The UN climate summit in Egypt delivered the long-awaited loss and damage fund, yet failed to address the core of the climate emergency
COP27 Watch, Marco Magrini
‘A small step towards climate justice.’ In just six words, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, summarised the final outcome of COP27. After the usual sleep deprivation and physical exhaustion, the world assembly on climate eventually agreed on a document that establishes a loss and damage fund, or the long-standing request of financing reconstruction in poor countries hit by the effects of climate change. It is a very small step, though. Neither is there a list of the ‘most vulnerable countries’ which are set to benefit from disaster relief, nor a tally of the countries which are due to contribute to the fund. Not to mention how much money is supposed to be raised.
Year after year, and again this time in Egypt, the annual conclave of climate diplomacy confirms that multilateralism – albeit a marvellous thing – is not too well-suited to confront an emergency. We may argue that the world is not considering climate warming an emergency. The rise in greenhouse-gases concentration is too invisible and the increase in temperature is too slow-moving, for people to get scared and react. Yet, scientists are predicting havoc if we cross impending tipping points. It is an emergency whose alarm bell has long gone off. The Conference of the Parties under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was explicitly established to address such a prospective calamity, exactly 30 years ago. It isn’t prospective anymore.
The trouble is that the small step forward, was accompanied by a step backwards. There is no significant progress on emission cuts in the approved text, apart from the repeating, hollow pledge to ‘stay below 1.5°C.’ It is hollow because there is no explicit commitment to ‘phase down all fossil fuels,’ as many were requesting. There is the same ‘phase-down of unabated coal power’ as in Glasgow, where the word ‘unabated’ maintains a loophole for carbon capture and storage projects, an old trick to continue burning coal. Besides, the provision to boost ‘low-emissions energy’ could imply natural gas, which is less carbon-intensive than coal but still a fossil fuel. As weird as it may sound, during the conference host country Egypt has struck a few gas contracts.
So, in World Cup parlance, we could say that fossil fuels beat climate science 3-1. The army of oil, gas and coal lobbyists who descended on Sharm El Sheikh, more than 600 people strong, accomplished their mission. It was an easy mission though, since all fossil-fuel nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela or Russia, are playing in the same team. Moreover, they compete on the multilateral United Nations playground, where their assent is mandatory. How can we expect an oil state, often under authoritarian rule, to underwrite its own economic demise?
During the Egyptian summit there were many calls for reform. A reform of the World Bank and of the entire Bretton Woods financial system, as suggested by Barbados’ PM Mia Mottley, gained some traction. A reform of the 30-year-old division of the world that was designed with the birth of UNFCCC is long overdue: in 1992, for example, China was indeed a developing country. Now it is the worst carbon polluter in the world (albeit not on a per capita basis). It is time for China and many oil-rich States to enter the ranks of countries considered responsible for the climate crisis and, for instance, contribute to the new loss and damage fund.
The whys and hows of the fund representing ‘a small step towards climate justice’ are to be ironed out next year at COP28, which will be held in the United Arab Emirates. Yes, the next conference will convene straight into the lion’s den.
The bottom line? The 1.5°C goal is practically gone. ‘The world remains on track for 2.7°C,’ Sir David King, former UK chief scientific adviser, commented. ‘By any measure, that represents a bleak future for humanity.’
COP27 final day: Climate talks enter extra time, outcome is in the balance
18 November 2022
After another all-nighter of consultations, every result is possible: a relative success, a debatable agreement or an outright failure
COP 27 Watch, Marco Magrini
‘I remain committed to bring this conference to a close tomorrow in an orderly manner, with the adoption of a series of consensus decisions that will be comprehensive, ambitious, and balanced,’ says Egyptian minister Sameh Shoukry, the president of COP27, conceding that the UN Conference was crucially unable to meet its deadline today.
It would not be a big problem, as long as the UN could truly produce a ‘comprehensive, ambitious and balanced’ outcome. Yet, at this stage, every result is still possible: a relative success, a debatable agreement or an outright failure (no, a great success is not on the cards).
