“There can be no effective climate policy without peace,” he said in a video speech at the Cop27 UN climate summit in Egypt on Tuesday. “The Russian war has caused an energy crisis that has forced dozens of countries to restart coal-fired power generation to lower energy prices for their people, to lower prices that are shockingly rising due to deliberate Russian actions.” Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers, has used his country’s dominance of Europe’s natural gas supplies to step up pressure on EU and other countries for war. Zelensky did not name individual countries, but told the summit: “There are still many for whom climate change is just rhetoric or marketing, not real action. They are the ones who prevent the implementation of the climate goals. they are the ones who in their offices mock those who are fighting to save life on the planet… They are the ones who start wars of aggression when the planet can’t take a single shot, because it needs global common action.” Putin snubbed the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, where more than 100 heads of state and government, as well as 45,000 other delegates, gathered over the past two days to discuss the climate crisis. Each leader had a short speech at the conference, but Zelensky received one of the best responses. He made it clear that the war in Ukraine was a problem not only for his country but for the world at large, and drew direct parallels with the climate crisis. “[The war] has brought an acute food crisis to the world, which has hit worst those suffering from the existing manifestations of climate change,” he said. He referred to the impact on Ukraine’s forests, of which a log embedded in shrapnel has been displayed at the Cop27 Ukraine stand. “The Russian war destroyed 5 million hectares of forests in Ukraine in less than six months,” he said. At Cop27, poor countries are calling for more financial aid from the rich world to help them deal with the effects of extreme weather, and their negotiators will spend the rest of the fortnight trying to reach a deal that would allow such funds. Barbados PM welcomes addition of ‘loss and damage’ to climate agenda at Cop27 – video They want more funding for what is known in UN talks as loss and damage in order to save and rebuild their economies, as well as social and physical infrastructure, after climate-related disasters. The devastating floods in Pakistan this summer have been held up as an example of the loss and damage already being suffered by developing countries as a result of climate collapse. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told the summit vividly what his country had experienced: “The devastating floods affected 33 million people, more than half of them women and children, and [covered] the size of three European countries. “Despite seven times the average extreme rainfall in the south, we struggled as raging floods washed away more than 8,000 kilometers of metalled roads, destroyed more than 3,000 kilometers of railway track and washed away standing crops on 4 million hectares and devastated all four corners of Pakistan.” He said more than $30bn (£26bn) in damage had been caused, yet Pakistan – like other developing countries – had done little to cause the climate crisis, having a small carbon footprint. “We fell victim to something we had nothing to do with, and of course it was a man-made disaster,” he said. The most important stories on the planet. Get all the week’s environmental news – the good, the bad and the must-haves Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. In addition to reconstruction, Pakistan has had to spend about $30 billion already on importing wheat, cooking oil and fuel. “Imagine on the one hand we have to take care of food security for the common man by spending billions of dollars and on the other hand we have to spend billions of dollars to protect the flood victims from further misery and hardship. How on earth can anyone expect us to take on this gigantic task alone?’ Harjeet Singh, senior adviser at the Climate Action Network, called out the US in particular: “The US has acted in bad faith for decades on loss and damage, but delays and deception have real-life consequences. We need to agree a funding facility on this Cop so we can work to make it operational by 2024 and the US needs to change from obstructionist to constructive.” John Kerry, the US president’s special climate envoy, told the conference that the crisis not only threatens infrastructure and the economy but “every aspect of our lives on a daily basis”. Elsewhere, the family of jailed British-Egyptian democracy activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who is on hunger strike, raised concerns that he may be force-fed in prison. It was about to be the third day he had been denied food and water, and his family demanded proof that he was still alive, but Egyptian officials did not provide any information on his health. Abd el-Fattah’s sister, Sanaa Seif, told a Cop27 press conference: “This has to end. It might end. There are three ways: have the British embassy visit him; put him on a plane out of Egypt today. otherwise he will die and be relieved of this nightmare,” he said. “Whatever happens, I feel like Alaa won – I just hope he doesn’t sacrifice himself for it. He’s in prison because he’s someone who believed the world could be a better place.”
