COP 22 starts in Marrakech
The 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 22) on climate change started in Marrakesh, Morocco on Monday, November 7, with the election of the COP22 President, Mr Salaheddine Mezouar, Morocco’s Foreign Minister.
The event being organised by the United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is expected to end on November 18.
The COP 22 will engage key players in climate action especially the universities and research centres.
High on the agenda for the two- week conference includes the adoption of the rules of procedure, agenda, election of officers, admission of organisations as observers, organisation of work, including the sessions of the subsidiary bodies, dates and venues of future sessions.
Others are the adoption of the report on credentials, reports of the subsidiary bodies, report of the subsidiary body for Scientific and Technological advice, report of the subsidiary body for implementation, report of the ad hoc and working group on the Paris Agreement.
The rest are preparations for the entry into force of the Paris Agreement and the first session of the COP serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris agreement.
With 197 Parties, the UNFCCC has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement.
The main aim of the Paris Agreement is to keep a global average temperature rise of the century well below two degrees Celsius and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The UNFCCC is also the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
The ultimate objective of all agreements under the UNFCCC is to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system, in a time frame which allows ecosystems to adapt naturally and enables sustainable development.
Source: GNA