, Egyptian Minister of Environment advised that government is looking what it is being produced and how it is being produced and what is being consumed and how it is being consumed. She also stressed that marginalized voices, and particularly women, would be included in the integrated approach towards agriculture, adaptation and nutrition.
“We will spare no effort to make this happen,” she said.
Lawrence Haddad, Executive Director for the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition emphasized the bidirectional relationship between nutrition and climate change, indicating that resilient, sustainable and healthy diets are a critical link between nutrition and climate change.
Dr Vijay Rangarajan, The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) Director General said that “putting nutrition on the agenda is crucial and will remain crucial.”
According to the I-CAN concept note, “Business as usual will not allow countries to realize their targets of Agenda 2030, including those of SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG2 (End Hunger) and SDG3 (Health). Transformative policy and action is needed to deliver sustainable, resilient and healthy diets to generate multiple benefits across SDGs.”
Envoys from around the globe gathered this week in a renovated Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, where green development projects mushroomed in the lead-up to this year’s climate change summit.
Recycling bins dot stretches of the city’s once-dishevelled roads as a fleet of solar-powered electric buses transports COP27 delegates at full throttle.
But as the country’s glittering Red Sea coast becomes a showpiece for what a sustainable future might look like, in the overcrowded streets of Cairo and other major Egyptian cities voices are being silenced to keep up a veneer of perfection.
“Egypt’s PR machine is operating on all cylinders to conceal the awful reality in the country’s jails. [But] no amount of PR can hide the country’s abysmal human rights record,” Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said in a statement.
The rights watchdog documented the arrest of 1,540 people for exercising free speech and association in the lead-up to COP27. Political prisoners in Egypt are estimated at 60,000 since President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took power in 2013, a number denied by Cairo.
The case of prominent British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah took centre stage as he escalated a hunger strike to include water as the summit kicked off on November 6.
His story, however, is far from isolated. “Alaa’s case is critical and urgent, but there are many other urgent cases that are not getting any proper care or attention,” Mona Seif, Abd el-Fattah’s sister, told Al Jazeera.
Seif said her 40-year-old brother, who has spent the best part of the past decade in prison after being sentenced over a Facebook post, has little hope for “individual salvation” but wishes that his death, if unavoidable, be a way to shed light on the violent crackdown on civil liberties.
“Alaa’s cellmates are mostly very young people, in their early 20s, and have become adults in prison,” Seif said. “He wants the voices of those who have been trying to get out of this massive war that el-Sisi is lashing out on people – and on the younger generation in particular – to be heard and acknowledged.”
No space for dissent at COP27
Amnesty documented the arrest of 184 people between October 25 and November 6 in Cairo alone, including some in connection to calls for protests at COP27 on November 11.
Hussein Baoumi, a researcher at Amnesty, told Al Jazeera the Egyptian government was going to great lengths to prevent dissent as it hosted the climate summit.
“The ministry of foreign affairs handpicked five Egyptian environmental groups that are not critical of the authorities [to take part in COP27],” Baoumi said, while others remained unaccredited and unable to cross the checkpoints erected on the roads to Sharm el-Sheikh.
According to the Egyptian COP27 Presidency website, protests are allowed between 10am and 5pm in a camera-monitored area away from the conference site. Anyone wishing to organise a demonstration must inform the authorities 36 hours in advance.
An app created by the government to act as a guide to the conference facilities requires users to provide their full name, email address, mobile number, nationality and passport number. “The app also asks to grant certain permissions that enable it to access the camera and microphone, which can be used for surveillance,” Baoumi said.
Authorities also mandated the installation of cameras in all taxis and introduced a registration process for the so-called Green Zone outside the COP venue, which at previous summits was open to the wider public.
Among the more than 25,000 participants, a few human rights activists – including Abd el-Fattah’s youngest sister Sanaa Seif and prominent human rights defender Hossam Bahgat – were able to shine a rare spotlight on the continuing violent crackdown on civil liberties.
But the heightened surveillance, including unconstitutional requests for passers-by to hand over their phones at checkpoints for scrutiny of their social media content, has magnified the risk of reprisals.
Egypt’s social media is witnessing some calls for protests on 11.11 as the country hosts #COP27. Gov’t reacted as usual by hysterical checkpoints in vital streets arbitrarily picking ppl to open their phones for unlawful checks into their contents. pic.twitter.com/h7C8ztFHs8
On November 1, outspoken journalist Manal Ajrama was arrested after she criticised government policies on her personal Facebook page. The deputy editor of the state-run Radio and Television Magazine has since appeared before the Supreme State Security Prosecution under terrorism charges, rights groups say.
A member of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate last week denounced the disappearance of al-Ahram journalist Mahmoud Saad Diab, who went missing after attempting to board a flight to China from Cairo’s airport.
On October 31, Egyptian authorities detained an Indian climate activist, Ajit Rajagopal, as he set off on an eight-day walk from Cairo to Sharm el-Sheikh to call attention to the climate crisis. He was released the next day after an international outcry.
Human Rights Watch found counterterrorism and state-of-emergency laws have been extensively used against journalists, activists and critics in retaliation for their peaceful criticism. El-Sisi declared a nationwide state of emergency in April 2017, which has been renewed and in effect ever since.
Locked up
As hundreds are arrested, thousands more languish in Egypt’s prisons.
Former presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh was sentenced to 15 years in prison in May for “spreading false news” and “incitement against state institutions”.
Mohamed el-Baqer, human rights lawyer and founder of the Adalah Centre for Rights and Freedoms, has spent more than 1,000 days in Egypt’s notorious maximum security Tora Prison 2.
Blogger and journalist Mohamed Ibrahim Radwan, known as Mohamed Oxygen, has been locked up mostly in solitary confinement in the same facility for more than three years.
