“Climate finance is influencing everything else“

Every day at the Nordic Pavilion we invite one of the party negotiators from the Nordic and Baltic countries to our stage. On 8 November Christoffer Nelson, Deputy head of the Swedish delegation to COP27, gave us a quick overview of this year’s negotiations.

- We have climate finance that is influencing everything else. And we have climate adaptation which is a very important issue for the African continent. And then we have the loss & damage issue which relates very much to adaptation and to finance. It’s basically finance, finance, finance, explained Christoffer Nelson about the key negotiation items for this year’s COP.

On the legacy from COP26 and how that is influencing the current negotiations he gave a quick run through of the Glasgow Climate Pact and how countries also agreed to update their national determined contributions (NDCs)  both this year as well as their long-term strategies.

-  So far only 29 parties out of 196 have actually updated their national determined contribution, so we are not there yet, he said. 

He is not keeping his hopes up for more ambitious target from parties, instead his focus is on the language of the agreements.

- I really hope that we will see the language lifted here in Sharm el Sheikh, he said. The Glasgow Climate Pact mentioned fossil fuels subsidies for the first time and it is this language, Christoffer Nelson is hoping to see advanced this year.

- I will be very satisfied if we have produced language where we talk about global prices on carbon and the phasing out of fossil fuels. And also a language that helps speed up the process of ending the ambition gap through a mitigation work programme that is ambitious enough to actually achieve that. I will be very happy if we could succeed with that, he said.

The daily briefings are everyday at 13.15 EET in the Nordic Pavilion.

Follow our stream from COP27 for more updates directly from the negotiations.