Greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise this year, research published this week showed, despite stark warnings from climate scientists over the past year. The prospect of meeting the 1.5C above pre-industrial levels that scientists tell us is necessary has shrunk to a “narrow window”. Many of the heads of state and government gathered in Egypt for the first days of the Cop27 UN climate summit, where 45,000 people from 196 countries are halfway through their two weeks of talks on the climate crisis, had their own missions to add from the frontline of the global emergency. That of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was among the most powerful. “The devastating floods affected 33 million people, more than half of us women and children, [covering] the size of three European countries. Despite seven times the average extreme rainfall in the south, we struggled as raging torrents washed away more than 8,000km of metalled roads, destroyed more than 3,000km of railway track and washed away standing crops across 4m hectares and destroyed all four corners. of Pakistan,” he told a room shocked into silence. Shehbaz Sharif delivers his speech at Cop27. Photo: Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock “We fell victim to something we had nothing to do with, and of course it was a man-made disaster,” he said. “Imagine on the one hand we have to take care of food security for the common man by spending billions of dollars and on the other hand we have to spend billions of dollars to protect the flood victims from further misery and hardship. How on earth can anyone expect us to take on this gigantic task alone?’ The protest has stalled at Cop27, where activists sought to highlight Egypt’s dismal record on human rights. Greta Thunberg, the Swedish youth activist, has decided not to come and many activists are confined to a separate location from the main conference. Delegates at the conference also faced food and water shortages, as well as a raw sewage leak at the conference center. Egypt’s security has been put in place and events for civil society groups have been curtailed. However, this has not stopped all protests against the Police – and the demands from those protesting are centered on one issue: “loss and damage”. The term refers to the devastating effects of the climate crisis, the most severe extreme weather events that countries cannot adapt to or protect against. Pakistan’s record floods are an example. The severe drought that has left 150 million people in Africa at risk of extreme hunger is another. Poor countries argue that the rich, the source of most greenhouse gas emissions, should provide aid to the poor who are most affected. “Loss and damage is not charity – it’s climate justice,” said Nabel Munir, Pakistan’s climate envoy. The amount of cash needed for climate finance, including losses and damages, can seem daunting. In a report jointly commissioned by the UK, host of last year’s Cop26 summit, and the Egyptian hosts of Cop27, published on Tuesday, climate economist Lord Stern estimated that around $2 trillion a year would be needed by 2030 the entire developing world. except for China. However, this amount is not substantially greater than what would be needed to invest in these economies in any case, using fossil fuels. Despite the focus on losses and damages, there is little cash in this conference so far. The UK said it would allow some debt payment deferrals for countries hit by climate disasters, while Austria and New Zealand proposed loss and damage funding and John Kerry, the US special climate envoy, presented a plan to the use of carbon offsets raise cash. A climate activist dressed as a polar bear takes part in a protest outside the Cop27 summit. Photo: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images Even as young people protested and those facing the most serious impacts of the climate crisis testified, the halls of Cop27 hosted a shadowy group with entirely different intentions. Oil and gas companies are enjoying an unprecedented bonanza amid record fossil fuel prices, which have soared due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They have sent lobbyists to Cop27 in force – there are more than 600 of them enjoying access to the talks, according to a Global Witness analysis published on Thursday. This is more than the delegations of many of the most vulnerable countries combined. Africa is particularly in their sights. This is the first African cop in six years, and some African leaders came with a specific purpose: to win support to exploit their natural gas reserves. Macky Sall, the president of Senegal, asked in an interview: “Why not? Why shouldn’t Africa do this?’ Climate campaigners are dismayed at the prospect, warning of a “neo-colonial” gas grab that would only benefit multinational gas companies and the countries’ elites, while poor people would suffer even worse from global warming. But Western countries are wary of appearing hypocritical in urging African countries not to exploit their natural gas, and moreover, many European countries are particularly keen to import African gas to ease the cost-of-living crisis. Negotiations at Cop27 will continue next week, and countries are hoping for substantial progress on loss and damage and climate finance more generally. But there will be no final settlement of loss and damage here. The most we can hope for is to set out a framework and parameters for how a loss and damage financing facility could be achieved, with a deadline for when it should be operational. In Cops, sometimes the most telling outcome is the one that isn’t even on the agenda. This could well be the case for Cop27, in the form of a drastic overhaul of the world’s public financial institutions. The World Bank and other multilateral development banks, along with the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, were created at the Bretton Woods conference in the closing days of World War II. Their purpose was to promote international economic cooperation, to grant aid to countries in need and to oil the wheels of public finances. Mia Mottley. Photo: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images But the world has changed since 1944, as Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, pointed out. “Institutions created in the middle of the 20th century cannot be effective in the third decade of the 21st century,” he said. “They don’t describe 21st century issues. Climate justice was not an issue then [when the bank was set up].” The World Bank is under increasing fire at Cop27 from countries that believe it is failing on climate finance. They argue that overall spending is too low, too much of it is in the form of loans rather than grants, and too much goes to middle-income countries rather than the poorest. World Bank officials point out that it has provided $31.7 billion in climate project financing in 2022. The World Bank is a separate body to the UN and there is no mandate for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – the treaty under which the Conference of the Parties (Cop) takes place – to make changes to it. Therefore, no official intervention to reform the bank can be made at this summit. But it became increasingly clear at Cop27 that the current set-up of the World Bank is a serious roadblock to progress on climate finance. If reform finally happens, which looks increasingly likely, it may be the biggest achievement since Sharm el-Sheikh.