So far today, the only encouraging news came from the European Union. Climate policy chief Frans Timmermans backed the demand from developing countries to set up a ‘loss and damage’ fund, the major issue dominating this year’s conference. However, while the US and China are said to be opposing the idea, EU’s acceptance is conditioned to finding a ‘large donor base’ and having other countries agree to phasing out fossil fuels while submitting reports on their progress. The EU is in favour of funding loss and damage with a windfall tax on fossil fuel companies, too.
Along with the brawl over money, there is a wrangle over the wording of COP’s final document. ‘We have heard that Iran is rejecting text that was already approved last year, and Saudi Arabia is asking to talk about emissions and not about fossil fuels,’ explained Canadian activist Catherine Abreu, during the CAN press conference.
This is to say that the intricacies of diplomacy have taken over – maybe too late, as customary. The summit’s final outcome, mostly undecided as I write, will be resolved after another night of haggling behind closed doors. Or maybe after two all-nighters, as happened in Madrid at COP25.
We will return for a final comment, once the dust has settled.
COP27 Day 11: Without a shred of an agreement, the conference drags on…
15 November 2022
Loss and damage, emissions cuts and the $100bn fund still lack consensus. Yet, going into extra time is part of the COP’s tradition
COP27 Watch, Marco Magrini
The first time I attended a Conference of the Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was at COP11 in Montreal, 2005. As a newbie, I was first astonished and later appalled at witnessing a fortnight of negotiations slipping away without any minimal, sensible progress. Weren’t all these people from around the world repeating that climate change is an existential risk? Then, why they were so patently unable to agree on the first few steps along a common path?
Newbies at COP27 in Egypt, now with time running out, may be having the same impression. Delegations from 194 countries had a whole year, after COP26 in Glasgow, to prepare for this additional fortnight of negotiations, which were supposed to improve and implement pledges already taken in the past. Then, move forward and find a way to solve the ‘loss and damage’ conundrum – how to repay for climate-related damages in poor countries that bear no carbon polluting responsibilities.
Yet, 24 hours before the formal deadline, the circulating text is being considered – depending on who you talk to – ’underwhelming’, ‘a joke’, ’a betrayal,’ up to ‘a death sentence.’
What COP insiders know well, is that having the conference entering into extra time is just normal. It’s the opposite that would be surprising (albeit it happened a couple of times).
Desperately trying to prop up the spirits, today UN Secretary-General António Guterres came back to Sharm El Sheikh from Bali, where the G20 summit robotically reiterated that the temperature increase must be kept within the famous 1.5°C target. During a public statement, Guterres perfectly summarised the three standing points of contention – and with some good lines.
Firstly, he urged countries to ‘reach an ambitious and credible agreement on loss and damage, as the time for talking is over.’ Secondly, he asked them to fill the ‘huge emission gap’ since most nations didn’t raise their targets as expected. ‘The 1.5°C target is not simply about keeping the goal alive; it’s about keeping people alive.’ He then quipped that ‘fossil fuel expansion is hijacking humanity’ and that ‘renewables are the exit ramp from the climate hell highway.’ Thirdly, he called on the delivery of the $100 billion a year that was promised to developing nations from 2020, but never fully appeared.
Rumour has it that the United States are opposing the establishment of a loss and damage fund, a position considered unacceptable by the Group of 77, the UN coalition that brings together not 77, but 134 developing countries. The US have the financial resources and their climate envoy, John Kerry, is well aware of the principles of climate justice – America has a much much bigger climate responsibility than, say, Botswana or Bangladesh. So, why oppose a loss and damage fund? We don’t know. Yet, the breaking news that the House of Congress has now a Republican majority usually unwilling to approve climate laws and treaties, may be playing a role.
Guterres lamented that ‘there is clearly a breakdown in trust between north and south, and between developed and emerging economies.’ But there’s something more. Under the UN rules, any document approved in Sharm El Sheikh has to be approved unanimously. It must be voted for by Burkina Faso and China; by a politically divided US and an autarchical Russia; by a climate-conscious country such as Denmark and by a kingdom literally running on oil such as Saudi Arabia.
If more of the COPs’ traditions are to be respected, negotiations will go deep into the night. Tomorrow delegates, hardly capable of meeting the deadline, will look like zombies. And the game will enter into extra time, whose duration is always uncertain. A few COPs ended on Sunday.
