After 27 years of failed climate conferences, the COP process clearly needs to change

The COP27 talks in Egypt ended with yet more dodged commitments, and there is now a sense that these mega meetings are not fit for purpose
Perhaps real agreements on climate action, driven by formal scientific guidance, should be made away from the media glare, to avoid grandstanding

David Dodwell

Published: 3:30am, 26 Nov 2022

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COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh was supposed to be the conference of implementation. Instead, it will be remembered for two weeks of procrastination. Most of the 45,000 participants watched on, frustrated and angry as global leaders postured and wilfully sidestepped hard commitments that might put meaningful brakes on global warming.

The main “success” – an agreement by rich countries to set up a “loss and damages” fund to help poor countries already being devastated by climate change – was arm-twisted after all deadlines had passed, but without any agreement on who will contribute to the fund, or how much.

The commitments made during COP26 in Glasgow to end coal-mining, provide a firm timetable for an end to fossil fuels, set more effective carbon trading rules, and end fossil fuel subsidies, were left glaringly unanswered – perhaps inevitably, given the presence of over 600 lobbyists for the fossil-fuel industry.

Ditto the road map to “net zero”. Instead of being able to declare that carbon emissions are edging down, last month’s UN’s Climate Synthesis report calculated that after all the contributions to achieving net zero by the 196 signatories to the 2015 Paris Agreement were added up, emissions are still rising.

It says we will be emitting 53.4 gigatonnes (GT) of CO2 by 2025 – up 53.7 per cent from 1990, 12.6 per cent up from 2010, and despite the Covid-19 recession, up 1.6 per cent from 2019. Instead of being on track to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, climate scientists say we will be lucky to stay the right side of 2 degrees.

The mood in Sharm el-Sheikh was that if, after 27 COP meetings since COP1 in Berlin in 1995, we are still unable to secure firm commitments from global leaders while catastrophic evidence piles up around us, then the COP process is unfit for purpose, and needs to be changed.

Climate activists hold placards at a demonstration during the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh on November 19. Photo: dpa

Such views came not just from environmental lobbyists, but from top officials with huge stakes in the COP process. Take the dismay of Alok Sharma, Britain’s chair of COP26: “Emissions peaking before 2025, as the science tells us is necessary? Not in the text. Clear follow-through on the phase-down of coal? Not in the text. A clear commitment to phase out all fossil fuels? Not in the text.”

Or Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, complaining that the conference had been “stonewalled by a number of large emitters and oil producers”.

Inger Andersen, head of the UN Environment Programme, complained of “a year of procrastination”. She might have added “hypocrisy”: in the global oil and gas exit list, compiled by a coalition of NGOs, it is reported that out of 901 oil and gas companies, 96 per cent are expanding production in the face of global government agreement on the need to expunge fossil fuels.

In 48 of Africa’s 55 countries (including Western Sahara), new fossil fuel projects have been launched in the past year, while in Egypt alone – the host of COP27 – 55 companies are currently prospecting for new natural gas.

Professor Bill McGuire, from University College London, captured the general mood: “It beggars belief that in 27 COPs, there has never been a formal agreement to reduce the world’s fossil fuel use … It is becoming increasingly difficult to view these events as anything other than photo opportunities for presidents and prime ministers”.

02:18

30 years of climate summits: Have they made a difference?

Clearly a COP that cannot, over 27 years, deliver on its most basic imperative – to get carbon emissions down and begin to reverse the process of global warming – can neither be fit for purpose, nor tolerated indefinitely as we edge closer to an irreversible climate catastrophe. But how can we do better?

Professor Benito Muller, at Oxford University, would replace today’s “mega-COPs” with a smaller annual meeting in Bonn, home of the COP Secretariat. Rotating cities could host “climate action weeks” focused on the most critical and specific aspects of the crisis.

McGuire would create several smaller bodies – for example focused on energy, agriculture, transport or “loss and damage” – which would be staffed full time and meet throughout the year. Analysis would be driven by “formal scientific guidance” and focused on specific detailed agreements that would be legally binding. Importantly, this work should be “hidden from the media glare” that so encourages grandstanding.

Perhaps as important, there would be great merit in a strong bilateral agreement between China and the US, which together account for 40 per cent of current carbon dioxide emissions. There can be no climate solution without them, and if they could agree to high and measurable commitments, pressure would be strong for others to follow.

A new negotiating architecture could certainly be helpful, even if it provided no silver bullet. Indeed, organisations like the World Trade Organization have made similar adjustments, creating “joint statement initiatives” in which small “alliances of the willing” have focused successfully on intractable issues like fisheries subsidies and e-commerce trade rules.

As McGuire pleads, “after the abject failure of COP27, it is worth a try, surely”. As the Dubai government takes up the baton preparing for COP28 next November, this must be food for thought. It would be a mistake to hold your breath.

David Dodwell is CEO of the trade policy and international relations consultancy Strategic Access, focused on developments and challenges facing the Asia-Pacific over the past four decades