Hopes were high ahead of the UN’s twenty-seventh Conference of the Parties (COP27) which was branded as the “Implementation COP” because of its potential to put the needs of developing countries center stage and bridge the gap between Global North and Global South countries. 

Lack of inclusion, in general, has long been a problem in climate negotiations and policy-making. The burden of responsibility is often disproportionately placed on those who have had the least impact on climate change, yet are the most impacted. This COP, which pledged to transform ideas and previously unfulfilled financial pledges into action, proclaimed a human-centered approach meant to bring about real solutions for the mitigation, adaptation, and relief from the damages inflicted by climate change. Egypt’s Minister of Environment Yasmine Fouad returned to the American University in Cairo after visiting last year while the much-anticipated climate summit was still in planning. Delivering a keynote speech entitled “Egypt and Climate Change—Post COP27,” she was eager to tell audiences “how the story went,” detailing the process of organizing the summit and the particular attention given to inclusion in turning mere ideas into implementable actions. 

Preparing for COP27
Fouad explained that before March 2022, Egypt’s plans for dealing with climate change were limited. Organizing COP27 therefore gave Egypt the opportunity to revisit its climate plans and strategies. That process included creating Egypt’s first updated Nationally Determined Contributions, as well as Egypt’s National Climate Change Strategy for 2050, which stated a goal of placing “the quality of life of the Egyptian citizen as a priority” and outlined how different facets of society can play a role in bringing this strategy to life, including the private sector, civil society, women, and academics. To follow that mantra, the road to COP included many collaborations between “the government, the civil society, the youth, the women, and the private sector, in order to prepare for one thing, this is, a COP for implementation”. 

Another facet of carving this inclusive road to implementation, she said, was maintaining a human-centered approach. This approach was critical to selecting COP27’s thematic days, which designate the central topics to be discussed during each day of COP. For instance, water was given its own day for the first time, along with other resources such as food and energy. Days were designated based on “who is going to be affected and who is going to affect”—so, alongside holding days for water, food, and energy, other days were dedicated to gender, youth, and civil society. The question of how policy in these sectors would be implemented could then be answered with finance and science-themed days, Fouad added. By framing the thematic days around these pragmatic questions, COP27 was able to set up a strategy for implementation with human needs at the center of the discussion. 

Building Momentum for Implementation
Aside from establishing the structure of this COP, Fouad stated that it “was not enough to have the themes and the issues; we wanted to have the momentum”. The minister and her team built momentum in two ways: first through the size of participation. Fouad announced that COP27 included 51,000 participants and 120 heads of state in attendance. She added that the conference also held 168 percent more events than the last three COPs. The second way for building momentum was in the area of negotiations. The agreement to establish a loss and damage fund has been widely regarded as an achievement in COP27. 

Fouad emphasized the significance of reaching a decision on the fund, especially for “small island developing states, for the least developed countries, for the most vulnerable countries, for the Africans,” and for countries like the Maldives where “loss and damage is the only survival plan”. Negotiations around a new Adaptation Agenda and around reworking climate finance commitments were also important keystones. These negotiations once again held a particular importance for the countries most vulnerable to climate change, which have long suffered from an adaptation gap—between climate adaptation goals and the actual implementation of adaptation measures due to resource limitations and competing priorities—as well as a lack of commitment follow-through from more developed countries on climate finance. 

Fouad attributed success in these areas to the country’s leadership in “framing the discussion, providing an open space for different parties to the convention,” so that it was “not only Egypt” reaching these successes. One way this was done was through the organization of the Green Zone and the Blue Zone. The Green Zone is a space created for the business community, youth, civil and indigenous societies, academia, artists, and fashion communities from all over the world to host exhibitions, workshops, cultural performances, and talks. According to the COP27 website, the Green Zone “promotes dialogue, awareness, education, and commitments”. 

The Blue Zone is the UN-managed area designated for negotiations, which can only be accessed by those accredited by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat. “We tried as much as we can to have the Green Zone very close to the Blue Zone, because we wanted to make sure that it was an inclusive COP,” said Fouad, also adding that COP27’s Green Zone was three times the size of the Green Zone at COP26 in order to have “the most affected the most heard”. Discussions in the Green Zone were set up to mirror those occurring in the Blue Zone, in an effort to create a “place to discuss, and to open a dialogue and to create and integrate their ideas” for those who “did not have authorization to the Blue Zone”. By including the private sector, civil society, women, academics, youth, and local communities in the Green Zone, Fouad said that they aimed to deliver the message that “climate change is not only an environmental and scientific phenomenon; climate change is the real risk for the one and only planet Earth and that is something that affects every single human being.” 