COP27 Day 10: Lula the saviour vows to defend the Amazon
14 November 2022
While Brazil’s president-elect is cheered at the conference, there is still no sign of an agreement
COP27 watch, marco magrini
Lula the saviour. Brazil’s president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva landed at COP27 being greeted by a chanting and festive crowd of climate activists – something you don’t see often at these conferences. The reason is easy to understand. The resurrected Brazilian politician is due to perform a massive U-turn in the way the Amazon rainforest, a literal treasure of the world, is going to be treated.
Without ever mentioning the name of his rival Jair Bolsonaro, who will still be Brazil’s president for another six weeks, Lula stressed that between 2004 and 2012 (i.e. during his first two mandates) his country ‘reduced deforestation by 83 per cent, while the farming sector’s GDP grew by 75 per cent.’ On the contrary, he lamented, in the last few years the deforestation rate in the Amazon spiked by 75 per cent. ’In 2011 only, 13,000 square kilometres were lost.’ It must be noted that, according to the IPCC, the Amazon is on the edge of a ‘tipping point.’ In the face of continued deforestation, the rainforest could eventually turn into an arid savannah.
All throughout his speech at the conference, Lula kept on collecting resounding rounds of applause. He announced a cooperation with Congo and Indonesia, the most forested countries on the planet. He revealed that Germany and Norway are about to restart the Amazon fund which was suspended under Bolsonaro’s policies. He asked for Brazil to be the host of COP30 in 2025. ‘It should be in the Amazon region,’ he remarked. Notably, he also appeased the business community, by saying that ‘Brazilian agri-business will be a strategic ally in our government looking for regenerative and sustainable agriculture. We have 30 million hectares of degraded lands. We don’t need to deforest one square metre to be one of the largest food producers in the world.’
Needless to say, the consummate left-wing politician used the COP27 podium to send out his messages – such as peace, food security and UN reform. ‘The UN is directed by the same geopolitical rationale of WW2. The world has changed since 1945. There’s no explanation why the winners of WW2 should be in charge and the directors of the UN security council,’ explicitly asking for an end to veto power. He then concluded by recounting he was in Copenhagen at COP15, in 2009, when rich countries pledged $100 billion to developing nations by 2020. ‘Today, I also came here to ask that promise to be fully kept.’ Cheers and chants came again from the audience.
The last time a politician was hailed with such ardour at a climate conference, was in 2009, when star-president Barack Obama arrived in Copenhagen to completely reverse George W. Bush’s climate policies. The summit in Denmark was a global diplomatic failure yet the Paris Agreement was then reached, under Obama, six years later. To put this into perspective: a few years later, America’s climate policies were reversed again. And again.
Generally, politicians are not very popular with climate activists and scientists at these conferences, including the one underway in Egypt. They are considered a diplomatic circus, where there is much ado about nothing.
Technically, two days are left, draft texts are circulating, yet there is no sign of an agreement between the usual global north and global south on the crucial loss and damage issue. The Alliance of Small Island States, a negotiating bloc of vulnerable nations, and CAN International, a federation of environmental NGOs, have publicly expressed their deep concern. It is extremely unlikely the conference will meet its official deadline on Friday. But the stopwatch is now ticking.
COP27 Day 9 – The trouble with climate disinformation
13 November 2022
The climate crisis is scientifically indisputable, yet many people still consider it a hoax. Traditional and social media, plus an army of lobbyists, all play a role in the information war
COP27 Watch, Marco Magrini
Many people around the world still consider climate change a ‘hoax.’ No wonder there’s too little public pressure on national leaders to take faster and bolder actions. ‘While emissions continue to rise humanity faces climate catastrophe, yet vested economic and political interests continue to organise and finance climate misinformation and disinformation to hold back action,’ reads an open letter from two climate watchdogs that was presented today at COP27 and that the general public are asked to support. ‘We cannot beat climate change without tackling disinformation.’
