For 30 years, developing nations have fought to establish an international fund to pay for the “loss and damage” they suffer as a result of climate change. As the COP27 climate summit in Egypt wrapped up over the weekend, they finally succeeded.
While it’s a historic moment, the agreement of loss and damage financing left many details yet to be sorted out. What’s more, many critics have lamented the overall outcome of COP27, saying it falls well short of a sufficient response to the climate crisis. As Alok Sharma, president of COP26 in Glasgow, noted:
Friends, I said in Glasgow that the pulse of 1.5 degrees was weak. Unfortunately it remains on life support.
But annual conferences aren’t the only way to pursue meaningful action on climate change. Mobilisation from activists, market forces and other sources of momentum mean hope isn’t lost.
UN climate conference, the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) is ocurring in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt from Monday November 6 to Friday November 18, 2022 (but may also go overtime into the weekend).
This is my digital diary of Australia at COP27. I have attended four previous COPs, but I will be following whats going on at COP27 online. Follow with me. I'll be updating this blog post regularly over October-November 2022.
The UN Climate conference COP27 may have closed but La Niña is set to intensify Australia’s cyclone season, raising risk of flooding (The Guardian)
What are the key outcomes of Cop27 climate summit? (The Guardian)
Guest: COP27: one big breakthrough but ultimately an inadequate response to the climate crisis (Blog)
The 1.5C climate goal died at Cop27 – but hope must not by Damian Carrington, Environment editor at The Guardian
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19 November - Overtime, out of time
Prime minister Anthony Albanese says taking climate seriously is key to international diplomacy, is key to Australia’s push to co-host a UN climate conference with the Pacific islands. "Taking climate change seriously is the entry fee to get a seat at the table of international diplomacy and to be taken seriously by those who care about the global economy as well." (The Guardian)
U.S. silent on surprise aid plan (for Loss and Damnage finance) as climate talks stagger (Climatewire) Previous article reported U.S. isolated on loss and damage (Climatewire)
Reuters publishes Analysis-Australia's Climate Policies Don't Match Its Big Talk at COP27 highlighting Australia's addiction to fossil fuel exports and lack of policy to change this so far. (Reuters)
Australian position on Loss and Damage Finance:Australia said it welcomed the EU’s contribution and would “engage constructively with it”. On loss and damage, it was “very attracted to a new fund that benefits from a broad contributor base and focuses on the most vulnerable”. “We want to fully examine how other institutions such as multinational development banks can interact and further develop their interaction with this fund,” said Chris Bowen, the Australian climate change minister. reports the Guardian.
End game for COP27: Will there be backsliding on Fossil fuels or 1.5C target? Will a Loss and Damage finance Facility be established? (Blog)
Highlights and images from Earth Negotians Bulletin highlights Saturday 19 November a real negotiations rollercoaster ride (ENB/IISD)
High Ambition Coalition lists its demands for a successful COP:
The USA wins the Colossal Fossil COP27 award for continuing to block and delay the creation of a Loss and Damage Fund in the negotiations. This needs to be called out loudly. Vulnerable countries are already experiencing high levels of climate disasters that affect economic recovery. This problem is only growing. A Loss and Damage fund is greatly needed to cope with escalating damages from heatwaves and drought, torrential rain and flood events, cyclones, and the long slow impact of sea level rise.
Dishonourable mentions to Russia for using COP27 for fossil fuel and nuclear lobbying, and to Bolsanaro's Brazil and the damage done with escalating emissions and levels of deforestation of the Amazon.
The Fossil awards on Solutions Day go to not one, but two countries.
Both Egypt and Israel were nominated for being the worst today. Egypt for its extremely weak first drafts of the Cover text: the decision of the COP. While Fossil of the Day Ceremony was ocurring, COP27 Presidency and UN Secretary General were reading the 'riot Act' to negotiators with so many areas left unresolved. BUT Egypt is responsible for pulling together the COP cover text and the current version is very weak. See Early Draft Cop27 cover decision fails to call for ‘phase-down’ of all fossil fuels (The Guardian)
Israel has it's first pavillion at COP, and while addressing water scarcity and adaptive agriculture is important, the elephant in the room is the human rights abuses to the Palestinian people. Greenwashing by Israel at their pavillion needs to be called out. Their is no climate justice without human rights.