According to the Egyptian Network for Human Rights, at least 35 people have died in detention in Egypt since the beginning of the year.
Political prisoner Alaa al-Salami died following a hunger strike to protest against the conditions of his detention, according to the organisation. The 47-year-old was sentenced to life imprisonment and held first in the maximum-security Scorpion Prison and then transferred to the newly built Badr 3 prison.
Human rights groups say prisoners in the Badr 3 complex, 70km northeast of Cairo, are held in punitive conditions including fluorescent lights and security cameras switched on round the clock and deprived of access to sufficient food, clothing and books.
No climate justice without open civic space
A group of independent Egyptian human rights organisations came together in the months leading up to the summit to form the Egyptian Human Rights Coalition on COP27 to leverage mobilisation under the strapline, “No climate justice without open civic space.”
“It’s an abysmal situation for human rights in Egypt. You cannot discuss the environmental crisis without addressing the overall human rights situation,” Yasmin Omar, human rights lawyer at the Committee for Justice and a member of the coalition, told Al Jazeera.
“The Egyptian human rights movement has sought every means of accountability to address this within the UN mechanism, but COP27 represents a unique moment to make this situation not only our responsibility but the responsibility of the world,” Omar, who left Egypt to continue her human rights activities, said.
On Friday, UN special rapporteurs joined a growing chorus of voices demanding nations and other stakeholders put pressure on the Egyptian government to release Abd el-Fattah and demonstrate that international human rights commitments matter.
“The hunger strike by Mr Abdel Fattah – a decision that may end in his death – appears to be the last resort of an individual deprived of all avenues to challenge a sentence by Egypt’s Terrorism Circuit Court, where basic procedural and substantive rights concerns, including lack of judicial independence, are allegedly systematic,” the experts said.
“The fact that we ‘hear and see’ Mr Abdel Fattah now, because the COP27 conference takes place in Egypt, underscores the importance of States and other stakeholders addressing his plight directly with the Egyptian government.”
‘Fear of reprisal’
Others have not yet had their voices heard. Among those notably absent from the climate conference are individuals and groups from the Sinai Peninsula, where the summit is taking place.
“The absence of the Sinai community from the COP27 is an expected result of the policies of the Egyptian government, which have stifled traditional forms of peaceful expression and assembly including popular councils,” Ahmed Salem, the director of the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera.
Beyond the gated premises of the COP venue, thousands of demolished homes are the remainder of military operations that have driven thousands from their homes, in what Human Rights Watch said amounts to forced eviction and population transfer – and potential war crimes.
Between late 2013 and July 2020, the army destroyed at least 12,350 buildings, mostly homes, and razed about 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres) of farmland as part of a protracted fight with the armed group Wilayat Sinai, a local ISIL (ISIS) affiliate, according to the watchdog.
In the process, activists who criticised the government’s heavy-handed response were silenced, including some who demanded action on pressing environmental concerns including groundwater depletion and beach erosion.
“Environmental protection groups are unable to address these issues due to fear of reprisal,” Salem, who also lives in exile, said.
“The protection of the environment cannot be effective without the protection of people’s rights.”
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — U.S. President Joe Biden offered a full-throated American commitment to the nations of Southeast Asia on Saturday, pledging at a Cambodia summit to help stand against China’s growing dominance in the region — without mentioning the other superpower by name.
Chinese President Xi Jinping wasn’t in the room at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, summit in Phnom Penh. But Xi hovered over the proceedings just two days before he and Biden are set to have their highly anticipated first face-to-face meeting at the G20 summit in Indonesia.
The Biden White House has declared Xi’s nation its greatest economic and military rival of the next century and while the president never called out China directly, his message was squarely aimed at Beijing.
“Together we will tackle the biggest issues of our time, from climate to health security to defend against significant threats to rules-based order and to threats against the rule of law,” Biden said. “We’ll build an Indo-Pacific that is free and open, stable and prosperous, resilient and secure.”
The U.S. has long derided China’s violation of the international rules-based order — from trade to shipping to intellectual property — and Biden tried to emphasize his administration’s solidarity with a region American has too often overlooked.
His work in Phnom Penh was meant to set a framework for his meeting with Xi — his first face-to-face with the Chinese leader since taking office — which is to be held Monday at the G20 summit of the world’s richest economies, this year being held in Indonesia on the island of Bali.
Much of Biden’s agenda at ASEAN was to demonstrate resistance to Beijing.
He was to push for better freedom of navigation on the South China Sea, where the U.S. believes the nations can fly and sail wherever international law allows. The U.S. had declared that China’s resistance to that freedom challenges the world’s rules-based order.
Moreover, in an effort to crack down on unregulated fishing by China, the U.S. began an effort to use radio frequencies from commercial satellites to better track so-called dark shipping and illegal fishing. Biden also pledged to help the area’s infrastructure initiative — meant as a counter to China’s Belt and Road program — as well as to lead a regional response to the ongoing violence in Myanmar.
But it is the Xi meeting that will be the main event for Biden’s week abroad, which comes right after his party showed surprising strength in the U.S. midterm elections, emboldening the president as he headed overseas. Biden will circumnavigate the globe, having made his first stop at a major climate conference in Egypt before arriving in Cambodia for a pair of weekend summits before going on to Indonesia.
There has been skepticism among Asian states as to American commitment to the region over the last two decades. Former President Barack Obama took office with the much-ballyhooed declaration that the U.S. would “pivot to Asia,” but his administration was sidetracked by growing involvements in Middle Eastern wars.