However, many observers condemned the presence of representatives of the oil and gas sector in the Green Zone’s discussions on “Decarbonization Day.” Fouad argued in favor of their inclusion, emphasizing the necessity of giving the space to representatives to “discuss, to make commitments, and to show us how they can be committed”. Nonetheless, this is part of a longstanding discussion among activists and environmentalists that the growing involvement of the fossil fuel lobby overshadows the voices of the most impacted and draws away from important efforts of fossil fuel phaseout. There was further condemnation of COP27’s attendance as many activists struggled to get accreditation and funding amidst prohibitively expensive travel and hotel costs. Young African activists were particularly impacted by COP27’s inaccessibility, a severe detriment to what was hoped to be “the African COP”. 

From Ideas to Implementation
In order to build on the momentum established through the inclusive planning process and important negotiations of COP27, Egypt is today working with the United Arab Emirates, which will be hosting COP28 in Dubai at the end of 2023, to support the decisions made at COP27. Fouad reported that leaders are following up on the loss and damage fund: “We’re working on the terms of reference and the scope. We’re working on different committees for implementation.” 

Fouad went on to highlight continuing efforts made by her ministry to engage the Egyptian public in climate action now that COP27 is over. By doing so, Egypt hopes to create sustainable solutions that get to the root of the problem through “creation, implementation, new ideas, and job opportunities—and linking that to the economic pathway of this country”. For example, the Ministry of Environment recently established the Green and Climate Investment Unit, which looks at opportunities for small and medium projects from youth and links them to incubators in the private sector. The ministry has also identified potential sectors for programs and employment opportunities that will directly link to Egypt’s mitigation and adaptation efforts, including renewable energy, waste, the bio-based economy, and protected areas. By taking this approach of incorporating climate action into economic opportunity, Fouad hopes for a shift in perspective that will allow people to “look behind climate change,” getting to the roots of the issue and creating sustainable change. 

The road to true implementation for the “Implementation COP” may be long and complicated, even with the successes of decisions like the long-awaited loss and damage fund. For implementation to be most effective and to truly move climate action forward, Fouad argued that every voice must be included and that every idea must move off the page and materialize. “COP27 is just the beginning of the road,” she said. 

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is one of the most water-stressed regions in the world. Global warming has exacerbated water shortages in water-poor areas, increased the risk of drought for agriculture, and increased the vulnerability of vital ecosystems. North Africa, specifically, has registered one of the lowest water rates in the world of less than 500 cubic meters per capita per annum. It is undeniable that climate change will play a massive role in the region’s choices regarding water as a resource. 

Unequal distribution of water resources in a region where they are already scarce has led to their overexploitation. For example, groundwater, which is the primary water source for domestic, agricultural, and industrial uses, has been used to expand agriculture into arid or desert areas through agribusiness companies. These companies promote the use of groundwater-based agriculture for economic profit, which increases the pressure placed on these valuable water resources. 

Scarcity as a result of extreme weather conditions also has a significant impact on agricultural activity in semi-arid regions, affecting crop productivity, increasing groundwater salinity in coastal areas, and causing water deficits and difficult working conditions for farmers. In the meantime, escalating climate conditions are changing and will continue to impact agriculture across the region. 

One face of that new reality is the unexpected ripple effect from conflicts and wars on agriculture and global and regional food security. For example, both Russia and Ukraine combined are responsible for 30 percent of global wheat exports while countries like Egypt, Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia produce less than their population’s wheat consumption and depend on Ukraine and/or Russia for wheat imports. 

The ongoing crisis has left these countries facing inflation, and many food commodities have vanished from local stores, making living conditions unbearable amid increasing poverty rates. Furthermore, decades of political instability, conflict, and higher import-to-export ratios have poorly impacted the agricultural sector’s development in the MENA region and left many food systems stagnant. 

The solution? Addressing climate change is crucial in policy and management decisions related to water. Water management planning must take into account the local context of specific countries and make use of integrated policies across Arab states. It is also crucial to have the ability to forecast future challenges but also put in place mechanisms which can turn current challenges into opportunities. 