The letter, has already been signed by hundreds of individuals, companies and organisations. It came after the release of a survey promoted by the same Climate Action Against Disinformation and the Conscious Advertising Network, and compiled by polling respondents to YouGov panels. Scientists have been saying for a long time that the climate crisis is indisputable. Yet, at least 20 per cent of people in the handful of surveyed countries (Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, the UK and the United States) believe false claims about it. In the US, 46 per cent of respondents said climate change is not caused by human activity and 23 per cent said it is an invention made up by the World Economic Forum!.
As expected, Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, Instagram and other social networks are the epicentre of disinformation. Here’s why the open letter asks their CEOs to accept a universal definition of climate disinformation and, among other things, to refuse to publish adverts that do disinform. Curiously enough, there are differences among countries: Twitter users in Australia and Brazil are much more deceived by falsity than users in the UK. Anyway, it is not just the fault of the digital realm – the traditional press can misinform, as well. ‘While 29 per cent of Britons believe that a significant number of scientists disagree on the cause of climate, nearly half (48 per cent) of regular Daily Mail consumers do,’ the survey reads.
As strange as it may seem, it turns out that African people are the least concerned with the climate crisis. Today at COP27, BBC Africa held a side event under the title ‘Fact-based storytelling versus misinformation.’ Reporting on online readers’ engagement during last year’s COP26 in Glasgow, Marsha Lulu Ochieng ‘growth editor’ at BBC Africa, recounted her astonishment at a deluge of sceptical and disdaining comments. ‘The globalist media is just pushing fear,’ was a typical user comment. ‘On the positive side – she added – one of our videos, telling the story of real people severely affected by climate change, counted more than 400,000 views.’ Evidently, she said to the many reporters attending: ‘Highlighting the human angle is more appealing and convincing to our public.’
As we talk about misinformation it is compelling to note that there are 636 registered fossil-fuel industry lobbyists at the conference in Sharm El Sheikh. What are they there for?
The bad news is that the negotiations, now just three days away from the formal deadline, are still stumbling, mostly on what form a finance mechanism for ’loss and damage’ should have and how it should operate. The good news is that the US and China have resumed their cooperation on climate, after Beijing left in protest because of Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Tomorrow, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will speak. He will likely vow to protect the Amazon after five insane years of deforestation as he becomes president in January. So far, his election was the best climate-related news of the year.
COP27 Day 8 – Welcome baby girl, or boy no. 8,000,000,000
12 November 2022
According to the UN, on 15 November humankind will reach a demographic milestone. Yet, this conference doesn’t seem to be welcoming the newborn eight billionths with open arms
COP27 Watch, Marco Magrini
Today, at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, it was Water Day: a focus on the resource all life depends on, now that oceans and freshwater reserves are at risk for the climate crisis. Tomorrow though, on the United Nations’ calendar it will be the ’Day of Eight Billion’. According to demographic projections on 15 November, a newborn boy or girl will take humankind to a new population milestone.
‘This unprecedented growth’, the United Nations says, ‘is due to the gradual increase in human lifespan owing to improvements in public health, nutrition, personal hygiene and medicine.’ Plus, it adds, high levels of fertility in some countries.
Of course, it could be easy to blame overpopulation for the climate crisis. There were three billion human beings swarming the planet in 1960. Now they are eight billion and they are consuming the planet’s resources at a pace never seen before. Yet, they do so at very different rates. The Global North is responsible for 92 per cent of excess CO2 or equivalents emissions; the Global South for the remaining eight per cent.
Of course, this multitude of people is behaving recklessly, for example decimating rainforests to convert them to crops that feed much bigger multitudes of cows, pigs and chickens. It is estimated that 14.5 per cent of anthropogenic greenhouse emissions come from the swelling global livestock industry. It is a bigger share than the transport section, yet there is no mention of it in any climate agreement, let alone a ‘Meat Day’ during a climate summit. And that is just one example.
The UN reckons that, ‘while it took the global population 12 years to grow from seven to eight billion, it will take approximately 15 years – until 2037– for it to reach nine billion.’ In other words, population growth is slowing. A few decades ago demographers were projecting up to 16 billion people on Earth by 2100. Overpopulation is not the problem it used to be. It is a different one.
