Location location location: a carbon footprint calculator for transparent travel to the UN Climate Conference 2022.

Addressing the large carbon footprint of conferences such as the United Nations Climate Change Convention Conference of the Parties (COP) will be important for maintaining public confidence in climate policy. Transparency is also a vital aspect of creating equitable outcomes in climate policies, as those most likely to be affected or who can create change on the ground are often unable to attend in person because of the high financial costs as well as having a large carbon footprint. The selection of host locations for the regular meetings of the UN Climate Change Convention is based on a rotation amongst the five UN regions, which for 2022 was Africa. Here, we present a carbon footprint calculator for travel to COP 27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, weighing the benefits of certain routes and modes of transport. The calculator demonstrates the well-known carbon efficiency of coach and rail over flights but shows that these benefits were partly diminished in the case of COP 27 due to insufficient transport links from Europe to the conference location. However, we also highlight some of the benefits of hosting a COP in the Global South, particularly in the context of climate justice. Users of the calculator are invited to consider all their options for travel and acknowledge the issue of climate justice through careful selection of carbon offsets.

Africa and climate justice at COP27 and beyond: impacts and solutions through an interdisciplinary lens.

Climate justice is not just a financial transaction to protect the environment. It needs to be seen as the protection of the most vulnerable in society after centuries of resource exploitation. African countries disproportionately face impacts of climate change on their environments, their economies, their resources and their infrastructure. This leads to greater vulnerability and increased exposure to the negative effects of a changing climate. In this article, we highlight the importance of climate justice and its role within the United Nations negotiations, and ultimately in concrete action. We discuss current climate impacts across key sectors in the African region, with a focus on health, infrastructure, food and water scarcity, energy and finance. All sectors are affected by climate change. They are interconnected and under threat. This triggers a ripple effect, where threats in one sector have a knock-on effect on other sectors. We find that the current set of intergovernmental institutions have failed to adequately address climate justice. We also contend that a siloed approach to climate action has proven to be ineffective. As we head towards the next set of negotiations (COP27), this paper argues that the economic and social conditions in Africa can be addressed through financial and collaborative support for adaptation and localised solutions, but that this will only be achieved if climate justice is prioritised by the decision makers. This needs to include a global-scale transition in how climate finance is assessed and accessed. Climate justice underpins real, effective and sustainable solutions for climate action in Africa.

Higher cost of finance exacerbates a climate investment trap in developing economies.

Finance is vital for the green energy transition, but access to low cost finance is uneven as the cost of capital differs substantially between regions. This study shows how modelled decarbonisation pathways for developing economies are disproportionately impacted by different weighted average cost of capital (WACC) assumptions. For example, representing regionally-specific WACC values indicates 35% lower green electricity production in Africa for a cost-optimal 2 °C pathway than when regional considerations are ignored. Moreover, policy interventions lowering WACC values for low-carbon and high-carbon technologies by 2050 would allow Africa to reach net-zero emissions approximately 10 years earlier than when the cost of capital reduction is not considered. A climate investment trap arises for developing economies when climate-related investments remain chronically insufficient. Current finance frameworks present barriers to these finance flows and radical changes are needed so that capital is more equitably distributed.

Global crop output and irrigation water requirements under a changing climate.

The anthropogenic increases in CO2 atmospheric concentrations are expected to lead to multiple and possibly opposing effects on crop performance with important implications for crop water productivity. The study integrates the global responses to mounting concentrations at three levels - climatic, cropping and economic - to determine the deviations in crop production and irrigation water requirements from a 'no climate change' socioeconomic development storyline. The biophysical effects are considered comprehensively for eight crop classes by taking into account alterations both to rainfed and irrigation yields, and to irrigation water intensities. These changes in crop growing conditions are explored in the 2004-2050 timeframe across two concentrations pathways (RCP2.6 and RCP 8.5) with the inclusion of the CO2 fertilisation effect. The economic responses are determined through a global water CGE model (RESCU-Water) comprising a bottom-up representation of crop systems. Changes in climatic conditions reduce crop output and depress the global water demand for irrigated crops in spite of an increase in irrigation water intensities. Discrepancies in crop production impacts between tropical and temperate regions increase with CO2 concentration levels. Embedding CO2 fertilisation more than offsets these adverse effects by determining a net increase in crop production and a reduction in irrigation water requirements at a regional level. The resulting water savings potential, even in the lower concentrations scenario (RCP2.6), warrant more research with the aim of reducing the different classes of uncertainty regarding the effects of CO2 fertilisation.