However, it is worth noting that the politicization of water issues in the region has, in some cases, removed the question of water scarcity from development discussions and from the public sphere. The late Muammar Gaddafi, for example, made water a national security variable in Libya, which distanced the topic from local and public discussion. The former regime imposed a top-down vision, empowering the state to be the sole “water manager,” with the public sector controlling all resources and leaving no room for national and international stakeholders to support the development of alternative water resources that would reduce pressure on groundwater sources. The water crisis in Libya re-emerged as an issue of public debate only after the 2011 uprising unseated Gaddafi’s government. 

Yet, the prevalence of corruption, lack of prioritization of the environment, and weak legislation have stemmed the pace and effectiveness of climate action across the region. Studies show that corruption obstructs anti-climate change funding efforts and initiatives, fuelling violations against the environment such as increased deforestation, illegal harvesting of minerals, and underreported overfishing. 

Policy efforts to protect the environment become ripe for corruption because many developing countries in the region have weak governmental institutions that lack transparency. One example of corruption is the relationship between the ruling class in some countries and the fossil fuel lobby, which makes more allowances for oil and gas companies to exist and exercise environment-harming practices. Although laws are available to guard against these practices, the need for an environmental strategy in some countries, such as Lebanon—where corruption has held the environment hostage, and has failed to address the waste crisis and the doubling of severe pollution rates in the air—is crucial to making any progress attainable. Therefore, tackling environmental challenges in the region requires robust governance systems that can allow for the effective design and implementation of climate policies and better monitoring programs. 

More than a National Security Problem: Thinking about Water Management
Looking at the water issue from a national security lens has limited the opportunities to take full potential and think about water management. In fact, water can easily be a transnational problem, as in the case of the Turkey, Syria, and Iraq conflict over the Euphrates Tigris or The Renaissance Dam in the case of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan. Considering these examples, it is imperative to think about water and water management solutions from a regional lens and, in some cases, through international mediation and support. The politicization of water issues has diminished or narrowed the lens through which water is perceived. 

One of these solutions includes investments in water technologies such as desalination plants in coastal areas and wastewater treatment for water reuse. This will allow for regional cooperation and integration to emerge and will therefore create more opportunities to develop solutions to water issues. For example, Egypt plans to build fourteen desalination plants through the Sovereign Fund of Egypt, in which Egypt and UAE-based firms are to invest in solar power. Studies have suggested the importance of investing in renewable energy-powered desalination plants while considering the sustainable use of renewable energies used in their operation. In addition, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, with the UAE and Saudi Arabia taking the lead, are reported to have the highest global water desalination capacity of 81 percent; this means that they are capable of producing around 40 percent of the world’s desalinated water, allowing them to be go-to partners with other countries that suffer from scarcity or lack water technology. 

Countries in the region also need to develop the know-how to integrate water efficiency into economic reform policies in general. That means developing a unified reference framework for the water sector that includes a comprehensive and focused strategy which integrates directions, policies, legislation, and practices at the national level. This work includes stakeholder engagement and assessment of the current state of the sector across a range of issues such as water demand, water resources, and sector operations. It should identify the nature and magnitude of gaps between supply and demand and the sector’s economies under different scenarios. 

Water management is a must and governments should consider ways to become more efficient. Investment in water-saving technologies in irrigation, such as drip technology or water capturing, boosts the development of supported entrepreneurship and innovation. In Morocco, for example, two hundred thousand agri-food producers and entrepreneurs were reported to have received financial incentives to transition to climate-smart agriculture techniques and practices. Governments have a role to incentivize farming to conserve water. They can also take further steps to prohibit growing water-intensive crops to help reduce water consumption for agricultural areas. One of the solutions that can be further investigated, for instance, is to provide incentive packages in both energy and water to assist farmers in adapting to changes imposed on these sectors. 

Enhancing the efficiency of buildings and the overall construction sector is another way to go, although this is usually missed from development discussions around water construction. The building industry consumes high quantities of water in its daily operations; some examples of this challenge include the construction boom of residential and industrial buildings in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Regulations must consider local contexts and the available tools before looking into other models from other regions that wouldn’t necessarily translate well once implemented. 

