Kalain Ho­sein

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

A suc­cess­ful COP is one where every­one leaves un­hap­py—but what hap­pens when the COP nears fail­ure?

With mis­aligned pri­or­i­ties of de­vel­oped and de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, many of these in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate con­fer­ences rarely pro­duce the out­comes small is­land states like Trinidad and To­ba­go des­per­ate­ly need to fight the cli­mate cri­sis. In­stead, such ac­tiv­i­ties usu­al­ly pro­duce wa­tered-down, com­pro­mised cli­mate pol­i­cy and fi­nanc­ing fa­cil­i­ties de­vel­oped with po­lit­i­cal­ly charged state­ments that do not al­ways trans­late in­to ac­tion.

Of the 32-point agen­da items set out at the start of COP27 two weeks ago, as of last evening, nine had been agreed to, eight were yet to have a de­ci­sion on them, four­teen have had no out­come and the de­ci­sion on bunker fu­els has been post­poned.

Amongst a host of oth­er crit­i­cal is­sues, at the cen­tre of the dys­func­tion has been the strug­gle be­tween wealthy and de­vel­op­ing na­tions to find com­mon ground in de­vel­op­ing a Loss and Dam­age Fund.

Loss and Dam­age was added to the COP27 agen­da, be­com­ing a win for the Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS), who have been push­ing this ef­fort for the last 30 years. How­ev­er, get­ting Loss and Dam­age on­to the agen­da was on­ly the first step.

Mul­ti­ple de­vel­oped coun­tries con­tin­ue to stonewall ef­forts to cre­ate the fund. The Unit­ed States has re­peat­ed­ly said it will not sup­port cre­at­ing a fund­ing fa­cil­i­ty and has held strong op­po­si­tion.

How­ev­er, in a sur­pris­ing re­ver­sal yes­ter­day morn­ing, Frans Tim­mer­mans, the vice pres­i­dent of the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion, said, “We were re­luc­tant about a fund. It was not our idea. I know from ex­pe­ri­ence it takes time be­fore a fund can be es­tab­lished. But since they [de­vel­op­ing coun­tries] were so at­tached to it, we have agreed. This is our fi­nal of­fer.”

There are three op­tions on the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble for cre­at­ing a Loss and Dam­age Fund – cre­ate a fund at COP27, wait a year to cre­ate the fund at COP28 or es­tab­lish “fund­ing arrange­ments” in 2023 to be op­er­a­tionalised at COP29 in 2024.

The G77 Plus Chi­na bloc, rep­re­sent­ing 134 na­tions, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, said the lat­ter two op­tions are not ten­able.

At a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Sher­ry Rehman, the Fed­er­al Cli­mate Change Min­is­ter from Pak­istan and chair of G77 plus Chi­na, said, “We are com­mit­ted to keep­ing to op­tion 1 with changes that we have sub­mit­ted.”

At an­oth­er press con­fer­ence ear­li­er this week, speak­ing as chair of AO­SIS and the Min­is­ter of Health, Well­ness and the En­vi­ron­ment of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Mol­wyn Joseph, said, “We have the op­por­tu­ni­ty at this COP to plant the first seed of restora­tion for these coun­tries that are dev­as­tat­ed. That is the es­tab­lish­ment of the Loss and Dam­age fund.”

He con­tin­ued, “When you open the bank ac­count, you don’t have all the funds in it. You build it up. And that’s what I’m say­ing. Let us open a bank ac­count here in Egypt. Then, we iden­ti­fy the fi­nan­cial flows in­to this fund so that when the chil­dren of our pop­u­la­tions’ homes are blown apart, we have funds to re­store their homes.”

At an in­for­mal stock take press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, COP27 pres­i­dent HE Sameh Shoukry said, “I re­main con­cerned at the num­ber of out­stand­ing is­sues, in­clud­ing on fi­nance mit­i­ga­tion, adap­ta­tion, loss and dam­age and their in­ter-link­ages. I call up­on par­ties to ur­gent­ly work to­geth­er to re­solve these out­stand­ing is­sues as swift­ly as pos­si­ble.”

This grid­lock has led to the con­fer­ence, slat­ed to end at 6 pm yes­ter­day (Egypt time), be­ing ex­tend­ed in­to to­day, with the new, ten­ta­tive end by late tonight in­to Sun­day morn­ing. How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the COP27 pres­i­dent, Am­bas­sador Wael Aboul­magd, this de­lay is not a tes­ta­ment for or against a COP Pres­i­den­cy.

A a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Aboul­magd said, “It is a very broad and com­plex process with many sov­er­eign states that don’t have a vot­ing cul­ture or mech­a­nism on sub­stan­tive is­sues. It’s sub­ject to so many cross­winds that might af­fect how things tran­spire. What mat­ters, re­al­ly, is to have mean­ing­ful out­comes.”

He added that he’d even take the con­fer­ence through Mon­day if it meant a mean­ing­ful out­come. Eight of the ten most re­cent COPs have been over­run by more than 24 hours, with on­ly six fin­ish­ing on the sched­uled day.

It is im­por­tant to note that the glob­al ac­tion seen at COP21 in 2015, which pro­duced the Paris Agree­ment, is an ex­cep­tion, not the norm. COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, has turned in­to Copen­hagen 2.0—where talks col­lapsed in 2009 at COP15. Many diplo­mats and ne­go­tia­tors have ex­pressed anger at the lev­el of dys­func­tion of the con­fer­ence over the past two weeks. One diplo­mat, who re­quest­ed to re­main anony­mous due to the na­ture of the re­marks, said to a press pool, “It’s a s---show, but it’s the on­ly s---show in town.”

This sto­ry was pro­duced as part of the 2022 Cli­mate Change Me­dia Part­ner­ship, a jour­nal­ism fel­low­ship or­gan­ised by In­ternews’ Earth Jour­nal­ism Net­work and the Stan­ley Cen­tre for Peace and Se­cu­ri­ty.