Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

As Con­fer­ence of Par­ties (COP30) pres­i­dent, An­dré Cor­rêa do La­go, was prepar­ing to fly to Guyana on Wednes­day for the Glob­al Bio­di­ver­si­ty Al­liance Sum­mit, news broke around the world of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice’s (ICJ) land­mark ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion.

In essence, the Unit­ed Na­tions’ prin­ci­pal ju­di­cial body ruled that coun­tries have an oblig­a­tion to pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment from green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions and act with due dili­gence and co­op­er­a­tion to ful­fil this oblig­a­tion.

For many, this may seem ob­vi­ous, but it shift­ed the con­ver­sa­tion from the realm of ethics to le­gal­i­ty.

Do La­go’s vis­it to Guyana pro­vid­ed a rare op­por­tu­ni­ty for a Caribbean jour­nal­ist to sit down one-on-one with the pres­i­dent of a COP. The Brazil­ian diplo­mat is well known for his af­fa­ble na­ture.

Do La­go: ICJ rul­ing a com­plex one

It didn’t take us long in our con­ver­sa­tion to reach the ICJ’s land­mark agree­ment. He hailed it as “a very com­plex de­ci­sion.” His de­scrip­tion is fit­ting for a COP pres­i­dent as the process of the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC) does not legal­ly ob­lig­ate coun­tries to meet their Na­tion­al De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (ND­Cs).

Do La­go stat­ed, “It’s a very im­por­tant de­ci­sion, and we are still analysing it. But what is al­ready very ev­i­dent is that there is a new ten­den­cy that is be­ing very ef­fec­tive, which is to align cli­mate and hu­man rights. I think that this is a very im­por­tant evo­lu­tion of these dis­cus­sions, and the de­ci­sion of the ICJ and al­so the de­ci­sion of the Latin Amer­i­can Court of Jus­tice was ab­solute­ly de­ter­mi­nant too, so this is very im­por­tant. We have to watch the con­se­quences that I be­lieve will be very sig­nif­i­cant.”

In­deed, the UN­FC­CC will watch with cu­rios­i­ty how this un­folds in the months and years ahead. It could af­fect the way the UN cli­mate change body op­er­ates as well.

I fur­ther pressed do La­go on how far in­to the fu­ture he thinks coun­tries could start be­ing held ac­count­able for fail­ing to meet their ND­Cs. He said, “I think it can be soon­er than most peo­ple ex­pect.” Five years? Ten years? I asked. “No, I think less,” he re­spond­ed.

While the ICJ’s rul­ing hit glob­al head­lines on Wednes­day, both St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves and Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley ac­knowl­edged that not every coun­try sub­scribes to that court, and there is a mix­ture of scep­ti­cism as to how far legal­ly this can go.

When asked whether the ICJ ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion might be con­sid­ered wa­tered down as it is not a le­gal rul­ing, the ca­reer diplo­mat re­spond­ed, “Look, we have to deal with re­al­i­ty. The same way that the UN­FC­CC can­not force a coun­try to do some­thing, the court al­so can­not force the coun­try to do. But the fact is that if you have these judges, by con­sen­sus, sign­ing a doc­u­ment like that, it is some­thing that has a very, very pow­er­ful ef­fect.”

The ad­vi­so­ry opin­ion will al­so make COP30 in Belem, Brazil, an even more in­ter­est­ing con­fer­ence this year.

Just tran­si­tion key at COP30

The 30th edi­tion of COP will start on No­vem­ber 10, and the cyn­i­cism sur­round­ing the ef­fec­tive­ness of the process to low­er green­house gas emis­sions has nev­er been far from the sum­mit.

While Glob­al North coun­tries have been large­ly crit­i­cised for their role in the cli­mate cri­sis, de­vel­op­ing na­tions like hosts Brazil, In­dia and Chi­na are al­so large emit­ters.

Guyana, where we had the con­ver­sa­tion, is one of the newest emit­ters in the world, though its vast forests act as a buffer for car­bon emis­sions.

Do La­go be­lieves the wrong nar­ra­tive has spread.

He said, “The log­ic is that ob­vi­ous­ly, and even more in democ­ra­cies, the log­ic is that the peo­ple vote for gov­ern­ments that make their life bet­ter. That is why I think it is es­sen­tial to link the fight against cli­mate change to bet­ter eco­nom­ic per­for­mance, bet­ter qual­i­ty of life for peo­ple, more jobs. I think that this is some­thing that will make an enor­mous dif­fer­ence be­cause if peo­ple think that fight­ing cli­mate change is go­ing to make their life worse, peo­ple are nat­u­ral­ly drawn to a short­er-term con­cern. But if you can tru­ly prove to peo­ple that there are so­lu­tions, that there are ex­am­ples, that there are ex­pe­ri­ences that prove that fight­ing cli­mate change can be some­thing that sup­ports de­vel­op­ment and sup­ports the cre­ation of jobs, I think this will change many things.”

His com­ment comes as Caribbean na­tions such as T&T and Suri­name em­bark on an en­er­gy tran­si­tion to di­vert their sources of en­er­gy away from fos­sil fu­els.

Do La­go be­lieves the is­sue of just tran­si­tion could be be­come key at COP30.

He ex­plained, “One of the main out­comes of the ne­go­ti­a­tion, the for­mal ne­go­ti­a­tion, is prob­a­bly go­ing to be the just tran­si­tion. Just tran­si­tion is a con­cept that is ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial be­cause it is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent for a de­vel­op­ing coun­try than for a de­vel­oped coun­try to tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fu­els and to tran­si­tion to an econ­o­my that is ca­pa­ble to fight cli­mate change, so I think that this is the thing to watch in the ne­go­ti­a­tion; the is­sue of just tran­si­tion.”

Bet­ter ex­pla­na­tion of COP need­ed

Do La­go’s trip to the Caribbean is his sec­ond since be­ing named the pres­i­dent-des­ig­nate of COP30. He is acute­ly aware of the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of this re­gion as the cli­mate cri­sis wors­ens.

He of­fered his sol­i­dar­i­ty to the peo­ple in the Caribbean fac­ing the ef­fects of cli­mate change, “be­cause I think that the Caribbean has been one of the most hit of all the re­gions in the world.”

He would add, “But al­so some hope, be­cause these ne­go­ti­a­tions, al­though you don’t see the im­me­di­ate re­sult, these ne­go­ti­a­tions have stim­u­lat­ed an enor­mous progress in sci­ence and al­so an enor­mous progress in tech­nolo­gies.”

Do La­go says he hopes world lead­ers can bet­ter ex­plain in Belem how the re­sults of the con­fer­ence have bet­ter served the world for the last three decades.

The Brazil­ian will take over the reins of COP from Azer­bai­jan’s Min­is­ter of Ecol­o­gy and Nat­ur­al Re­sources and COP29 pres­i­dent, Mukhtar Babayev. The crit­i­cism of the COP process has some­times been re­lent­ing. At the mid­way point of the con­fer­ence last year, for­mer UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Ban-Ki Moon, for­mer UN cli­mate chief Chris­tiana Figueres and for­mer pres­i­dent of Ire­land Mary Robin­son, penned a let­ter say­ing COP is “no longer fit for pur­pose.”

Do La­go says peo­ple are des­per­ate to see change when it comes to the cli­mate fight. He re­spond­ed, “What I can tell you is that COPs were de­signed for ne­go­ti­a­tion and now what peo­ple need is im­ple­men­ta­tion. Peo­ple like to know that a doc­u­ment was ap­proved at the COP, but peo­ple would like to know much bet­ter if this has con­se­quences and if this is go­ing to af­fect their life.”