Such green thinking is emerging in the region, especially in Jordan where wastewater treatment systems are being used for agriculture use. The As-Samra wastewater treatment plant is a successful example, and has been used in the country under the Public Private Partnership economic model. In contrast, in the Gulf region and conflict countries such as Syria, Libya, and Yemen, there is heavy dependence on groundwater, amid a growing demand for bottled water as a source of clean drinking water. Nestle SA and Agthia Group are among the major players in the GCC’s bottled water market and have succeeded in marketing bottled water to be as clean as faucet water. The implication of this perception is significant environmental damage due to plastic waste. 

Water planning requires the inclusion of different sectors— and not only focus on agriculture—and must be addressed as a cross-sectoral issue requiring a holistic approach to its management. This necessitates not only global and regional partnerships, but also a long-term vision to have a return on investment that could possibly save the planet. 

There are multiple intriguing, often competing, narratives about the future of work. To some, it is digital, virtual, inclusively diverse, and overall promising. To others, it is scary, with machines taking over most of the work we thought we could do. Giant tech companies made much noise a couple of years ago by calling for universal basic income to compensate for anticipated job losses. Even creative writing, what we humans thought we could exclusively do, was threatened by the recent emergence of ChatGPT.  One of the less circulated narratives about the future of work is that it can be green.

Lone voices about green jobs were heard after the global financial crisis of 2008, with efforts spearheaded by a number of international organizations including the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). More than five years later, in 2013, the ILO offered a definition of green jobs during its Conference of Labour Statisticians, as jobs that are meant to “preserve or restore the environment, be they in traditional sectors such as manufacturing and construction, or in new, emerging green sectors such as renewable energy and energy efficiency”. They also noted that green jobs could help reduce negative environmental impact and lead to sustainable enterprises and economies. Green jobs have been heralded as the promising win-win scenario, reconciling the long competing objectives of economic growth and environmental sustainability. 

The 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27), which was presided by Egypt in 2022, concluded with a historic decision to establish and operationalize a loss and damage fund. This is anticipated to stimulate interest in green investment and expand prospects for green jobs. In Egypt, 2022 has been a year of significant milestones including the issuing of the first comprehensive National Climate Change Strategy for the country (until 2050), which put mitigation costs at 211 billion dollars. The year also witnessed the establishment of the National Climate Change Council, a national Climate Change Measuring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) System, and the publication of a revised Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) report. 

However, green jobs have not been created in the numbers or pace that had been expected, and especially in the sectors where they were expected to grow such as the renewable energy industries. Moreover, enforcing green policies, which is key to creating and activating green jobs, fell short. A set of conditions can enable “green jobs” to grow, some of which require a rethinking of how we envision them and where they are most likely to be found. 

Tying Green Policies to Green Jobs
Green jobs are driven by green policies. In fact, green jobs only happen in contexts where there is strong enforcement of green policies. Such an enforcement creates the demand for green skills and green jobs. In a more recent iteration of the definition of green jobs, the ILO and UNDP directly linked green jobs to green policies and offered a typology of green jobs as: (i) direct jobs created in green industries, such as wind and solar electricity; (ii) indirect jobs created in the rest of the economy due to demand of goods and services as a result from the green policies and growth of green industries; and (iii) induced jobs created in all industries due to growth of income resulting from the green policies, which boost household consumption. The main source of green employment is ultimately the links between the economy and the environment. 

Some have argued that we need not look too far for green jobs. A green transition would mean that some jobs will be reduced or even eliminated, such as packaging, particularly using plastics. 

However, there is also the expectation that a green transition will lead to many jobs being gained. These include, but are not limited to, pollution control officers and environmental standards experts in all fields and at different levels of enterprises. Some jobs will be transformed. For example, a driver might shift from vehicles that are built on fossil fuel technology to vehicles operating on renewable energy. Another example is in plumbing, which will have to rely on new skills in water recycling and water management to reduce the depletion of environmental resources. 

Plot Twist 1: The Prospective Marriage of Green and Traditional Jobs 

A key plot twist is that there is also a growing consensus that green jobs do not necessarily need to be in new unconventional sectors and that they can be found in some of the most conventional ones. Agriculture presents an interesting example of the potential for creating green jobs in a conventional sector. This seemingly green sector—at least plants are green—is a major part of the climate problem and needs to be the central focus of greening policies. 

