2022 was a very significant year when it came to climate change. While many measures were done to control climate change, the impact of the crisis worsened ? climate change started to demonstrate its full impact.

On November 27th, Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) was held in Egypt. Nations were able to finally agree on establishing a suite of funding arrangements, as well as a plan to compensate for economic damage to developing nations who suffer the most from both the climate change itself and the international agreements on reducing carbon emissions. Countries also set important deadlines to make significant changes on climate change until the next meeting, COP28.

However, these decisions did not decrease the carbon emission, continuing to worsen climate change. This year, there were constant reminders of the increasingly irreversible consequences that will occur if we permit the world to warm by 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Examples of such consequences include catastrophic flooding in Pakistan and China, record-breaking heat waves in the U.S. and Europe in summer and winter, severe drought in Africa, and ice melting at the poles.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine even led to reversing the measures taken to stop climate change and worsening the impact. European countries started to reopen coal plants as importing gas from Russia became unavailable, which made many recent climate-related policies obsolete. Also, the insecurity in food supply resulted in worsening the impact of climate change on less developed countries, causing millions to starve. 

Although there were many big steps done in terms of stopping climate change last year, it seems evident that more assertive measures must be done to protect us from ecological catastrophe.

장수혁 강남포스트 학생기자  webmaster@ignnews.kr

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