Donald Trump conducted a more inward-looking foreign policy and spent much of his time in office trying to broker a better trade deal with China, all the while praising Xi’s authoritarian instincts. Declaring China the United States’ biggest rival, Biden again tried to focus on Beijing but has had to devote an extraordinary amount of resources to helping Ukraine fend off Russia’s invasion.
But this week is meant to refocus America on Asia — just as China, taking advantage of the vacuum left by America’s inattention, has continued to wield its power over the region.
Biden declared that the ten nations that make up ASEAN are “the heart of my administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy” and that his time in office — which included hosting the leaders in Washington earlier this year — begins “a new era in our cooperation.” He did, though, mistakenly identify the host country as “Colombia” while offering thanks at the beginning of his speech.
“We will build a better future, a better future we all say we want to see,” Biden said.
Biden was only the second U.S. president to set foot in Cambodia, after Obama visited in 2012. And like Obama did then, the president on Saturday made no public remarks about Cambodia’s dark history or the United States’ role in the nation’s tortured past.
In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon authorized a secret carpet-bombing campaign in Cambodia to cut off North Vietnam’s move toward South Vietnam. The U.S. also backed a coup that led, in part, to the rise of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, a bloodthirsty guerrilla group that went on to orchestrate a genocide that resulted in the deaths of more than 1.5 million people between 1975 and 1979.
One of the regime’s infamous Killing Fields, where nearly 20,000 Cambodians were executed and thrown in mass graves, lies just a few miles outside the center of Phnom Penh. There, a memorial featuring thousands of skulls sits as a vivid reminder of the atrocities committed just a few generations ago. White House aides said that Biden had no scheduled plans to visit.
As is customary, Biden met with the host country’s leader at the start of the summit. Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander, has ruled Cambodia for decades with next to no tolerance for dissent. Opposition leaders have been jailed and killed, and his administration has been accused of widespread corruption, according to human rights groups.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said Biden would “engage across the board in service of America’s interests and to advance America’s strategic position and our values.” He said Biden was meeting with Hun Sen because he was the leader of the host country.
U.S. officials said Biden urged the Cambodian leader to make a greater commitment to democracy and “reopen civic and political space” ahead of the country’s next elections.
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President Biden is attending a global climate meeting in Egypt with a giant domestic investment in tow — and he’s likely to face questions about how far the U.S. will go to pull other large greenhouse gas emitters along.
His attendance Friday at the U.N. climate conference, known as COP27, in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, is the first stop on an around-the-world trip that will also take him to a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders in Cambodia and a Group of 20 summit meeting for leaders of the world’s largest economies in Bali, Indonesia.
Through a translator, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi welcomed Mr. Biden and said that since the U.S. media was present, he wanted to talk about overall issues in the Middle East. At the “center of debate” is human rights, el-Sisi said, adding that Egyptians have taken a “comprehensive approach” to human rights with the establishment of a national academy for human rights. Mr. Biden thanked the Egyptian president for his cooperation on climate change, and Egypt’s “strong” stance with the United Nations regarding the Russian war in Ukraine. Mr. Biden also said he will discuss human rights with el-Sisi.
Mr. Biden arrived in Egypt buoyed by a stronger-than-expected showing by the Democratic Party in Tuesday’s midterm elections, congressional passage this year of the largest climate investment in U.S. history and Russian military setbacks on the Ukrainian battlefield.
At the climate conference, Mr. Biden will discuss a new supplemental rule coming Friday that cracks down on methane emissions, a measure that expands on a similar regulation his administration released last year.
The 2021 rule targeted emissions of methane — a potent greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to global warming — from existing oil and gas wells nationwide, rather than focusing only on new wells as previous Environmental Protection Agency regulations have done. But this year’s rule goes a step further and takes aim at all drilling sites, including smaller wells that emit less than 3 tons (2.7 metric tonnes) of methane per year.
He also will spotlight one of his key domestic successes — the Democrats’ massive health care and climate change bill known as the Inflation Reduction Act.
The U.S. commitment of some $375 billion over a decade to fight climate change gives Mr. Biden greater leverage to press other nations to make good on their pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition the global economy toward cleaner energy sources.
The president will be in a far different position from last year’s gathering, which came about during a particularly unhappy stretch in the bill’s tortuous path to passage.
That summit resulted in additional global commitments to meet the temperature targets agreed to in the Paris Climate Accord, which Mr. Biden rejoined after his predecessor, Donald Trump, pulled the U.S. from the deal.
In his remarks, Mr. Biden will also make his case that “good climate policy is good economic policy,” while calling on all major emitting countries to “align their ambition” to the international goal of trying to limit future global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the White House.
But even with these fresh efforts, America and the world have a long way to go to meet emissions targets that scientists hope will contain global warming. And the political will for more investment — as the global economy faces new headwinds — is shrinking.
Speaking at the COP27 summit Wednesday, former U.S. vice president and climate activist Al Gore called Biden a “climate hero in my book,” adding that “the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act represents the most significant pro-climate legislation ever passed by any nation in all of history.”
It remained to be seen whether Mr. Biden would address the item top of mind at the climate talks: loss and damage. That’s international negotiations language for asking rich countries like the United States, the top historic polluting nation, to pay what are essentially reparations for damages caused to poorer vulnerable nations that don’t emit much heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
In the past the United States has been against even talking about the issue, but it has now softened its stance, agreeing to the topic being discussed. Special Envoy John Kerry has even mentioned it in speeches. However, the U.S. doesn’t want liability to be part of any deal and when it comes to paying, Congress and the public have been reluctant to embrace many types of climate aid — and this is the most controversial type.
“I wish the U.S. would say something constructive about loss and damage” because it could get a vital issue moving, Princeton University climate and global affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer said.