Agriculture stretches the use of natural resources including soil and water, and negatively impacts biodiversity. In a country that is water-poor like Egypt, agriculture is responsible for more than 80 percent of water consumption. 

Agriculture is also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, thanks to the livestock sector. This sector is globally responsible for almost half of human-induced methane emissions from cattle and the fermentative processes in manure. 

The growing consumption of meat and dairy products is a key contributor to the environmental footprint of the sector. Agriculture is also a highly vulnerable sector to climate change. Extreme weather events and the depletion of water and soil resources all affect crop production. With the growing pressures to increase crop yields to meet population demands, the sector increasingly contributes to climate change and then becomes most affected by its adversities. In Egypt, threats of water poverty and the increased salinization of the Nile Delta due to rising sea levels are projected to have a serious impact on food production in the country. 

There is great hope for green jobs in agriculture. Countries in the Global North, or in other words rich countries, have long reckoned with the fact that agriculture is a knowledge-intensive sector. Research on technologies for seed varieties, soil management, water resource management, and crop protection has long thrived in these countries. Digital technology has been increasingly used in agriculture including the reliance on remote sensing data, digital advisory systems, and digital platforms for trade and supply chain support in the sector. 

Investment in these technologies has contributed to job gains and to attracting talent to a sector that has traditionally lost workers to industry and services. According to Eurostat, agriculture remains a big employer within the European Union, with 17 million people working in the sector in 2020, both in full-time and part-time jobs, which is calculated at the equivalent of 8.2 million full-time workers. 

There is an opportunity for countries in the Global South to benefit from this experience and to attract investments in greening the agriculture sector. These countries are burdened by population pressures and are not supported enough in areas of research and development capabilities. 

Knowledge transfer and contextualization remain a key recommended approach in this context, factoring in both indigenous knowledge and science. Climate Smart Agriculture, an initiative supported by the World Bank, for instance, seeks to capture the essence of such efforts by focusing on the three-fold objective of increasing agricultural yields; enhancing resilience to drought, pests, diseases and other climate-related risks and shocks; and reducing emissions. A gendered focus of these policies is of paramount importance since climate change impacts men and women differently. Women’s role in agriculture is least recognized, which puts women farmers at a disadvantage in access to different agricultural inputs. 

While there are great prospects for green jobs in conventional sectors like agriculture, renewable energy has not really been creating the number of green jobs that was previously envisioned. 

According to a recent report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), this sector has globally provided only 12.7 million jobs in 2021. China alone created almost half of these jobs. China’s job creation is in the manufacturing of renewable energy-related products, primarily in the solar sector. China is followed by Brazil, the United States, India, and Indonesia. Each of these countries has its own renewable energy job profile. For example, hydropower has been the sector that created most jobs in renewable energy in Indonesia. Arab countries are quite lagging in adding jobs in renewable energy, with Jordan being described by IRENA as the largest country with jobs in renewable energy in the region, estimated at 50,000 in 2021. 

Plot Twist 2: Green Jobs Don’t Have to be “Green” 

Another major plot twist is that green jobs are not only about saving the environment. The ILO insists that environmentally responsive jobs in some sectors are not necessarily green. In the 2013 definition of green jobs, the ILO starts by defining these as “decent jobs”. The decent work agenda has five main components: income security (in terms of level, regularity, and predictability); employment security (existence of employment agreement is key); health and safety issues; access to reasonable hours of work (not too short and not too long); and skill building prospects. 

However, this definition presents a challenge. Work opportunities associated with environmentally sustainable practices and outputs are only considered green if they also comply with the job quality standards set by the ILO’s decent work agenda. Informal jobs, for example, that contribute to improving energy efficiency or minimizing waste and pollution cannot therefore be considered green jobs because of their decent work deficit. In this fashion, low-wage earners working informally in the recycling sector or in the installation of solar panels do not participate in green jobs. 

Even though they are contributing to environmentally friendly activities, their employment cannot be classified as “green” since their jobs are not defined by the conditions of decent work. 

Green jobs might constitute a narrative of hope about the future of work amid fears about the potential repercussions of climate change. However, green jobs require a deliberate course of policy action by governments to steer economies toward a green transition. Green jobs need policies to support a green transition in different sectors, and cannot be created without them. Such a transition is urgent under the quickening pace of climate change. Although hopeful, the green jobs narrative should be treated with caution like all other narratives because its implementation hinges on so many factors. 

