This Guide is brought to you as part of Going Green and
Giki Zero’s Guide to COP27.

Guide to COP27 Goal 2:
Delivering on adaptation. Enhance resilience and assist the most vulnerable communities

Section 1 – What does this mean?

Adaptation means helping people protect themselves from the devastation of climate change. In tandem, we need to protect nature and natural environments with one million animals and plants facing extinction out of a total of eight million species known to exist.

In 2022, records have been broken for droughts, heat waves, and wildfires highlighting that people need help today with the climate crisis. One of the successes of COP26 was the creation of a work programme for adaptation, but progress has been slow. This is because the impacts of climate change are accelerating, the correct response is very local, there is no one size fits all, and the most affected have the least resources to fund any programme.

Contents

Section 1 – What does this mean?

Section 2 – What this means for you

Section 3 – Avoid Palm oil

Section 2 – What this means for you

Knowing what you can do as an individual to help communities be more resilient can seem very remote until it directly impacts our homes and lives.

However, many of the small choices we make can collectively have a huge impact on nature and local resilience, both positive and negative. This is the food we eat and the stuff we buy. As an example, one thing we can do is avoid high-risk ingredients we eat that can cause deforestation.

Section 3 – Avoid Palm oil

The production of many commodities is transforming regions and countries and making communities and the natural environment less resilient as it does so.

Palm oil is one example, and palm oil production in Indonesia has led to the felling of rainforests, home to orangutans, rhinoceros, tigers, and thousands of other species, threatening many with extinction. About 12 million hectares of forest on Sumatra have been cleared in the past 22 years, a loss of nearly 50%.

This is due to significant global demand for palm oil, which is a vegetable oil that is highly efficient, cheap, and very versatile. It is grown in tropical areas, and swathes of rainforest felled to produce it, often through fires, which cause pollution to surrounding areas. Palm oil can be grown sustainably, but much of it is not. Unsustainable palm oil leads to deforestation and accelerates climate change.

Your palm oil checklist

Some people try to avoid palm oil completely. Others try to avoid unsustainable palm oil.

You can do this by:

  • Look at the ingredients list for the products in your cupboards. Start with processed snacks first. Unprocessed food is much less likely to contain palm oil. In foods, it is a requirement in Europe to list palm oil if it is an ingredient.
  • Look at the ingredients list for products in your bathroom. Start with shampoos and shower gels. Look for palm and sodium laureth sulphate (and similar variants).
  • Research products you’re going to switch.

Changing some of our regular habits and encouraging people we know to do the same, can play a role in helping to protect nature and bringing pressure to bear on companies who are loath to change.

Sign up to our newsletter for guides, articles, updates and events. Let’s stay connected 💚

Join the community

Thank you to our partner Giki for their contribution to this guide to COP27 Goal 2.