Every year about 200 nations meet to negotiate additional national commitments on climate change. The goals are generally to increase the rate at which we’re reducing fossil fuel use, and to increase adaptation to the changes, including with increased financing for alleviating some of the climate burden for countries who have been the smallest contributors to the problem.
This year the meeting was in Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt.
The biggest win at this meeting was a last minute agreement to develop a ‘Loss and Damage Fund’. This is designed for wealthier and higher emitting countries to contribute funding that would be used by poorer and lower emitting countries - many of which are in the global South.
This has been a topic of conversation and a demand from poorer countries for many years but this year was the first time it was officially added to the agenda. The agreement was hard-won and it remains to be seen how it will be operationalized. A committee will meet in March of next year, and at the COP28 meeting in November in Dubai, there will be more work on implementation.
So, there is still some uncertainty as to how this will work, but it is a great step forward in global cooperation and accountability.
There were also other agreements and discussions around adaptation support and financing, technological support, and on climate financing in general. Developed countries had previously agreed to collectively mobilize $100b by 2020, which hasn’t happened. Deliberations refocused that commitment with a new 2024 ‘collective quantified goal on climate finance’, calling not just on nations, but on financial institutions - banks and investment corporations - to be part of a firm path forward.
Along with the formal negotiations, there is also a civil society space that provides a platform for all sorts of organizations across the globe to convene, showcase, discuss, and promote various solutions from climate justice and equitable transition, to biodiversity and conservation actions, to technology, resilience, and other aspects of climate progress. Around 45,000 participants met in Egypt to engage in sharing tools and resources and ideas.
These meetings provide an incredibly important space for continuous progress - for both governments and for civil society. And there IS continuous progress being made, for which I am grateful and I think is impressive in its own right.
And yet….
For me, there are a few things missing in these meetings.
The first is still urgency. In this COP, there was little agreement to increase ambition around greenhouse gas reductions. While we’re still officially trying to stay below a 1.5C global warming, the current commitments from nations (even if we meet them) would still take us over 2.5C. There wasn’t a great deal of push to get more aggressive on our targets. This is essential if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and having to pay for it in lost lives, homes, businesses, and even whole island nations, and/or having to pay for it in literal dollars. The cost will be in the trillions.
The second is ‘integration’. We still break down all the bits and pieces of climate change action into mitigation efforts and adaptation agreements, and financing commitments, and resilience objectives (etc etc). These are all complex in their own right, and agreements are genuinely tricky for all sorts of reasons. In many ways, agreement on any of them is somewhat miraculous.
But none of them really get to the heart of how we could live differently.
None of them really emphasize the value of our ecosystems and our globally-shared resources.
None of them elevate a collective wisdom, or a common humanity.
Very few of them inspire.
Some years ago (probably 10 or more), I had the privilege of attending a Native American climate conference. I gave an update on the global science there, but mine was by far the least useful, least human, least impactful presentation.
Speaker after native speaker offered something far more important in driving progress and solutions: They articulated connection. Connection to each other, to our natural world, to our past, and to the future.
Connection leads to caretaking. It literally can’t lead anywhere else, if you acknowledge the ways in which we are truly linked.
While I celebrate the historic progress we’re making on addressing the many and complex aspects of climate action (and it really is historic - I have no wish to diminish it), I also hope we can find a way to get more connected around our shared experiences - as past, present, and future people of the Earth.
And yes, that also needs to lead to reduced emissions, smarter adaptation, and more equitable financing.