The conferences of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) should be seen as a continuous annual process, and not as separate events. Only by analyzing the scope of the decisions adopted at previous conferences, and the content of the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that warn about the challenges facing the international community in reducing the global threat of climate change and countries’ new issues of concern, can the result of each conference be objectively evaluated. 

The Framework Convention was adopted in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It entered into force in 1995, the year in which the first Conference of the Parties (COP) took place in Bonn, Germany. Today, it is the convention that has the greatest international acceptance, with the accession of 197 states, including the 193 UN member states, and some territories that have also committed to implement its provisions. 

Each annual COP examines the state of international cooperation on climate change, the possibility of taking additional measures to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, or adaptation measures to climate change effects, and other international cooperation initiatives such as financing, capacity building, and technical cooperation, to support developing countries in reducing their emissions or enacting their own adaptation programs. 

COP conferences are the only mechanisms available to the international community to reach agreements on reducing GHG emissions, and thus ward off the most serious threat faced by the international community as a whole: global climate change. The conferences are increasingly massive events in which thousands of people participate including delegates from national and subnational governments (regions and cities), representatives of international organizations, private sector and civil society organizations, experts, academics, activists, and media representatives. Discussions can be followed remotely by thousands of accredited people. More than forty thousand people were accredited at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh. 

Decision-making is achieved through consensus but decisions are not adopted by the majority, which undoubtedly limits the possibilities of achieving significant progress with the speed required to tackle the most serious global threat facing humanity. However, when consensus is reached on a specific issue, it is more likely the corresponding decision will be applied by all states. In any case, COPs have no current substitute—the future of humanity and its survival as a species relies on their decisions. 

A Global Threat
According to the latest IPCC report, global temperature rise is a scientifically proven fact and is occurring in all regions of the planet without exception, although in a differentiated way. Climate change caused by global warming is not uniform across geographic regions—there are areas and countries that are much more vulnerable than others. The IPCC estimates that global average temperatures are already 1.1 degrees Celsius above the 1850 pre-industrial levels. This rise in global temperatures has devastating consequences in many regions and countries around the world, causing prolonged droughts, catastrophic floods, the melting of the two poles, rising water levels and acidification of the seas, and an accelerated loss of terrestrial and maritime biodiversity. Climate change is also affecting food production in many countries. In 2022, large producers registered lower production than in previous years due to more acute and prolonged droughts. According to the World Food Programme, climate change puts 340 million people at risk of starvation in countries that have suffered a degree of food insecurity for years at a time. Moreover, climate change is producing new mass and disorderly migrations and violent conflicts in many countries. 

According to the IPCC, a rise in average global temperature above 1.5 degrees Celsius could cause irreversible damage to the global climate system. Global GHG emissions must be radically reduced in the coming years of this decade: precisely, by 45 percent by 2030, using 2010 as a baseline. 

The Main Achievements of COP27
The main challenge faced by COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh was implementing the agreements reached in the previous six years, especially the Paris Agreement adopted at COP21 in Paris, and the so-called “Glasgow Package” approved in 2021 during COP26 in Glasgow. 

It was expected that the most sensitive issue at COP27 would be related to the “loss and damage” suffered by poor nations, particularly those most vulnerable to climate change. The agreement to establish a special fund to help these countries cope with the consequences of global warming, such as terrible floods, intense heat waves, and prolonged droughts, was a positive outcome of COP27. Sadly, we know these climate phenomena do not come alone. They also bring with them the destruction of basic infrastructure, disruptions in food production, threats to the health of populations, and often generate violent conflicts that, in addition to the loss of lives, cause new waves of displaced persons and refugees. Although they might belatedly receive some climate justice, this new fund is a triumph for the large group of countries that have contributed least to climate change but are suffering its consequences the most. Their representatives returned home with the satisfaction that the international community had not completely abandoned them, and that they were able to show some results to both their governments and populations. 

But in reality, establishing a fund like this is a sign that something very serious is happening. Its creation is necessary precisely because things are not going well. Instead of countries mitigating GHG emissions in recent decades, they have doubled them since 1990. If in the last thirty years the main GHG emitters had made a consistent effort in reducing them, these countries would not be creating tools to address the losses and damages they are causing. 

