Assistant Minister pledges to offset COP27 flight emissions

Tuesday 08 November 2022

The Assistant Environment Minister has pledged to offset all her flight emissions when she travels to Egypt for the COP27 global climate-change summit today.

Deputy Hilary Jeune said she had signed up to two forest management programmes in Kenya and the Congo in order to cover her emissions while she is in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt for the 27th Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The four-day event has a daily theme centred on topics relating to climate change, but concerns have been raised about the environmental impact of delegates jetting in from across the globe.

"It is something that sits heavily with me and I understand that there is a lot of carbon emissions being emitted as we all jet off to Egypt. But I think diplomacy and multi-lateral diplomacy works far more when you are in a room together and I think we are in a delicate situation globally, we aren't as cohesive as we were in 2015 when the Paris agreement was signed and so I think it is important that world leaders do come together on this single issue of climate change," said Deputy Jeune.

"I've offset not only my flights to Egypt but also my general travel with things such as taxis and my food miles.

"It was important I offset more than just my flight and so we have bought offsets from an official source and they are towards two programmes – one in Kenya and one in the Congo and they are related to the management of forestry."

Pictured: The summit is being held in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt.

The island's approach to climate change is centred around the Carbon Neutral Roadmap, which was approved by the States earlier this year and has set a target to be carbon neutral by 2030 and net-zero by 2050.

However, the government is yet to roll out a number of the initiatives which were scheduled for this year.

Deputy Jeune said: "The roadmap was agreed in 2022 shortly before the purdah period and the election so unfortunately for the roadmap there has been this big gap with no political steer or [chance] to start implementing some of those things," she said.

"Since my appointment we have steamed ahead and we have got a number of things that'll be coming out at the end of this year and the start of next year which we will launch shortly.

"We will hopefully see some real progress by end of the first quarter next year. I am hoping to get a net zero network up and running by the end of this year. This will bring different communities together, whether that is businesses, schools, civil society or parishes to discuss how we can as a community fight against climate change," she added.