Global eagerness for shifting away from fossil fuels has been tempered by the roiling of world energy markets after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At home and abroad, Biden is pressing oil and gas producers to boost production to meet demand and bring down prices that have funded the Kremlin’s war effort.
Prospects for a significant breakthrough are further dampened as major emitters such as China and India are sending less-senior delegations. Biden administration officials have tried to lower expectations for results at the meeting and instead cast it as a return to U.S. leadership on the issue.
Biden leaves Washington with votes still being tallied in key races that will determine control of both chambers of Congress. Still, the president was feeling the wind at his back as Democrats performed stronger than expected. He was likely to learn the results of the races that will sharply impact his ability to get things done in Washington while he was overseas.
While in Egypt, Biden will hold a bilateral meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, where they are to discuss the two nations’ strategic partnership, the Israel-Palestinian conflict and regional security issues.
Egypt’s foreign minister Sameh Shoukry told The Associated Press on Thursday that he understood Mr. Biden’s visit in Sharm el-Sheikh to be “an indication of the political will to move the process forward” on tackling global warming.
“We hope … it will resonate within the collective will of the negotiating groups that the United States is party to, but also in creating a momentum for the conference, for the parties to deliver what is expected,” he said.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden would also broach the issue of human rights when he meets with El-Sisi, whose government has taken an authoritarian turn, and with other leaders on the trip.
“He feels you’re not the American president — you’re not really doing your job as American president — if you’re not raising issues of human rights,” said Sullivan. “You can expect that he will raise human rights issues in that meeting, as he will with other leaders that he encounters at the G-20.”
Sullivan said Mr. Biden and other senior officials would also advocate for the release of imprisoned Egyptian pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah, whose family said they were told by prison officials he was undergoing an undefined medical intervention amid a hunger strike that escalated Sunday.
After his brief stop in Egypt, the president will continue on to Cambodia for a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to reinforce the U.S. commitment to the region in the face of China’s increasing assertiveness.
And then, in Indonesia, the president is set to hold his first sitdown as president with a newly empowered Chinese President Xi Jinping, who was awarded a norm-breaking third, five-year term as the Chinese Communist Party leader during the party’s national congress last month amid increasingly strained U.S.-China relations.
The White House has been working with Chinese officials over the last several weeks to arrange the meeting. Biden on Wednesday told reporters that he intended to discuss with Xi growing tensions between Washington and Beijing over the self-ruled island of Taiwan, trade policies, Beijing’s relationship with Russia and more.
“What I want to do with him when we talk is lay out what each of our red lines are and understand what he believes to be in the critical national interests of China, what I know to be the critical interests of the United States,” Mr. Biden said. “And determine whether or not they conflict with one another.”
Mr. Biden will also aim to demonstrate global resolve to stand up to Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and meet with two critical new partners in the effort to support Ukraine’s defense: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni. President Vladimir Putin announced Thursday that he was skipping the gatherings, averting a potentially awkward encounter. Sullivan said the president has no plans to interact with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who is attending in Putin’s stead.
In Cambodia, Mr. Biden will also discuss North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs in a trilateral meeting with leaders of South Korea and Japan.
___
Kim reported from Phnom Penh, Cambodia. AP writers Seth Borenstein in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and Chris Megerian and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed.
The sharp jump in attendees associated with some of the world’s biggest polluting oil and gas giants at COP27 is thought to reflect the rise in the influence of the fossil fuel industry to shape the debate.
Ahmad Gharabli | Afp | Getty Images
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — More than 600 fossil fuel industry delegates have been registered to attend the COP27 climate talks in Egypt, according to analysis from campaign groups, reflecting an increase of over 25% from last year.
The sharp jump in attendees associated with some of the world’s biggest polluting oil and gas giants at the U.N.’s flagship climate conference is thought to reflect the rise in the influence of the fossil fuel industry to shape the debate.
Campaigners described the findings as a “twisted joke” and said it appeared to set the stage for COP27 to be a “festival of fossil fuels and their polluting friends, buoyed by recent bumper profits.”
A spokesperson for Egypt’s COP presidency was not immediately available to comment on the findings of the report.
Around 35,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries are expected to convene in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh to discuss collective action to tackle the climate emergency.
An analysis of data from the U.N.’s provisional list of named attendees by campaign groups Corporate Accountability, Corporate Europe Observatory and Global Witness found that 636 fossil fuel lobbyists had been registered to take part in the talks.
That reflects an increase of over 100 when compared to last year’s talks in Glasgow, Scotland.
It means that more fossil fuel lobbyists are represented at the two-week-long summit than any single country besides the United Arab Emirates, which has 1,070 delegates registered compared to 176 last year.
The data also showed that more fossil fuel industry delegates were set to attend COP27 than any national delegation from the African continent, despite the talks being described as the “Africa COP.”
Researchers pored through the U.N.’s provisional list of named attendees to count the number of individuals registered either acting on behalf of the fossil fuel industry or those directly affiliated with oil and gas companies, such as BP, Shell and Chevron.
“With time running out to avert climate disaster, major talks like COP27 absolutely must advance concrete action to stop the toxic practices of the fossil fuel industry that is causing more damage to the climate than any other industry,” a spokesperson for the groups said.
“The extraordinary presence of this industry’s lobbyists at these talks is therefore a twisted joke at the expense of both people and planet,” they added.
To be sure, the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, is the chief driver of the climate crisis.
A flurry of major U.N. reports published in recent weeks delivered a grim assessment of how close the planet is to irreversible climate breakdown, warning there is “no credible pathway” in place to cap global heating at the critical temperature threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“There’s been a lot of lip service paid to this being the so-called African COP, but how are you going to address the dire climate impacts on the continent, when the fossil fuel delegation is larger than that of any African country?” said Philip Jakpor of Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa.
