COP27 delivered a big win wrapped in epic failure.
After November’s climate summit talks ran into overtime, with water and air conditioning in Sharm el-Sheikh growing scarce, negotiators landed a victory: wealthy nations agreed to set up a loss and damage fund to help the world’s most vulnerable recover and rebuild from the worst climate disasters.
“We have struggled for 30 years on this path,” said Pakistan Climate Minister Sherry Rehman, who saw a third of her country devastated by flooding earlier in the year. “The establishment of a fund is not about dispensing charity. It is clearly a down payment on the longer investment in our joint futures.”
But the talks left some diplomats questioning the integrity of Egypt’s COP27 presidency, the Financial Times reported, with negotiating teams given insufficient time to review crucial decision text before it was adopted.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this: untransparent, unpredictable, and chaotic,” a delegate told the Times. “This is 3D chess played by tired, grumpy humans who just don’t want to be here,” added one observer.
The latest in the annual series of “chaotic, bloated carnivals” had Globe and Mail European Bureau Chief Eric Reguly convinced it’s time to shut the COPs down and replace them with something that works. None of the conferences has “ended with formal agreements to reduce fossil-fuel use,” he writes, when that’s "the only metric that matters as average global temperatures rise to dangerous levels.”
Reguly suggests replacing the COP with small, expert negotiating teams working year-round on specific, urgent issues like emission reductions, methane controls, or forest protection. Once they got something done, “a small summit devoid of human clutter could be used to push any deal over the finish line.”
Some of that “human clutter” has a purpose, ensuring that traditionally disenfranchised voices are heard and building international connections to advance real climate solutions. But whether that makes the COP a carnival, a trade show, or an essential forum for climate justice, not all the activity must co-located with the negotiations that are the COP’s raison d’être. Much of it could be extended to a far wider participant group in a hybrid forum. But that idea has been dismissed by anyone associated with the COP process who’s heard it.
While the success or failure of COPs often boils down to the substance of final pledges agreed to by negotiators, some academics suggest that failures like the 2009 Copenhagen COP have led to successes like the 2015 Paris Agreement. It’s important not to lose sight of this big picture view, write professors David Tindall, of the University of Berlin, Maria Brockhaus, of the University of Helsinki, Mark Stoddard, of Memorial University, and Marlene Kammerer, a senior researcher at the University of Bern.
The academics argue in The Conversation that these meetings may seem to have small impacts to start, but “may result in increasing returns over time”, making them “critical events” that can “shape the context for social issues or movements.” And while a lot of attention is focused on what national government negotiators are doing, the conferences also serve as an important meeting place for other levels of government.
The complaints about this year had UN Climate Secretary Simon Stiell promising a review to make the COP process as “effective as possible”. But he’s sure to face more of the same at COP28 next fall. The United Arab Emirates is already positioning the gathering in Dubai as a chance to entrench the fossil fuels its own economy depends on.
At COP27, meanwhile, even the win on loss and damage was limited to process, not substance—a recurring theme with climate gains in United Nations fora dating back to 1995. The decision left open key issues about how the fund will operate, who will qualify, and where the money will come from. Delegates assigned those questions to a working group that will report back to next year’s COP.
“What we have is an empty bucket,” said Power Shift Africa Director Mohamed Adow. “We need money to make it worthwhile.” Given rich countries’ past track record for keeping their climate finance promises, it’s a good bet the backsliding on loss and damage has already begun.
Elsewhere, COP27 left an overwhelming accumulation of unfinished business.
“Emissions peaking before 2025 as the science tells us is necessary? Not in this text,” said COP26 chair Alok Sharma. “Clear follow-through on the phasedown of coal? Not in this text. Clear commitment to phase out all fossil fuels? Not in this text. The energy text? Weakened in the final minutes.” The last-minute provision, inserted by Egypt’s fossil-fuel-friendly COP presidency, backed natural gas as a form of “low-emission energy”. Media onsite spoke to sleep-deprived delegates who’d voted for the final text without noticing that language.
“It is more than frustrating to see overdue steps on mitigation and the phaseout of fossil energies being stonewalled by a number of large emitters and oil producers,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
It remains to be seen whether that process can be fixed and protected before COP28 assembles in one of the world’s leading petro-states next year.
