It will be an African summit, where the voices of the most vulnerable countries will be heard. No, it’s a top for “green washing”, where the host country aims to divert attention from human rights violations with a conference on climate. An implementation summit where words are turned into action. Or at least just a stopover, before the sum of all international climate plans will be looked at in the United Arab Emirates next year.
The climate summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh starts on Sunday, but there are already many characterizations going around. What are the themes of this 27th Conference of the Parties to the Climate Convention? What’s at stake at COP27?
1 Why should another climate summit be held?
Since 1995, a conference on international climate policy has been held every year (with the exception of pandemic year 2020). In that year it was decided in Bonn that a legally binding treaty should ensure the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that warm the climate.
In 1997, at COP3, the Kyoto Protocol was a reality. But for countries that had well and truly implemented it, it had already failed. The United States withdrew, Canada, Japan and a few other countries failed to meet their target. Developing countries did not have to do anything anyway. Only Europe was more or less able to meet its Kyoto commitments.
Only two decades later, at COP21 in Paris, did the world reach a new agreement. Countries promised to limit the average temperature increase to “well below two degrees” and preferably to one and a half degrees (compared to the time before the industrial revolution). But this agreement failed to prevent both greenhouse gas emissions and warming itself from continuing since then.
In an interview with the BBC Last week UN chief António Guterres called climate change “the all-important issue of our times.” No one, he says, has the right to sacrifice climate policy for any other purpose. So world leaders will have to regularly look each other in the eye and find a solution to this crisis.
2 Are countries not complying with the Paris Agreement?
Yes and no. Because ‘Paris’ is not legally binding, countries can determine their own national contribution.
From the latest reports from the World Meteorological Organization and the UN Environment Programme it turns out that with the current plans the earth will warm up at least 2.8 degrees, and slightly less if all the promises are fulfilled that have already been made, but have not yet been translated into policy.
Even a rich country like the Netherlands has great difficulty in achieving its climate goals. „The estimated decline [van broeikasgassen] is not yet in line with the tightening of the target from 49 to 55 percent emission reduction,” wrote the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency last week in its Climate and Energy Exploration.
Also read: PBL: Even if the cabinet implements all climate plans, that is not enough
3 Why can’t the world agree?
Despite all the (future) social and economic benefits, climate policy is complicated and expensive. Because climate change does not stop at the border, it is attractive to do as little as possible yourself, but to fully benefit from the efforts of others.
That’s exactly what goes wrong – especially between the two biggest climate polluters: China and the US. Both countries tend to blame each other for the lack of progress. They did agree on one occasion, prior to the summit in Paris in 2015. Their bilateral agreement laid the foundations for the Paris Climate Agreement.
But relations between the two superpowers have cooled after a visit to Taiwan earlier this year by Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives. China, which considers Taiwan a renegade province, has suspended talks with the US on climate change. That could have a major impact on the outcome of Sharm el-Sheikh.
4 Can the European Union play a mediating role?
Perhaps. Europe is a major player in the climate debate. European climate policy often serves as an example for other countries. And as an economic superpower, Europe sets (industrial) standards for sustainability that other countries must adopt if they want to be active on the European market.
But Europe, like the other rich countries, has a credibility problem. They do not meet their financial obligations. As early as 2009, they promised to make $100 billion annually available from 2020 for climate policy in countries that cannot afford it themselves. That amount has still not been reached.
China is making good use of this weakness by posing as the leader of the so-called G77, a coalition of more than 130 developing countries and emerging economies demanding more money. In doing so, China successfully diverts attention from the weakness of its own policy – such as that the country does not expect its emissions peak until 2030, and that it itself barely contributes to that 100 billion.
The war in Ukraine also influences the European position. The war has made Europe’s dependence on Russian gas visible and is now forcing Europe to buy gas for a lot of money elsewhere, and even to mothball its polluting coal-fired power stations.
In the short term, that means more greenhouse gases. At the same time, the war also forms a strong business case for sustainable energy.
5 Is Egypt only about money?
It does look like that. In a year in which climate scientists warned of increasing risks, in which countries faced extreme heat, drought and forest fires, in which Pakistan and Nigeria were hit by severe flooding, blame will play a prominent role in the negotiations.
Western countries have discussed the so-called ‘loss and damage‘, managed to keep loss and damage out of the negotiations for a long time. But for host country Egypt, this is the main theme of the summit. Western countries find it a tricky subject. They do not want to pay for the damage that climate change is already causing. Poor countries point out that they are the hardest hit, even though they have barely contributed to the problem.
6 Shouldn’t it be about one and a half degrees of warming?
‘Keep 1.5 alive‘, don’t let the one and a half degrees disappear from the picture, was the slogan at the climate summit in Glasgow last year. Time is running out, climate scientists say. For this, countries such as China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies will also have to increase their ambitions. But they only do that if the money issue is settled.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of November 5, 2022