“More than 450 organisations around the world are calling on world governments to do what they should have done from day one,” Jakpor said in a statement. “It’s time to kick Big Polluters out! No more writing the rules or bankrolling the climate talks.”
Western security advisers are warning delegates at the COP27 climate summit not to download the host Egyptian government’s official smartphone app, amid fears it could be used to hack their private emails, texts and even voice conversations.
Policymakers from Germany, France and Canada were among those who had downloaded the app by November 8, according to two separate Western security officials briefed on discussions within these delegations at the U.N. climate summit.
Other Western governments have advised officials not to download the app, said another official from a European government. All of the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss international government deliberations.
The potential vulnerability from the Android app, which has been downloaded thousands of times and provides a gateway for participants at COP27, was confirmed separately by four cybersecurity experts who reviewed the digital application for POLITICO.
The app is being promoted as a tool to help attendees navigate the event. But it risks giving the Egyptian government permission to read users’ emails and messages. Even messages shared via encrypted services like WhatsApp are vulnerable, according to POLITICO’s technical review of the application, and two of the outside experts.
The app also provides Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, which created it, with other so-called backdoor privileges, or the ability to scan people’s devices.
World leaders, including Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres pose for a group photo during the Sharm El-Sheikh Climate Implementation Summit of the COP27 climate conference in Egypt | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
On smartphones running Google’s Android software, it has permission to potentially listen into users’ conversations via the app, even when the device is in sleep mode, according to the three experts and POLITICO’s separate analysis. It can also track people’s locations via smartphone’s built-in GPS and Wi-Fi technologies, according to two of the analysts.
The app is nothing short of “a surveillance tool that could be weaponized by the Egyptian authorities to track activists, government delegates and anyone attending COP27,” said Marwa Fatafta, digital rights lead for the Middle East and North Africa for Access Now, a nonprofit digital rights organization.
“The application is a cyber weapon,” said one security expert after reviewing it, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect colleagues attending COP.
The Egyptian government did not respond to requests for comment. Google said it had reviewed the app and had not found any violations to its app policies.
The potential security risk comes as thousands of high-profile officials descend on Sharm El-Sheikh, the Egyptian resort town, where so-called QR codes, or quasi-bar codes that direct people to download the smartphone application, are dotted around the city.
Participants at COP27 include global leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, though such high profile politicians are unlikely to download another government’s app.
The experts who spoke to POLITICO said that much of the data and access that the COP27 app gets is fairly standard. But, according to three of these specialists, the combination of the Egyptian government’s track record on human rights and the types of people who would downloaded the app represent a cause for concern.
Strange and extensive access
Three of the researchers said the app posed surveillance risks to those who download it due to its widespread permissions to review people’s devices, though the extent of the risk remains unclear.
Elias Koivula, a researcher at WithSecure, a cybersecurity firm, reviewed the Android app for POLITICO and said he had found no evidence people’s emails had been read. Many of the permissions granted to the climate change conference app also have benign purposes like keeping people up-to-date with the latest travel information around the summit, he added.
But Koivula said other permissions granted to the app appeared “strange” and could potentially be used to track people’s movements and communications. So far, he said he had no evidence that such activity had taken place.
Not all the experts agreed on the risks.
Paul Shunk, a security intelligence engineer at cybersecurity firm Lookout, said he had found no evidence the app had access to emails, describing the idea that it posed a surveillance risk as “strange.” He was confident the app was not built as typical spyware, pouring cold water on claims the app functioned as a listening device. Shunk said it could not record audio if it was running in the background, which makes it “almost completely unsuitable for spying on users.”
The COP27 app uses location tracking “extensively,” Shunk said, but seemingly for legitimate purposes like route planning for summit attendees. It lacked the ability to access location in the background, based on Android permissions, which would be what the app would need for continuous location tracking, he added.
The other two cybersecurity analysts who reviewed the app spoke on the condition of anonymity to safeguard their ongoing security work and to protect colleagues attending the climate change conference.
“Let me put it this way: I wouldn’t download this app onto my phone,” said one of those experts. Those two the researchers also warned that once the application had been downloaded onto a device, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to remove its ability to access people’s sensitive data — even after it had been deleted.
POLITICO checked the app’s potential security risks via two open cybersecurity tools, and both raised concerns about its ability to listen to people’s conversations, track their locations and alter how the app operates without asking for permission.
Both Google and Apple approved the app to appear in their separate app stores. All of the analysts only reviewed the Android version of the app, and not the separate app created for Apple’s devices. Apple declined to comment on the separate app created for its App Store.
Egypt’s track(ing) record
Adding to rights groups’ concerns is the track record of the Egyptian government to monitor its people. In the wake of the so-called Arab Spring, Cairo has clamped down on dissidents and used local emergency rules to track its citizens online and offline activity, according to a report by Privacy International, a nonprofit organization.
As part of the smartphone app’s privacy notice, the Egyptian government says it has the right to use information provided by those who have downloaded the app, including GPS locations, camera access, photos and Wi-Fi details.
“Our application reserves the right to access customer accounts for technical and administrative purposes and for security reasons,” the privacy statement said.
Yet the technical review, both by POLITICO and the outside experts of the COP27 smartphone application discovered further permissions that people had granted, unwittingly, to the Egyptian government that were not made public via its public statements.
These included the application having the right to track what attendees did on other apps on their phone; connecting users’ smartphones via Bluetooth to other hardware in ways that could lead to data being offloaded onto government-owned devices; and independently linking individuals’ phones to Wi-Fi networks, or making calls on their behalf without them knowing.
“The Egyptian government cannot be entrusted with managing people’s personal data given its dismal human rights record and blatant disregard for privacy,” said Fatafta, the digital rights campaigner.