Sameh Shoukry, COP27 President and the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres targeted comments at negotiators, although they did not identify the blockers in negotiations.
According to Sameh Shoukry, the items of contention are "The Mitigation Work Program (MWP) is yet to reach the desired outcome, Adaptation is still held back by procedural matters, ambitious outcomes on finance have not yet materialised. And on Loss and Damage Parties are shying away from taking the difficult political decisions."
Add to this the cover decision of COP has yet to include any ambition, such as the request by India to change the phasedown of coal statement from COP26 to being a Phaseout of all Fossil Fuels.
Watch them both trying to shame the negotiators in stepping up, compromise to deliver climate ambition especially on Loss and Damage Finance at this COP.
See also Side-event at the bottom of this post: Practical Action, NYU, Germanwatch, UCS: To many the climate negotiations appear to be stuck, how do we unlock progress on Loss and Damage?
In a year where Russia launched a full scale war on Ukraine, violating human rights, supporting oil, gas, and nuclear, and manipulatin forests’ absorbing capacity, let alone the destruction of life, natural resources and infrastructure, how could Russia not be called out at COP27 at failing to implement climate action?
In fact going the other way.
The press release....
Russia is making all the wrong choices. Throughout this year…..and at the COP.
The Russian delegation used their only public appearance here lobbying for nuclear power and claiming that they produce the safest, cleanest nuclear power plants with zero emissions in energy production. Of course, ignoring the fact that production is not the only thing we are worried about. All those claims on safety and security were made while the Russian Army still occupies the Zaporozhskaya nuclear power plant in Ukraine putting millions of people in grave danger.
Russia is being so criminally self-centered that they decided that energy transition and focus on mitigation is a scam against them and even tried to deny the anthropogenic nature of the climate crisis. Talk about a fossil alert!
G20 Leaders Plant Mangroves In Bali Photo via PM Albanese via twitter
So what did the G20 meeting say on climate and how will it affect the UN Climate Change conference COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt?
"Mindful of our leadership role, we reaffirm our steadfast commitments, in pursuit of the objective of UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) to tackle climate change by strengthening the full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement and its temperature goal," a declaration issued at the end of the meeting said.
The declaration maintains the 1.5C temperature goal.
There was also an important bilateral meeting between Biden and Xi that cleared blockages for climate co-operation.
And a $20 billion financing package for Indonesia to phase out coal and increase renewables as part of it's energy transition and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Australia -Europe joint statement which in point 9 affirmed "deeply committed to full implementation of the Paris Agreement, noting the urgency to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees through rapid, deep and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in this decade and to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, and will spare no effort to bring about ambitious action by all members of the international community."
"The country avoided a commitment to halt new coal, and it was silent on the issue of phasing out existing plants in its new climate targets submission. "
"Under its BAU scenario, Turkey would emit 1.18 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030, more than double the 524 million tons it emitted in 2020. The newly proposed cut in emissions still means Turkey’s carbon footprint will increase by 32% at the end of the decade, with emissions peaking in 2038 at the latest, according to the plan."
Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen delivered a speech to COP27 High Level Segment today highlighting the new government's actions so far but also indicating there was so much more to do.
He articulated Australia's bid to co-host with Pacific Nations COP31 in 2026. Turkey is also bidding for that COP.. Czechia and Brazil are reported to be candidate countries for COP29 (2024) and COP30 (2025)
He also identified that global financial institutions and multilateral banks need to be reformed to support the new paradigm of a changing climate and developing countries needing to be sustainably supported in their mitigation and adaptation challenges.
The Guardian has already reported on an advanced copy of the speech. The Climate Council response is below the speech transcript.
I hope the Minister has a chance to meet Mia Motley, Prime Minister of Barbados, to discuss reformation of global financial institutions.
Australia's Ministerial representation at COP27 included Pat Conroy as Minister for International Development and the Pacific, present for the first week; Chris Bowen as Minister for Climate Change and Energy present for the second week; and Senator Jenny McAllister as Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy (Present for the second week).