On one hand, the world has to drastically cut emissions by 2030 – as science recommends and as countries have pledged – while feeding and powering a growing number of people. On the other hand, some economies are desperate for a burst of growth before the population bubble bursts and they are left supporting an ageing population. It is estimated that population will peak in 2064 and decline thereafter, some countries (starting with China) are worried about the economic impact of such a prospect. Can they get rich enough, quick enough to afford a shrinking workforce?
Anyway – our warmest welcome to the girl, or boy, number 8,000,000,000. You are destined to see a planet much different from that of your ancestors.
Today at COP27, aptly on Water Day, there were rumours of some parties trying to water down climate goals: disavowing Glasgow, they are said to be pushing for the old temperature goal of ‘well below 2°C.’ It would be serious backtracking – and an admission that our baby newcomer will live in a far, far hotter world!
COP27 day 6 – Biden admits ‘life on Earth at risk’
11 November 2022
The President stole the limelight and vowed to fight the climate crisis. Yet, the Conference in Sharm El Sheikh is still lagging behind
COP27 Watch, Marco Magrini
‘I can assure you that the United States will meet our emission goals by 2030’ – big applause from the audience. Joe Biden, who didn’t attend COP27’s opening session because of the midterm elections at home, landed today at the UN climate conference in Egypt and stole the limelight: people queued for more than two hours to attend his speech. Technically, it was a speech from the top historical carbon-polluting country in the world.
‘The climate crisis is about human security, economic security, environmental security, national security, and the very life of the planet,’ Biden stated, something his predecessor would have never said. He touted his Inflation Reduction Act, which includes $370 billion in clean energy incentives. He promised to cut down on methane emissions from fossil fuel operations by 87 per cent in the next eight years (through regulation, not legislation). And he announced some new initiatives aimed at Africa, including a $500 million co-financing to help host country Egypt decarbonise its electricity production.
Commentators rightfully say that Biden was relieved by the Democrats’ good performance in the recent elections. Yet, the electoral game is still in play. If Republicans will seize control of one or both Chambers, the likelihood of any meaningful climate action – including the large financial support that developing countries need to mitigate and adapt to climate change – appear dim. Not to mention what may happen if the White House is won by a Republican candidate in 2024. In a nutshell, nobody can guarantee anybody that the United States will meet its climate goals and fulfil its climate responsibilities.
Today at COP27 was also ’Decarbonisation Day’. There were a lot of talks, announced initiatives and customary pledges about reducing the carbon impact of the global economy. A ’masterplan’ to accelerate the decarbonisation of five major sectors (transport, power, steel, hydrogen, and agriculture) was presented by the COP27 presidency.
The first week in Sharm El Sheikh is almost over and, as always, there’s no hint of any sound agreement to be reached at the end.
COP27 Day 5: A ‘dash for gas’ in the rainforest
10 November 2022
Countries and companies are scrambling for methane reserves in Africa. The Congo Basin is suddenly at risk, as the world’s climate ambitions falter
COP27 Watch, Marco Magrini
They call it the ‘dash for gas’ – or the scramble to fill the energy gap left by Russia with undiscovered gas reserves. Thanks to liquified natural gas technology, or LNG, methane doesn’t need a pipeline to reach European consumers. It may come from anywhere, including from the belly of Africa.
Take the vast Democratic Republic of Congo. Last July, its government launched a bidding round for 30 exploration permits, many in the forests and wetlands of the Congo Basin. The Republic defends its right to raise its living standards. And Western fossil fuel companies are happy to help out.
‘The area of land allocated to oil and gas production on the African continent is set to quadruple,’ finds a report published today by Rainforest Foundation UK and Earth Insight, titled ‘Congo in the Crosshairs.’ The Congo Basin is shared by six nations and its rainforest is relatively pristine, especially when compared to the Amazon. However, ’fossil fuel exploration blocks overlap 30 per cent of dense tropical forests in Africa, of which 90 per cent are in the Congo Basin,’ an area nearly twice the size of Germany (64 million hectares).
Not only the second biggest rainforest in the world is at risk, but more than 35 million people from 150 different ethnic groups live there. And there’s much more. The Dash for Gas ‘is an overreach,’ argued today at COP27 by Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Insight and a well-known climatologist.