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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Climate change talks have long been stymied over demands for transfers of billions of dollars — on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron backed a new push for the conversation to be measured in trillions.
Speaking at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, Macron gave his support to elements of a plan outlined by Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley that seeks to overhaul the way climate finance flows to the countries that most need it.
He called for a “huge shock of concessional financing,” suspension of debt for disaster-struck countries and putting the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on notice.
It was a speech that signaled a shift in tone that developing countries have been long been pushing for.
During the first day of official speeches, leader after leader from wealthy countries highlighted the need to demonstrate “solidarity” with developing countries after a year in which calamitous disasters and a bubbling debt crisis helped reshape the often contentious conversation about climate finance.
“It’s the right thing to do,” said U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Money is a central focus of this year’s climate talks given the widening gap between what has been pledged and what is needed. It extends from everything from clean energy transitions to hardening countries’ defenses against climate impacts to potential payments for irreparable climate damages.
In September, Barbados issued the world’s first pandemic and natural disaster bond. “The time has come for the introduction of natural disaster-pandemic clauses in our debt instruments,” Mottley said.
“God forbid, if we are hit tomorrow, we unlock 18 percent of GDP over the next two years, because what we do is effectively put a pause on all of our debt,” she said.
Macron called for the rules of the IMF, the World Bank and other major lenders to be changed to makeclauses that halt debt repayments in the event of a disaster far more common.
“What you’re asking of us in terms of debt reimbursement and guarantees, when we are affected by a climate shock, when we are a victim of a climate accident, to some degree, there must be a suspension of those conditions,” said the French president.
Broken promises
While the need for finance to spur the transition to clean energy across the world and guard against the ravages of climate change is already stretching into trillions, the U.N. climate system remains stuck on a broken decade-old promise from rich countries. They pledged to deliver $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020, but that’s not likely to happen until next year.
As climate impacts have grown more extreme and prolific, appeals for new and more innovative forms of finance have escalated. Ballooning debt in the wake of the pandemic has heightened those calls, with dozens of vulnerable countries threatening a debt strike in the lead-up to COP27.
Mottley has been a champion of elevating the debt crisis facing nations like her own and highlighting how it adds to climate inequities. The plan she outlined in September hinges on debt relief, increased finance, and new mechanisms for post-disaster recovery, like bonds.
The Barbados leader’s call to arms and Macron’s heavyweight backing brought a new reality and scale to the financial discussion.
Mottley has pushed for the IMF’s special drawing rights to be put toward helping climate-vulnerable nations recover and respond to climate impacts. That could be used to help unlock far more money from the private sector — $500 billion from the IMF could result in $5 trillion in investments, she said Monday.
The challenge is getting shareholders in those financial institutions to agree to reforms.
Officials in the U.S., Germany and other major economies have pushed for an overhaul of the way multilateral development banks lend to allow them to extend more climate finance. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has called on the World Bank to draft a roadmap by the end of the year that could then be used to drive reform efforts at other development banks.
On Monday, Macron went further, saying that by next spring, global financial institutions would need to devise ways to “come up with concrete solutions to activate these innovative financing solutions and to help us to provide access to new liquidities.”
He paid tribute to Mottley’s “force of character” and said the two leaders — one who commands an economy 600 times larger than the other — had agreed to form a group of “wise minds” to develop suggestions for the overhaul of the international financial system.
But one Mottley suggestion that Macron swerved was her call for fossil fuel companies to pay a levy on their profits into a fund for disaster-hit countries.
“How do companies make $200 billion in profits in the last three months and not expect to contribute at least 10 cents on every dollar of profit to a loss and damage fund?” she asked.
The COP27 climate summit kicked off on Sunday with yet another dire report about the state of the planet. As world leaders gathered for the conference in Egypt, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said the past eight years have been the hottest in recorded history.
In the period from 2013 to 2022, the global average temperature was an estimated 1.14 degrees Celsius above 1850-1900 levels, according to the U.N. agency’s provisional State of the Global Climate in 2022 report.
And according to the agency, “the warming continues” — accompanied by accelerating sea level rise, record-breaking glacier melting in Europe and extreme weather.
“We just had the 8 warmest years on record,” the U.N. agency said. “The global average temperature in 2022 is about 1.15 °C above the pre-industrial level.”
Officials warned for years that to prevent the most severe impacts of climate change, the world needs to stay below a global average of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming compared to pre-industrial times. Now, WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas warns that is looking improbable.
“The greater the warming, the worse the impacts,” he said. “We have such high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now that the lower 1.5ºC of the Paris Agreement is barely within reach.”
The development echoes a string of reports the U.N. issued less than two weeks ago that found nations are failing to create and enact sufficient plans for tackling the climate crisis. The reports found that based on current actions, plans and emissions, Earth is on track to hit nearly 3 degrees Celsius of warming in less than 80 years.
The WMO’s latest report said the record heat comes as “the tell-tale signs and impacts of climate change are becoming more dramatic.”
We just had the 8 warmest years on record. The global average temperature in 2022 is about 1.15 °C above the pre-industrial level.
In its provisional State of the Global Climate in 2022 report, the WMO found that greenhouse gases have hit record levels. The rate of sea level rise doubled since 1993 and has risen by nearly 10 millimeters since January 2020, hitting a record high in 2022. Ocean heat also hit record levels in 2021.
“The past two and a half years alone account for 10 percent of the overall rise in sea level since satellite measurements started nearly 30 years ago,” the WMO said.
Glaciers played a large role in this. In Europe, glaciers in the European Alps are believed to have had “record-shattering melt” since January alone. The Greenland ice sheet, which combined with Antarctica stores about two-thirds of the planet’s fresh water, lost some of its mass for the 26th consecutive year and got its first rain in September, the report found.
