Lost and damaged: reflections on COP27

Yes, I was in Sharm El Shaik, Egypt, attending the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It was a busy place of deliberations and trade fares, and you could easily get lost in the dizzying array of events and the labyrinth of COP-speak.

This COP, which was dubbed the Africa COP, was attended by anywhere between 20 000 and 40 000 people. Those with money to spend must have found this to be one of the most expensive COPs; with Sharm being so remote, conference attendees were forced to pay two to three times the norm for goods and services.

There were both political victories and losses at the conference – such as new words being inserted or not being inserted in the text of the Presidency, also called the Cover Letter. Those that celebrated the ‘victory of words’ will know that this is not the same as securing real outcomes.

But it seems there was little victory in expanding the reach of the COP to squeeze more fossil fuels out of the system to keep us on the 1.5 ºC path. Moreover, no phase-out of gas and oil was mentioned, but what was won was a Loss and Damage (L&D) Fund. This was a victory for vulnerable States that have long fought to hold rich countries responsible for climate change.

The European Union (EU), which had been holding out against the L&D Fund being set up, agreed to this demand in the last hours of the COP. We must now work on getting the promised funding.

The US was also not eager to support the idea of any fund or funding for the L&D Fund, as the country, just like the EU at one point, held the view that countries such as China – which have grown richer over the last few decades – should also be contributing to the fund, despite the fact that the Paris Agreement imposes historical responsibility for global warming on those who have used the global carbon budget the most.

However, the two giants of climate diplomacy eventually came along to ‘save’ the COP.

‘Loss and damage’ was one of the three main issues for Africa. The second was adaptation support; so, getting a new climate adaptation goal was key (it did not move much). The third was agreeing on a process to achieve a new finance goal by 2025. Depending on who you believe, L&D estimates could be as much as $1.8-trillion by 2050, but many more trillions are needed to deal with energy transitions and adaptation.

COP27 was promoted as an African COP because it was held in Egypt. However, the broader context of the COP cannot escape the reality that we are living in a post-liberal phase of international relations. The dark shadow of the Ukraine war continues to be cast over international deliberations, whether it’s UN General Assembly deliberations, climate negotiations or the G20 meeting, which was held in Bali, Indonesia, on November 15 and 16.

The UNFCCC process and negotiations emerged during an era of energetic liberalism and enthusiasm for multilateralism – an era when the Soviet bloc collapsed and the Western-led liberal order gained ascendency. Renowned political theorist Francis Fukuyama proclaimed with gusto and confidence that we were at the end of history. If you lived in the West, the general feeling was that everything was going your way. Not so these days.

Liberalism promised freedom and self- expression, unlike authoritarianism and populism, which carved a worldview of “it as ‘we’ against ‘them’”. Populism has exploited the failure of liberalism and painted it as being out of touch with ordinary people and where democracies are avatars of elite control over popular will.

This force of populism has also curtailed the retreat of universal liberalism and given rise to a contained liberal positioning, where it is country first and then the rest. This now dominates every string of diplomacy and one finds this in the climate space as well.

The world is becoming less democratic (even in traditional democracies such as India) and globalisation is being questioned. For example, former US President Donald Trump punctuated his entire Presidency with an antiglobalist sentiment because he felt America was losing out to China. Protectionist regionalism is back in swing and the notion of ‘friendshoring’ is a term that is no longer uncommon.

Reshoring, or friendshoring, will have implications for global energy transitions because who you get the funds and technology from for your transition will involve some political football. The debate on fifth-generation technology for accessing microchips gives us a foretaste of what things will look like for solar photovoltaics or electric vehicles, for example.

The Western world is no longer the only source of finance for development and investment – continents such as Africa can now look to China and smaller powers as alternative sources. At the height of enthusiastic global liberalism, the natural inclination for Africa and the South was to look towards the West for climate finance and other forms of support.

In some respects, the willingness of G7 countries to play a leading role in additional just energy transition partnerships, such as those that have been announced for Indonesia and Vietnam, carries this unspoken geopolitical caveat with regard to how these deals are being structured – this is not only a public relations exercise, but also an attempt to keep climate diplomacy entrenched within the sphere of influence of traditional powers. Just energy transition partnerships may well become a new climate club.

Climate diplomacy is increasingly being bent by the shift in a geopolitical arch riven by competition and suspicion. It makes collective action even harder to take. It is likely that the way climate problems are dealt with in the future – from climate finance to access to clean technology – will see more and more strategic competition between global powers.

Climate change is not without climate politics.