It is a conference of great people, with great problems on the table. Official figures show that more than 120 world leaders are expected at COP 27, which runs until the end of this week in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron, newcomers Rishi Sunak and Olaf Scholz, and Prime Minister António Costa are some of the political leaders who expressed concern about the future of the planet.
But the diversity of COP 27 is also made up of ordinary people who give shape and life to a debate that, due to the decisions that may arise, will touch the daily lives of millions and millions of people around the world. Going to Egypt and being at the center of the world debate is not in the hands of anyone -and even less so of a young person-, but audacity and hard work can help. This is what happened to Catarina Semedo de Oliveira. The 20-year-old from Ílhavo already has some international experiences in organizations linked to environmental education, such as the Foundation for Environmental Education. The foundation launched a contest with the opportunity for two young people to experience the COP in Egypt. Catarina applied and ended up being one of the chosen ones.
With Émer, a young woman of the same age from Northern Ireland, he spent a week in contact with a debate that is attracting attention throughout the world. “I think I only realized where I was going closer to the date, when I had to go to the Egyptian embassy to get the visa and I had to deal with all the paperwork,” says Catarina. TSF🇧🇷
The young woman, who returned to Portugal this Sunday, already knew that it would be difficult for her to encounter the protests of activists who, in other years, marked the agenda of this summit with the seal of the UN. The repression is intense, and in recent days there have been reports of arrests. Amnesty International, for example, has already denounced the detention of some 1,600 people since the start of COP 27. The few moments of protest that Catarina observed occurred “in a controlled area, to which not everyone had access.”
Contact with the culture of Egypt was practically nil. In these two weeks of conference, according to the young woman, Sharm El-Sheikh became a veritable bubble. “The whole city is very prefabricated. It is a city in the middle of the desert, on the edge of the Red Sea, full of resorts, where tourists go with two main objectives: either to dive, or to enjoy a good sunrise or sunset. I don’t feel like we experienced the spirit of an Egyptian city, and that was precisely one of the criticisms I heard from many of the people who were participating in the COP,” she says.
Among the pavilions, projects and associations that shared their stories at the COP, Catarina does not hide the fact that there are reports that show why a debate on what to do to stop climate change is never just another debate. “I met a lady who lives in a remote part of the US that is known as the ‘Cancer Village.’ Due to the high radioactivity, hardly anyone in that village reaches the end of life without suffering some kind of of cancer or another health problem,” he recalls.
It is by hearing stories like this that Catarina’s desire to fight does not wane. “From the moment you put your face to these stories and realize that they are people like you, and that just because of where they were born, they tend to be exposed to these risks, your willingness to act and change things becomes partner. older”, confesses the young woman.
On an individual level, Catarina lives this will, but on a collective level she recognizes that hope in Sharm El-Sheikh has been diminishing with the passing of the days. “As the summit progressed, I feel like hope has faded. And there were many people who doubted the purpose of the Summit. If the idea was to think about new measures and financing to combat the climate crisis, why not wait until next year? when the economies are already more recovered from the impacts of the pandemic and the war?”, asks Catarina.
In the first week of COP 27, António Guterres warned that we are on a “highway to climate hell”. The UN Secretary General urged the world to “take the foot off the accelerator”. Are we really doing this? “I’d like to think so. But so far I feel like we haven’t done everything we can to shift our foot from accelerator to brake,” he replies. Until Friday, the world can still decide if and when to switch pedals.
Source: TSF