LNG investments are set to increase enormously. By 2030, the capacity for liquified natural gas will be five times the 2021 Russian gas exports to Europe. ‘The resulting oversupply will produce excess emissions of 2 billion tons of CO2 a year by 2030,’ Hare remarked. Since improvements in government policies in the last 12 months imply a reduction in emissions of 0.5 billion tons, emissions from new gas fields will be four times bigger. ‘This is happening at such a scale that is undermining any effort to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.’
In reality, the whole scenario is even worse. Hare’s Climate Analytics contributes to The Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific analysis that tracks national climate actions, which today unveiled its latest report.
Nothing has changed since COP26 in Glasgow and this is not good news. By the end of the century, with the current policies pathway, the planet’s mean temperature increase is still projected to reach a devastating 2.7°C. If all national targets in emission reduction are taken into account, it would still bring a 2.4°C increase. Finally, in case all of the long-term net-zero promises are kept by 2050 (when all the present country leaders will be dead or deposed), it would still reach 1.8˚C.
‘The energy crisis has taken over the climate crisis,’ concluded Hare. It may turn out to be a perfect COP-27 summary.
CO27 Day 4: The north-south financial divide
The climate bill is going to be high. There are growing calls for reforming the World Bank and the IMF and for a tax levy on Big Oil
COP27 Watch, Marco Magrini
The most heated topic at COP27, how to finance mitigation, adaptation and damages in the Global South, has touched a red-hot button. Is it time to reform Bretton Woods – the post-World War II monetary order that gave birth to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank?
The idea comes from Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley. Her proposal on financial reform, already dubbed the Bridgetown Initiative after Barbados’s capital, includes plans to finance struggling countries, expand multilateral lending by up to $1 trillion, and make it easier for developing countries to access loans.
The UN Climate Summit in Sharm El Sheikh is not the place for such a complicated (and delicate) endeavour, yet something is happening. To begin with, France, a G7 country, expressed its support for the Bridgetown agenda. ’Africa is disproportionately affected by climatic events,’ admitted Kristalina Georgieva, IMF’s managing director, while speaking at the conference.
For example, the idea to use SDRs, the ‘special drawing rights’ usually reserved to countries in case of extreme need, a special asset run by the Monetary Fund, shouldn’t be ruled out. After all, the United States got $71 billion worth of SDRs in order to cope with the pandemic. Why not use them for financing reconstruction after a climate disaster?
‘Climate is a defining challenge facing development. It signals another important evolution for international financial institutions and the World Bank Group,’ the World Bank president, David Malpass, a Trump nominee and a public climate change ‘denier’ cryptically said.
In the meanwhile, a few governments (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Austria, New Zealand and Scotland) pledged a collective $70 million to fund ‘loss and damage,’ or the long-standing request for polluting countries to pay for the climate havoc in countries with no polluting responsibilities. That money is not enough, but it is a nice start. It came among a flurry of other partnerships and initiatives launched in Egypt today, such as the Climate Trace, a system to monitor greenhouse-gases emissions from satellites, promoted by Al Gore.
Rich nations should pay. And the international financial system may well be reformed. But there are growing calls – starting with the UN Secretary-General Guterres – to make the true polluters pay, namely the oil, gas and coal companies.
‘The Big Five oil companies (Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and Total), who have reported over $170 billion in profit in 2022 alone, are collectively responsible for 11.38 per cent of global historic CO2 emission,’ reads a report from Global Justice Now, a UK NGO, which was presented today at the conference. ‘Collectively, they could be responsible for $32.5-$64.9 billion a year of loss and damage to the Global South.’ Well, there’s room for a tax levy.
COP27 Day 3: Politicians that sound like activists
8 November 2022
Charismatic heads of state, well-prepared speeches…But will this amount to anything?
COP27 Watch, Marco Magrini
Listening to a flood of well-prepared speeches by the world’s heads of state and prime ministers – who walked down the conference’s catwalk for the second and final day – you would assume the climate crisis is going to be mended. In general, industrialised countries commit to lowering their emissions, developing nations are willing to adopt clean energy sources and even fossil-fuel-rich States pledge to go green.
