Conference of Parties (COP) 27 – Pilgrim’s Progress?

As in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the climate pilgrimage from Glasgow to Sharm el Sheik, that is from COP26 to COP27, has made little progress. As the gavel went down on Sunday, 20^th November, 2022, to mark the end of COP27, the closing spectacle evoked the picture of siblings quibbling even as their ancestral home was on fire! After all the sound and fury, all that was achieved at COP27 was setting up of “Loss & Damage Fund”.

At the heart of the climate debate was the question of finance without which neither “mitigation” nor “adaptation” and compensation for “loss and damage”, the three broad approaches constituting the strategy to deal with climate crisis, would yield hardly any results. The Green Climate Fund has raised barely $ 10 billion over about 8 years after what now appear to be hollow promises made at the Paris climate summit to contribute $ 100 billion annually. And the finance has morphed from grants to loans or insurance and guarantees. The latest UN report on “adaptation” says that international adaptation finance flows to developing countries are 5 to 10 times below estimated needs and the gap is widening with estimated adaptation needs requiring around $ 160 to 240 billion by 2030. Developing countries need same level of funds for “mitigation”. The only hope seems to be a financially and technically feasible, public private global initiative for tech transfer, of the sort initiated during vaccines for Covid.

“Mitigation” refers to measures to prevent further global warming by reducing emissions, phasing out fossil fuels with accelerated adoption of renewable energy, electric mobility, etc. In spite of the efforts of the preceding 26 Conferences of Parties (COPs) to UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, what is achieved so far falls far short of what is required to ward off a climate disaster. As per the recent Emission Gap Report, 2022, even if all the countries do fully what they voluntarily agreed to do, the world will be warmer by 2.6C by the end of the century as compared to the average temperature of the pre-industrialisation era. Today the planet is hotter by 1.1C and we are already witnessing horrific climate events like cyclones hurricanes with increasing frequency, heat waves, massive forest fires, rise in sea levels due to heat driven expansion of sea water and melting of polar and glacial ice. The secondary effects will be disease, displacement of people, water scarcity and the attendant social tensions.

Given the inequity and inadequacy of just the “mitigation” initiative, countries are increasingly focusing  on the “adaption” leg of the strategy to contain adverse effects of climate change. While mitigation calls for concerted action at the global level, adaptation is more locally oriented. At the city and township levels, adaptation measures would include, among other things, building storm water drains, rescue boats, shelters to house people affected by natural calamities, distributed electricity systems such as mini grids that can quickly come online, sufficient stocks of food and medicines, preserving and renewing wetlands and water bodies and regulatory and infra initiatives to preserve and recharge ground water table.

The third leg of the climate strategy is essentially to ensure climate justice.  Climate justice calls for the recognition and acceptance of the fact that the developed world accounts for most of the stock of carbon in the atmosphere since the dawn of industrial era. So climate justice would have to play out not just in terms of the developed world spelling out emission goals, but also paying poor countries which are devastated by disasters caused by climate change. Hence the urgent need for “Loss & Damage” fund. It is some consolation that COP 27 was at least able to set up a Loss & Damage Fund. But as usual the devil is in the details. Much will depend on some crucial details, such as who will contribute to the fund and how much and more importantly who will be eligible for assistance from the fund. At the moment, there is no clarity on the size of the fund. Going by the track record of developed countries, such as their poor contributions to the green climate fund and their faltering commitments to mobilize $100 billion for the developing countries to help them fight climate change, a lot of difficult negotiations are lying ahead. Typically, the can has been kicked down the road by setting up a “transitional committee” tasked with responsibility of operationalising the fund and determine the composition, mandate and timelines of the fund. A case of Nero fiddling while Rome was burning?