56th Session of the UNFCCC Subsidiary Bodies
Ghana CVF Statement for the Closing plenary
Thursday, 16 June 2022
Hon. Dr. Henry Kokofu, Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency of Ghana, delivering CVF Ghana statement for the Closing Plenary
Thank you chair: I speak for Ghana, which now holds the Presidency of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, the “CVF”.
We are 1.4 billion people in the 55 nations. I want to share our expectations for COP27.
According to the IPCC, Africa is, after all, the world’s most vulnerable region. With an African COP this year, Sharm-el-Sheikh must decisively advance both adaptation and loss and damage.
For the global goal on adaptation, COP27 needs to create the building blocks for it to be fully operationalized. Vulnerable countries don’t only want to survive, but also to thrive. We want to move from vulnerability through resilience to prosperity and we are seeking a framework for the global goal that will be transformational and orientated around the needs of the most vulnerable nations.
We spoke out in the crucial Glasgow Dialogue on Loss and Damage indicating that for us funding for loss and damage is an emergency agenda. We support the G-77 call for a sub agenda item on loss and damage funding at the COP for this reason. We need to start directly working on Glasgow’s mandate to come to a clear COP decision this year on loss and damage funding arrangements. There is no time to lose.
The growing work on loss and damage should be supported by scientific evidence. That is why we published a V20 economic loss and damage report this week, indicating a 20% loss to our wealth on average this century. For the same reason, we put on record our call for COP27 to commission an IPCC Special Report into Loss and Damage.
Concerning finance, we are calling for a status update on the Delivery Plan enshrined in the COP26 outcome for the annual $100 billion in climate finance to be fully mobilized for the period 2020 through 2025. We are also calling for a standalone “Implementation Plan” for how the crucial decision on doubling adaptation funding by 2025 is being executed by developed nations.
Preventing global warming from surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius is a matter of our survival. In-line with the COP26 decision, we therefore strongly urge all responsible nations to strengthen their 2030 NDC mitigation targets for compliance with 1.5ºC, the chief Paris mitigation goal, in this year: 2022. The work programme to urgently scale up mitigation ambition and implementation in this critical decade and the annual high-level roundtable on pre-2030 ambition must also deliver stronger results under the Paris accord in these respects. The CVF will support that work by commissioning a traffic light system on Paris NDC alignment later this year.
We look forward to working with you all to support strongest possible COP27 outcomes.
I thank you.