Of course, everyone has his own point of view. ‘The IPCC has warned us: in eight years the climate crisis may reach a point of no return,’ said Venezuelan president Nicolàs Maduro, without ever mentioning his country’s oil business. ‘But let me be clear: capitalism is the cause of such destruction.’
The most vulnerable nations criticise the slow pace of global climate action. ‘We are running out of time. Nature is losing its patience with us. As nature lashes out, our citizens are also losing their patience,’ said Lazarus Chakwera, president of Malawi. At the same time, every single developing-country leader is (rightfully) asking for money. ‘We need innovative financial mechanisms. These mechanisms should contain green bonds and large-scale financial guarantees,’ stated Burundi’s president, Évariste Ndayishimiye.
In other words, the screenplay is always the same. ‘The UK, which was the first major economy in the world to legislate for net zero – said prime minister Rishi Sunak, who didn’t originally plan to attend the conference in Sharm El Sheikh – will fulfil our ambitious commitment to reduce emissions by at least 68 per cent by 2030.’ Italy’s new right-wing PM Giorgia Meloni, whose party lacks an environmental track record, said that ‘we need action… we owe it to our future generations.’ And Polish president Andrzej Duda asserted that ‘Poland is an example of a country following the path of sustainable development, significantly reducing emissions.’ Well, kind of.
Now that the politicians’ pageant is over, diplomats and negotiators from more than 190 countries have a few remaining days to reach several agreements on different issues, mostly involving finance. However, tonight almost everyone in Sharm will be bracing for the outcome of America’s midterm elections.
John Kerry, the ’climate envoy’ from Washington, ruled out an impact on the Biden administration’s clean energy initiatives, in case of a Republican win. He hopes that Congress would vote to finance a loss and damage fund for vulnerable countries but ‘even if they don’t, folks, president Biden is more determined than ever to continue what we are doing.’ Hardly so.
The trouble is that, without Democratic control of the House and the Senate, the United States can hardly keep its promises and commitments. It already happened in the past, when the Senate refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol signed by then vice-president Al Gore, or when George W Bush completely reversed the US’s climate diplomacy.
It is a matter of reputation. If countries cannot trust the word of the world’s biggest historical carbon polluter – flip-flopping every few years – how can they trust the entire negotiating effort?
Whatever the US election results will be, they are due to have an impact on the climate negotiating table.
Day Two of COP27
7 November 2022
UN Secretary-General warns of a climate highway to hell
COP27 watch, Marco Magrini
‘We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator’, is a pretty strong statement. Not only because it came from UN Secretary-General António Guterres during the opening ceremony of COP27, but because it is true.
After all, the World Meteorological Organisation just confirmed that the last eight years were the hottest ever recorded. And CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is now at 416 ppm (parts per million), while it was at 360 ppm in 1995 when the first UN climate summit was held. True and simple.
With that spirit, as every unheeded UN chief, Guterres asked the assembly in Egypt – which included several Heads of State – to forge ‘a historic Pact between developed and emerging economies, a Climate Solidarity Pact.’ He so urged wealthier countries to help emerging economies speed their own renewable energy transition; he counted on China and the US, the world’s biggest economies, to cooperate and – very interestingly – he suggested ‘all governments to tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies.’
It is interesting because, in just the last nine months of higher energy prices, the seven biggest private oil drillers earned a staggering $173 billion. Of course, we are not talking about national oil companies, since Saudi Arabia or Venezuela would never tax themselves. But just 10 per cent of those private earnings could pay for much of the adaptation and mitigation investments in poorer and climate-vulnerable countries. Yesterday, such an idea was explicitly proposed by Mia Amor Mottley, the combative and eloquent prime minister of Barbados, during her speech at the opening ceremony.
Regrettably, the world is heading in the opposite direction. The OECD and the IEA revealed that overall government support for fossil fuels almost doubled in 2021 to $697 billion. In other words, while rich nations pledge to reduce emissions and baulk at dispensing money to poorer nations, they profusely subsidise the fossil fuel industry without any shade of shame. Arguably, there are two main explanations: populism (low fuel prices keep people quiet) and lobbying (Big Oil & Gas is the powerhouse).
