And this was the tone both before and throughout COP27, concrete actions were expected to be taken and real strides were expected to be made.
But, as we reflect on two weeks of debate and disharmony, of drafts and re-drafts, it is disheartening to see that the European Parliament was left having to content itself with “progress, and (the) hope for more”, rather than firm actions.
With over 44,000 people registered to attend, including more than 100 Heads of State and Governments, it was to be expected that at times there would be a level of disagreement between attendees. Even by these expected standards, COP27 was fraught with disagreement, summed up best by the first draft of the COP27 cover decision being poorly received by “pretty much everybody”, according to New Zealand’s climate minister.
It was also clear that there was misalignment between the goals of various states represented at COP27. Many, including India and the EU, had pushed for an absolute commitment to ‘phasing down’ (a phrase which was removed at the last minute from COP26 in November 2021) global fossil fuel usage.
Egypt, who held the Presidency for this year’s COP, has been pushing fossil gas as a “transition fuel” that is the “perfect solution” to the climate crisis. This is to be expected from a country with large reserves of natural gas that they wish to cash in on at a time of global energy scarcity, but it still put the presidency of the summit at odds with a coalition of more than 80 states.
As Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock put it, “it is more than frustrating to see overdue steps on mitigation and the phase-out of fossil energies being stonewalled by a number of large emitters and oil producers.”
It seems then that vested interests have yet again hindered the possibility for truly global reformation on the use of fossil fuels.
It is not the case though that there were no good outcomes from this most recent forum. Before COP27 started, we were told that this year would be dominated by questions on finance and by the inordinate strain placed on those countries most often suffering from the impacts of climate change.
So, the inclusion of ‘loss and damage’ as an agenda item was seen as a positive first step for the forum when it came to redressing the issue of the Global North vs Global South imbalance. And at the end of the forum, after a later intervention from the European Commission vice-president, a loss and damage fund was indeed agreed upon.
This is a significant first step on the road to a global solution to the devastating financial impact of climate disasters on the Global South. UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell hopes that the creation of this fund “moves us forward” as it ends decades-long deliberation around loss and damage funding.
However, the trust created has no attached commitments on funding levels, who should provide capital, or even who qualifies as ‘vulnerable’, so it remains to be seen how effective it will be moving forward.
As with COP26 before it, it seems that COP27 started off with good intentions but simply has not made the sort of progress that is required at this stage if we are to significantly mitigate the impact of the climate crisis.
With ‘action’ being the buzzword around Sharm el-Sheikh before the summit, it is fitting that perhaps the most striking speech of the entire two week period was delivered by Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, on the subject of political inaction:
“But the simple political will that is necessary, not just to come here and make promises, but to deliver on them and make a definable difference on the lives of the people who we have a responsibility to serve, seems still to be incapable of being produced.”
Until this will is found, it is evident that we will have a long way to go before meaningful, global change can be fostered.
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