Why didn't Prime Minister Albanese attend? Well COP27 is more of a technical conference focussed on the implementation of the Paris Agreement. While there was a 2 day high level segment in which about 100 leaders, Presidents and Prime Ministers flew in to attend, the political decisions to break deadlocks just weren't there. The high level segment was primarily leader grandstanding. Adam Morton in The Guardian thinks It was an avoidable mistake for Anthony Albanese not to attend Cop27, in terms of maintaining climate momentum. I don't think it was necessary for this COP.
At the UN Climate Change conference the latest Climate Change performance Index for 2023 was launched.
The good news? Australia has improved its overall ranking by 4 places, mainly due to improvement in international climate policy..
It recognises the new 2030 climate targets while saying the target is still insufficient. The ramping up renewables and EV tansition is still in the early development stages. There is criticism that Australia has no plan to phase out coal and gas, and the Safeguard mechanism is also criticised as being insufficient.
Australia is still in the very low performing countries and is behind many other developed nations.
So what is the decarbonisation path forward for Australia to improve its ranking?
"To align with a well-below-2°C trajectory, Australia must halt gas and coal mining for both domestic use and export, end fossil fuel subsidies, take further action to reduce GHG emissions from transport, and further increase its NDC ambition."
The USA is still delaying a Loss and Damages Facility, and are being called out on addressing the responsibility for the huge historic contribution of greenhouse gas emissions.
Will the conference achieve even a modicum of success in moving forward Loss and Damage and establishment of a Loss and Damage Finance Facility? That is still unknown.
A small battle was won at the start of COP27 to get Loss and Damage on the formal Agenda, but that is no gurantee of an outcome. There are countries who are still interested in delay, kicking the can down the road.
So on Friday members of civil society dressed in blue to Flood the COP at the conference. Most of the meetings had been shut down anyway due to the presence of US President Joe Biden and his speech announcing more details of actions the US is taking.
Early this week there was another flooding problem: a major sewerage flood at the UN Climate Change conference in Sharm El-Shiekh. Enough for people to start calling it Sharm El-Shit.
This is symptomatic of many problems and stories coming out of this COP. Expensive food, with long queues. Very little access to water, initially. Delegates being rorted by accommodation jacking up prices. Little shade or space for civil society to organise. The atmosphere of suppression of local civil society and human rights.
The Egyptian Presidency had allocated today, November 11, as Decarbonization Day. But really it turned out to be a Fossil of the day Bonanza. So many countries won a Fossil award today: USA, Russia, Egypt and United Arab Emirates. Read on...
I know from attending online the Advamcing the Global Methane Pledge, which included the CEO of Total Energies, gas was being marketed as a transition fuel to be used for decades and the Global Methane Pledge an excuse to seek financial subsidies to do what these companies already should be doing.
Australia’s emissions are almost double those of Egypt, according to a new global emissions tracker - Climate Trace - launched at COP27.
The Climate TRACE platform tracks greenhouse gas emissions from around the world, providing maps and data on 72,000 power plants, oil refineries, airports, and more.
This tool adds substantially to global transparency of reporting emissions and effectiveness of nations at reducing emissions.
The Application was launched by Former US Vice President Al Gore, with an introduction by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
Or take note of Fossil Fuel Polluters/Lobbyists taking over the COP. An analysis of registrations found 636 fossil fuel lobbyists have been registered to the COP27 climate talks, affiliated with some of the world's biggest polluting oil and gas giants. This is an increase of over 25% from COP26 says a Global Witness analysis
Or refer to the civil society intervention in the opening plenary. There can be no climate Justice without Human rights.
During the UN Climate Change Conference the Environmental NGO Climate Action Network awards the Fossil of the Day awards to highlight those contries or entities doing the worst.
This year at Sharm El-Sheik the first award was made on November 9... to Japan.
Today’s Fossil of the Day is… Japan!
For being the world’s largest public financier for oil, gas, and coal projects
As the COP27 climate talks got underway in Egypt this week, climate and energy minister Chris Bowen announced Australia would bid to co-host the annual United Nations climate summit with Pacific island nations in 2026.
Playing host to the world’s climate negotiations could be a very big deal. It would be the largest diplomatic event Australia has ever held and would have major implications for both climate policy and our international relations.
A successful summit would signal Australia’s shift from fossil fuel heavyweight to renewables superpower and herald a new era of regional cooperation with the Pacific. However, these outcomes cannot be assumed, nor can support from Pacific nations.
