The 2022 Conference of Parties on Climate Change, popularly known as COP 27, has begun on Sunday in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, with a call on everyone to work toward averting further climate crisis.

The UN Climate Change executive secretary, Simon Stiell, said COP27 has set out a new direction for a new era of implementation, where outcomes from the formal and informal processes truly begin to come together to drive greater climate progress.

Stiell urged governments to focus on three critical areas at COP27.

The first area, he said was a transformational shift to implementation of the Paris Agreement and putting negotiations into concrete actions.

The summit is coming up weeks after more than 600 lives were killed and millions of people rendered homeless in Nigeria due to flooding, which many experts blamed on the effects of climate change.

The Egyptian COP27 Presidency has set out an ambitious vision for the conference, the one that will put human needs at the heart of global efforts to address climate change.

Sameh Shoukry, Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs, said the presidency intended to focus the world’s attention on key elements that address some of the most fundamental needs of people everywhere, including water security, food security, health and energy security.