“It’s already too late for many glaciers and the melting will continue for hundreds if not thousands of years, with major implications for water security,” Taalas said. “The rate of sea level rise has doubled in the past 30 years. Although we still measure this in terms of millimetres per year, it adds up to half to one meter per century and that is a long-term and major threat to many millions of coastal dwellers and low-lying states.”
The WMO said U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expected to unveil a plan at COP27 for a global early warning system, which the agency noted half of nations lack. The Early Warnings for All Initiative will seek $3.1 billion of investments over the next five years to help with “disaster risk knowledge, observations and forecasting, preparedness and response, and communication of early warnings.”
The sister of Egyptian-British hunger striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah has landed in Sharm el-Sheikh to campaign for his release as British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and other world leaders began the COP27 climate summit.
“I’m here to do my best to try and shed light on my brother’s case and to save him,” said Sanaa Seif, Abd el-Fattah’s sister, after arriving in Sharm el-Sheikh in the early hours of Monday.
“I’m really worried. I’m here to put pressure on all leaders coming, especially Prime Minister Rishi Sunak,” said Seif, who had recently been leading a sit-in outside the British Foreign Office in London.
Sunak has said he will raise Abd el-Fattah’s case with Egypt’s leadership. Abd el-Fattah had informed his family that he would stop drinking water on Sunday in an escalation of his protest.
The 40-year-old political activist rose to prominence with Egypt’s 2011 uprising but has been jailed for most of the period since. Sentenced most recently in December 2021 to five years on charges of spreading false news, he has been on hunger strike for 220 days against his detention and prison conditions.
Egyptian officials have not responded to calls for comment on Abd el-Fattah’s case, but have said previously that he was receiving meals and was moved to a prison with better conditions earlier this year.
Abd el-Fattah’s family said he was only consuming minimal calories and some fibre to sustain himself earlier in the year. After family visits in October, Seif said: “He looks very weak. He’s fading away slowly. He looks like a skeleton.”
Some rights campaigners have criticised the decision to allow Egypt to host COP27, citing a long crackdown on political dissent in which rights groups say tens of thousands have been imprisoned and raising concern over access and space for protests at the talks.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has said security measures are needed to stabilise Egypt after the country’s 2011 revolution. Egypt is hoping to raise its diplomatic profile by hosting the United Nations climate talks.
Low expectations
More than 100 world leaders are preparing to discuss a worsening problem that climate scientists call Earth’s biggest challenge – greenhouse gas emissions – which leads to global warming.
The climate events are being held amid multiple global crises surrounding food, energy and rising inflation, and expectations for breakthroughs are seen to be low.
Dozens of heads of states or governments will take the stage on Monday, the first day of “high-level” international climate talks, in Egypt, with more to come in the following days.
“The fear is other priorities take precedence,” top UN climate change official Simon Stiell told a news conference.
The “fear is that we lose another day, another week, another month, another year – because we can’t”, he said.
In 2009, developed countries pledged to provide $100bn a year by 2020 for climate protection in poor countries. The pledge remained largely unfulfilled.
Only 29 of 194 countries have presented improved climate plans, as called for at the UN talks in Glasgow last year, Stiell noted.
French President Emmanuel Macron urged the United States, China and other non-European rich nations to “step up” their efforts to cut emissions and provide financial aid to other countries.
“Europeans are paying,” Macron told French and African climate campaigners on the sidelines of COP27. “We are the only ones paying.”
‘Loss and damage’
Fresh from his election victory, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is expected to attend the summit later on, with hopes that he will protect the Amazon from deforestation after defeating climate-sceptic leader Jair Bolsonaro.
Sunak, another new leader, reversed a decision not to attend the talks and is due to urge countries to move “further and faster” in transitioning away from fossil fuels.
On Sunday, the heads of developing nations won a small victory when delegates agreed to put the controversial issue of money for “loss and damage” on the summit agenda.
Pakistan, which chairs the powerful G77+China negotiating bloc of more than 130 developing nations, has made the issue a priority.
“We definitely regard this as a success for the parties,” said Egypt’s Sameh Shoukry, who is chairing COP27.
The US and the European Union have dragged their feet on the issue for years, fearing it would create an open-ended reparations framework.
But European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans welcomed the inclusion of loss and damage, tweeting that the “climate crisis has impacts beyond what vulnerable countries can shoulder alone”.
It has been a century since the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun was discovered. Imtiaz Tyab reports on the importance of King Tut’s legacy to Egypt’s economy and culture.
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The deteriorating health of jailed Egyptian-British activist, Alaa Abd El-Fattah will dominate the upcoming COP27 summit if Egyptian authorities fail to intervene, Amnesty International has warned.
Fears have mounted for the life of writer Abd El-Fattah who escalated a more than 200-day hunger strike on Sunday by refusing to drink water.
“Let’s be very clear, we’re running out of time. So, if the authorities do not want to end up with a death they should have and could have prevented, they must act now; 24, 48 hours, 72 hours at the most, that’s how long they have to save a life,” Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnes Callamard told a news conference in Giza, Egypt, on Sunday.
“If they don’t, that death will be holding on to COP27, it will be in every single discussion, every single discussion there will be Alaa there,” Callamard added.
Abd El-Fattah, who became a leading voice in the country’s 2011 uprising, has been imprisoned over the course of nine years. In 2019, he was sentenced to a further five years in prison for allegedly spreading false news after sharing a Facebook post highlighting human rights abuses in Egyptian jails.
Callamard said that the “extraordinarily severe human rights situation” in Egypt is “at the heart” of agenda of the COP27 summit, which kicked off in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Sunday.