The big news in Sharm El Sheikh is that the Loss and Damage issue will be formally included, for the first time, in the discussions. In other words, there will be talks about the Global North paying for climate-related disasters in the Global South. If developed countries are more hesitant about that, imagine Big Oil & Gas. ‘At COP27 Big Oil delegations are even bigger than in Glasgow,’ lamented Tasneem Essop, executive director of CAN, a federation of more than 800 NGOs worldwide. ‘The fossil fuel industry is emboldened by the prospect of new markets.’
She was referring to what is now colloquially called ‘the dash to Africa’ – or the fresh idea to exploit the continent’s gas reserves in order to fill the gap left by Russia. Even Al Gore, during his speech today, mentioned it. In a nutshell, it is contrary to what should happen during the celebrated ‘African COP.’ Mohamed Adow, Director of PowerShift Africa, criticised the prospect of extracting natural gas reserves in Africa, only to meet Western energy demands. ‘This is a new type of colonialism,’ he said during CAN’s press conference today. Sadly, since energy-deprived Europe is behind such plans, that word is not an overstatement. ‘Gas deals involving Africa’s resources cannot be determined in Berlin,’ he quipped.
It is a far cry from reaching any pact, let alone about ‘climate solidarity’.
Preview of COP27 – 5 Nov
Our regular climate commentator will be keeping us up-to-date with regular reports on COP27 starting in Sharm El Shiekh, Egypt. Here is his first dispatch…
COP27 watch by Marco Magrini
For the twenty-seventh time, national leaders and diplomats from around the world will convene in Egypt for two weeks, to try to solve the biggest trouble mankind has ever faced. Can the umpteenth United Nations Conference on Climate Change, better known as COP27, live up to such a lofty goal?
This time no ‘historic’ treaty is due to be signed, like the one that was inked in Glasgow last year, after much tension and drama. In their commitment, the 193 countries attending the Scottish pow-wow pledged to update their emission-cutting ambitions by September this year. Yet, only 23 of them have done so. It is not what you would do, in case of an emergency.
The effort of pruning greenhouse-gases emissions worldwide (better known as ‘mitigation’ in COP parlance), is aimed at keeping the increase in the planetary mean temperature below 1.5°C, considered by climatologists a damning dangerous threshold. In 2015, the Paris Agreement solemnly promised to ‘hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.’ It is not happening.
The Economist’s latest cover page shouts what scientists have been whispering for months: ‘Say goodbye to 1.5°C.’ If we consider that we are already close to a 1.2°C warming and that carbon dioxide and methane emissions have been keeping on growing, it is a predictable outcome. Still, no sense of emergency is felt, apart from the usual Cassandras, such as distraught climatologists or the United Nations Secretary-General. ‘We have a choice – collective action or collective suicide. It is in our hands,’ António Guterres said bluntly a few months ago.
However, rather than about mitigation COP27 will be much more about confronting the effects of the ongoing and prospective warming, or ‘adaptation.’ In other words, it will all be about money.
Apart from the infamous fund which was established in Copenhagen and never managed to deliver $100 billion a year to developing countries, the so-called ‘Loss and Damage’ will be the hottest topic in Sharm El Sheikh. It is the central tenet of climate justice: long-time polluting countries should compensate for the destruction brought by warming-supercharged events in countries that bear no responsibilities. Egypt, the host nation with an awful track record on human rights, will certainly push this issue forward, as all developing countries will do.
We can then expect unpleasant friction between poor nations, who have the right to complain, and rich nations now facing resurgent inflation and a looming recession. If we add the geopolitical uneasiness provoked by the Russian aggression in Ukraine, with its ripple effects on energy markets, monthly bills and political stability, and the fact that the imminent midterm elections in the US may end up in a Republican majority willing to restrain Joe Biden’s green initiatives, COP27 doesn’t appear to be starting off on the right foot.
But don’t be afraid. Some steps forward will be made – no country, not even Egypt, nor China would happily endorse a total fiasco. Albeit their number and length are hard to predict. But I fear they won’t be enough.
This climate crisis is the biggest trouble we have ever faced. Yet, the corresponding sense of emergency is eerily missing.
