What is lacking in climate resolutions taken so far by UNFCCC? What can the COP 27 do better so we can see improved progress in countries’ greenhouse gas emission reductions to reach the global 2030 targets?
The UNFCCC was signed between 3rd to 14th June 1992 with the aim to combat the "dangerous human interference with the climate system". Since then, the global environment governance system has seen additions of more agreements specialising on various aspects of pollution, emissions and human activities, stakeholders and gained structural complexity. Looking at this complex structure, one would agree that a lot has been done yet we are not even a tad near to solving climate change. Today, there exist more than 100 environmental treaties and yet climate change negotiations have earned a notorious reputation and several Conference of Parties are marred with criticisms of failure.
A sound analysis of why have COPs or climate resolutions not been effective points us to various glaring realisations. The environment governance structure is divided. At the heart of this division lies the issues of climate equity and climate imperialism between the developed and developing countries who have failed to come to terms with. Also, climate change is a high-politics issue secondary to geopolitics, economics and trade gets lashed, compromised or forgotten very often. Finally, issues discussed or negotiated at the supra-national level have a good chance of facing rejection at the national-level governments which points to the fact that the international space is an anarchic one.
Additionally, what has been lacking in the climate resolutions take so far across UNEP, UNFCCC and GEF has been a universal participation of 196 countries, agreement of committing to reductions or other adaptations, the issue of who shares the financial burden of technology transfer to the needy countries, training and capacity development and loss and damage, etc.
The decade of 2020 has been inadvertently termed as the last best chance to keep the goal of 1.5 degree celsius alive. With this, each COP has been viewed with great expectation. The present juncture of climate change demands a shift of perspective from pledges to actions. In this light, the 27th COP would be held in the deserts of Sahara at Sharm El-Sheikh, a place whose maximum temperature goes as high as 50 Degrees, in 2022 must shoulder a climactic responsibility.
Not only is Egypt a strategic player as it represents the African continent, the Saharan belt, but also its high participation in G20 since 2016 stands relevant in bringing different geography-based as well as issue-based blocs together at the negotiating table at the COP 27. With this, it is pertinent to look at what COP 27 can do to improve the progress in countries’ emission levels, and to achieve the 2030 goals. The following analysis draws heavily from the UNFCCC publications, the WWF COP 27 Expectations Paper, Bonn Conference, the Glasgow Climate Pact official documents and the IPCC Report 6 Part 3 which have been released in the past few months.
From Pledges to Action
There is a broad agreement that the focus must urgently shift from planning to implementation. Climate diplomacy in the form of negotiations, agreements, pledges need to be put to action. These include the Paris Rulebook finalised at COP 26, the Glasgow Climate Pact, the Nationally Determined Contributions. Out of the 197 parties to the Paris Convention, about 194 have submitted their NDCs as of today. The final step would be to get the last three parties to comply to achieve universality in the same. This also calls for the formalisation of the Enhanced Transparency Framework and transition to biennial transparency reports from all members.
Global climate governance currently consists of a complex structure of institutions created to address each turn of processes and issues. The Action for Climate Empowerment is an initiative for accelerating solutions through education, training and public awareness is striving to reconfigure climate change action from a matter of high politics to a local one. The Work Programme which represents non-state actors and their role as equal partners. The Global Stock Take (GST) which will assess the sum of all individual actions as a unit instead of NDCs. The Adaptations Communication initiative has also been failing with only 47 submissions by February 2022. These are important initiatives that need to be strengthened at COP 27.
The three legs of climate change action are finance, technology and capacity building. The COP 27 must strive to achieve the long-dream of collecting $100 Bn every year for financing the developing and vulnerable countries, primarily for technology transfer, training and loss and damage. This will set the stage for enhancing the trust between developed and developing countries.
Multilateralism, plenitude of perspectives and changing dynamics within DCs
The next suggestion would include a greater variety of stakeholders from the public as well as private sphere. The public sphere includes coalitions, alliances and blocs- regional-based such as OASIS, African Union and issue-based such as Corals, tropical forests, Methane emission, etc. Learning from the lessons learnt after the failure of the Copenhagen Summit and the subsequent Cancun success, it has become pertinent to include such groups. With this, COP 27 can bring all the countries at the negotiating table, and help in arriving at a common ground, especially the developed and developing countries. While the divide between the two is not new, what we see today, is an increasing schism within the developing countries (DCs). The emerging markets like India, China who want an escape-window to burn fossil fuel to industrialise themselves, while the smaller, weaker and vulnerable countries are looking for an immediate change. The latter may also coalesce with the developed counterpart against the emerging market coalition. Thus, many DC blocks are pitted against each other. This makes the involvement of developed nations to negotiate and address the rising schism between the developing countries with high emissions and smaller-vulnerable nations, very much necessary. On the other hand, the private ones include not only the businesses, but also civil society, youth leaders, observers, etc.
Geopolitics and its climatic risks
Finally, over the next few months until COP 27, the geopolitical situation around the world must be solved. This includes the rising energy insecurity and prices, the risk of pandemic coming back and most importantly, the Russia-Ukraine crisis. This is because the geopolitics tensions will inadvertently harm the already frail thread on which climate negotiations are done.
Therefore, one certainly has very high expectations from the COP 27. The job to not only learn from the mistakes from the past, to work on the existing structure and make required additions is a responsibility to be handled at the upcoming conference. A lot has been said and said on ambitions. There is no dearth of ambitions and at the same time mere ambitions are not enough. It is time to move to a post-ambition phase and focus on implementation.
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