“In other words, yes it’s about climate justice but you cannot deliver climate justice anywhere in the world, including in Egypt, if you don’t have human rights protection,” Callamard told journalists.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made a pledge on Sunday to raise the case of Abd El-Fattah to the Egyptian government when he attends the summit next week.
In a letter to Abd El-Fattah’s sister, Sanaa Seif, Sunak conveyed his concern regarding the activist’s “deteriorating health,” adding his case “remains a priority for the British government.”
According to Sunak, British “ministers and officials continue to press for urgent consular access to Alaa as well as calling for his release at the highest levels of the Egyptian government.”
In a letter written to Sunak and shared with CNN, Seif said: “It is my sincere belief that if Alaa is not released within the coming days that he will die in person, quite possibly while you are in Egypt.”
Abd El-Fattah’s mother was born in London in 1956 and in 2021 he acquired British citizenship, according to the Free Alaa campaign website. Since then, it has been his right to a consular visit by representatives of the British embassy, a right that has so far been refused by Egypt, Free Alaa said.
The Free Alaa campaign says Abd El-Fattah has been on hunger strike since April 2.
London — The scientific community and the majority of the world’s political leaders agree that climate change is one of the biggest threats to life on this planet, and the impacts are already being seen and felt around the world in the form of droughts, more frequent and more severe storms, rampant flooding, heat waves and wildfires.
While there’s little doubt that the problem can only be addressed through international cooperation, it can be hard to keep track of global efforts to do that. Every year there is one major global event that seeks to put it all in one place.
Below is a breakdown of what to expect from the biggest international climate conference, COP27, as it kicks off Sunday in Egypt.
What is a “COP”?
COP stands for “conference of parties.” It happens every year, and this is the 27th time it has been convened. It is a meeting of governments that have signed onto the world’s major climate change agreements: The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, or the Paris Agreement.
The gathering is hosted by a different country each year, and this year it is being held in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, from November 6-18. The event is an opportunity for the signatory nations to discuss everything from steps they are taking to adapt to the impacts of climate change, to financing climate action.
But this year’s gathering is also seen by many as a critical test of whether the global community can or will do enough to prevent the worst predicted outcomes of climate change.
A critical test for climate action
Under the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, the first legally binding international climate change treaty, 194 countries committed to the goal of limiting the rise in the global average temperature to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius — and ideally below 1.5 degrees Celsius — compared to pre-industrial levels.
Under the treaty, each country decides for itself how much it will reduce its emissions every year to meet that goal. Every five years, those targets are revised and made more ambitious; this is called a “ratchet mechanism.”
COP26, which took place in Glasgow in 2021, was the first test of the ratchet mechanism, and the results weren’t promising. The targets submitted by governments for that conference were insufficient to limit global warming to the desired levels. Countries were therefore asked to revise their targets before COP27.
According to a U.N. report released in October, just weeks ahead of COP27, the policies currently in place put the world on track for warming of 2.8 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and there is currently “no credible pathway” to the goal of limiting the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“We are still nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required to put us on track toward a 1.5 degrees Celsius world,” Simon Stiell, executive secretary of U.N. Climate Change, said in October. “To keep this goal alive, national governments need to strengthen their climate action plans now and implement them in the next eight years.”
Who is going to COP27?
President Biden, alongside U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry, will attend the conference, as will at least 90 other heads of state.
Britain’s King Charles III, who devoted a huge amount of attention to environmental causes before inheriting the throne, will not attend, it was confirmed by Buckingham Palace. The U.K.’s new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, initially said he would be unable to attend because of the financial turmoil at home, but after it emerged that former premier Boris Johnson, a same-party rival, might show up in Egypt, Sunak confirmed on Wednesday that he’d go.
There is no long-term prosperity without action on climate change.
There is no energy security without investing in renewables.
That is why I will attend @COP27P next week: to deliver on Glasgow’s legacy of building a secure and sustainable future.
Climate activist Greta Thunberg said she was not going to the conference this year, dismissing the global summit as a forum for “greenwashing.”
“As it is, the COPs are not really working, unless of course we use them as an opportunity to mobilize,” Thunberg said.
Thunberg said she also believed space for activists at the conference was limited, and she wanted to leave room for other advocates to attend.
“Commitments to net zero are worth zero without the plans, policies and actions to back it up,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said ahead of the conference. “Our world cannot afford any more greenwashing, fake movers or late movers. We must close the emissions gap before climate catastrophe closes in on us all.”
PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron released a selfie video on social media platforms Saturday asking the public to send him questions about what France should do about climate change and biodiversity.
Thousands of responses quickly poured in. Several were hostile or questioned his sincerity, but they also included rigorous questions about fossil fuel subsidies, sea pollution and nuclear energy.
In the video, he read from a letter from the public asking why he doesn’t declare an “environmental state of emergency.” He said the letter “prompted me to ask questions about what we are doing about this ecological challenge, the challenge of our generation.”
Early in his presidency, Macron pledged to make tackling climate change issues a top priority, but he has come under widespread criticism for not instituting enough tangible change.
At the COP27 talks in Egypt on Monday, Macron is expected to discuss climate-related financing, protecting forests, Africa’s Great Green Wall, and other climate adaptation measures, according to his office.
He’s also expected to raise the importance — and challenge — of sticking to climate commitments as Europe faces an energy crisis stemming from Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Those are all key issues at the climate talks at the Red Sea coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, which are expected to include more than 120 world leaders and run from Nov. 6-18.
Laurent Fabius, the French diplomat who presided over the U.N. talks in 2015 that produced the Paris climate agreement, made a plea Saturday to those gathering in Egypt: “Keep in mind that the most beautiful announcements mean nothing if they’re not backed up by precise and rapid policies and actions.”
