Opinion – Why? Economês in plain English: COP27: more shallow commitments or concrete actions?

From November 6th to 18th of this year, the world accompanied COP27 (27th United Nations Conference on Climate Change), held in Egypt. In English, COP means “Conference of the Parties”, which in international relations generally implies the creation of a committee after the signing of an international treaty. This committee is charged with making decisions about how the treaty is implemented.

There are several types of COP for various international agreements, such as those discussing chemical weapons and combating desertification. However, the term COP came to be associated with the meetings of the committee that created the treaty of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). The UNFCCC is the result of UNCED (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The treaty signed in 1994 initially by 154 countries aims to discuss actions of tackling the global challenges of climate change.

Since 1995, COP meetings have been held (almost) annually to discuss how to achieve and monitor progress related to climate change. Each COP is usually referred to by its number in the series, and the country that becomes the chair of the COP is charged with organizing that year’s meeting. Any new agreements that are made tend to be named after the host city, for example the 2015 Paris Agreement or the 2021 Glasgow Climate Pact.

Those who participate in the COPs are political, market and global civil society leaders, given that the necessary solutions involve changes in the scope of public policies, business strategies and consumer-citizen behavior.

But what was expected from COP27?

According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions need to be reduced by 45% by 2030, compared to 2010 levels, to meet the central target of the Paris Agreement to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C by the end of this century. This is crucial to averting the worst impacts of climate change, including more frequent and severe droughts, heat waves and rainfall. A report published by the UN on climate change ahead of COP27 shows that, although countries are reducing global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, efforts are still insufficient to reach this limit.

Thus, one of the main objectives of COP27 would be to assess whether member countries have advanced in the goals defined at COP26 and discuss the effective implementation of the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Since COP26, only 29 out of 194 countries have come up with more stringent national plans.

Another objective would be to improve actions on adapting to climate change and mitigating its effects, such as reducing deforestation, reforestation, energy transition, adoption of sustainable food systems by agribusiness and food security.

In terms of financial support, in addition to the process of formalizing an agreement focused on damages and losses, it was expected that developed countries would specify how they would guarantee that funding would especially serve developing countries, which are generally the ones that suffer most due to the climate-related health, energy and food crises, despite being the least responsible for them. This would entail greater commitment of resources to locally led adaptation initiatives in these countries, ensuring that they participate in investment decisions and have access to the funds and other resources needed to build their resilience.

Finally, it would be necessary to develop the principles of transparency and accountability for monitoring and evaluating advances and setbacks.

Looking at the results, however, I dare say that this was the COP of stalemate and retreat. With no agreement among international leaders, the conference had to be extended until November 19th. One of the main points of impasse was the creation of the fund to compensate losses and damages of the poorest countries. For two weeks, the G77 plus China, the largest negotiating group of developing countries, with 137 members representing more than 5 billion people, stood united by the demand for the creation of the fund. This is despite intense pressure from countries like the United States, which tried to block the initiative, and from some European Union nations that tried to derail the negotiations with watered down options that would divide developing countries.

A day late, the Loss and Damages Fund was approved, as the first step in a process to correct systemic climate injustice. First step because the document that deals with it is vague, with no clear definition of how much resources the fund needs, who needs to pay and who is eligible for compensation. This, added to the fact that rich countries have already failed to fulfill a previous commitment to provide US$ 100 billion a year in financing to developing countries for climate-related projects, reinforces that the negotiation on damages will have to continue at the next COP. . Given the urgency of the issue, waiting another year is wasting time we don’t have to resolve injustices that grow each year.

While COP27 addressed the consequences of the climate crisis, it failed to address its cause: fossil fuels. The capture of the lawsuit by industry lobbyists prevented an agreement for a just and equitable transition from all fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas. The proposal to phase out all fossil fuels, not just coal, came to nothing, weakening the COP26 commitment. Even with the approval of agreements to reduce methane emissions, reduce deforestation and increase investment in renewable energy, without plans to phase out fossil fuels, we run the risk of violating the 1.5 °C limit. The COP27 agreement, called the Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan, only limitedly guaranteed a limitation (and not elimination) of the causes of climate change, the burning of fossil fuels. Despite numerous commitments, global emissions have reached record levels, showing that speeches are dissociated from concrete actions. Critical details about how countries must fulfill their commitments with transparency and accountability are also unresolved.

The inherent problem in international climate negotiations is that limiting the rise in global temperatures requires all responsible countries to act quickly and aggressively to tackle the causes of that rise, but neither actor can force the other to do anything. Commitments to reduce emissions are self-defined by countries themselves, and the rules around meeting these targets are established by consensus, so that everyone, from major oil producers to countries losing land to rising sea levels, have to agree – that has been the role of the COPs. It is of no use for countries that suffer from rising sea levels to agree to more aggressive commitments if the other countries, especially those most responsible for emissions, do not agree. This is related to the concept of the Tragedy of the Commons, explored by Hardin in 1968. In the long run, everyone loses.

If impasses and setbacks reigned at the global level, perhaps the greatest advance of COP27 is, for us Brazilians, the intention of the new government to assume a leadership role in the climate agenda, biodiversity, the reduction of inequalities and the fight against hunger. We returned to the game of environmental diplomacy, recognizing our guilt and proposing to be part of the necessary solution for us to return to growth with sustainable development. It is important to pay special attention to commitments made in relation to forests and methane. However, intentions will not be enough: climate governance integrated with economic recovery will be needed. But this is the subject for my next text.