Nevertheless, COP27 took important decisions on all items on its agenda, and three important acknowledgements stand out. Firstly, the recognition that to avoid irreversible damage in the global climate system and to keep the limit of temperature increase at 1.5 Celsius degrees, it is necessary to reduce global GHG emissions by 43 percent by 2030. Secondly, there was recognition of the need to double the funds for national adaptation plans in developing countries. Thirdly, the acknowledgement that developed countries have not fulfilled their commitment to annually mobilize one hundred billion dollars to help developing countries. 

However, perhaps the most important COP27 agreement on financing was the understanding that about four trillion dollars is required to be invested annually in renewable energy until 2030 to achieve zero GHG emissions by 2050, and that the transition to a low-carbon economy will require an annual investment of between four and six trillion dollars. This implies the need to multiply private sector financing to help fund the sustainable transformation of our societies. Only by incorporating the private sector in all countries will it be possible to channel the enormous financial resources that this transformation requires. 

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Report on the 2022 Emissions Gap shows that the world is still far from reaching the Paris Agreement target of limiting the rise of global average temperatures to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius. According to the report, the policies of governments, mainly of G20 member countries, “point to a temperature increase of 2.8 degrees by the end of the century. Implementing current pledges will only reduce this to a temperature rise of 2.4-2.6 Celsius degrees by the end of the century.” 

It is evident that there is strong resistance and competing interests that prevent environment-friendly structural changes from materializing to defeat climate change. As with the United States and Western Europe in the last century, today the main oil-producing countries and large transnational corporations defend the exploitation of fossil fuels, denying that these are mainly responsible for GHG emissions. Powerful political interests also exist in some high-emitting countries. The outcome of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections returned control of the House of Representatives to Republicans; their spokespeople have already announced that they will oppose the Biden administration’s efforts to accelerate the energy transition to renewable energy sources. 

The 2022 UNEP report concluded that only an accelerated transformation of our societies can save us from the worst consequences of climate change. But this transformation cannot occur spontaneously. It is an indispensable condition that national governments assume a real commitment against climate change, adopting realistic plans to attract investments for renewable and non-polluting energies and sustainable projects. 

Sustainable transformation requires the main GHG emitters—China, the United States, the European Union, India, and Japan—to make additional efforts to reduce their emissions, and to do so as soon as possible. For that reason, it is good news that China and the United States have resumed their dialogue on this matter, without which it would have been difficult to conceive that both nations could significantly reduce their emissions before 2030. 

COP27 also invited all countries to continue making national efforts to reduce their GHG emissions during the present decade. There is hope that new technologies and increased financing can accelerate national mitigation plans among major emitters, most of which are part of the G20. 

Another significant decision was the announcement by the UN Secretary-General which extended, over the next five years, an early warning network on climate disaster risks to the entire planet; this will help populations to develop their resilience through specific and timely strategies. 

All in all, COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh was a diplomatic success and holds out hope that over the next few years, until 2030, countries may make additional efforts to reduce their GHG emissions. It was a success because, for the first time, it provided international support to the least-developed and island developing countries for the loss and damage they are experiencing due to climate change. It should be stressed that these are the countries that have contributed the least to global warming. 

The Challenges of COP28
The challenges facing COP28 in Dubai this November are enormous, however. Perhaps the most significant of these challenges will be for the conference to make the necessary decisions to operationalize the new loss and damage fund by 2024 to begin helping developing countries. 

It will also be important for developed countries to demonstrate strong signs of intent to fulfill their commitment on resource mobilization. Beyond that commitment, it is essential to increase financial flows that facilitate the transformation of the global economy to a low-carbon one. Trillions of dollars are required, and funding is not flowing with the necessary speed. 

The war in Ukraine dislocated global energy and food markets, further increasing food insecurity in many countries in North Africa and the Middle East. COP28 cannot make decisions on these issues except to emphasize that the global economy must start reducing its dependence on fossil fuels. A gradual and orderly reduction, one that does not unfairly punish the countries whose economies depend on the exports of these fuels, is necessary. 

Along with increasing measures focused on emission mitigation, it is essential that national climate change adaptation plans be scaled up, particularly with realistic nature-based programs such as reforestation, extensive mangrove cultivation in coastal areas, and expansion of protected areas. 

The ambition of Nationally Determined Contributions, especially of high-emitting countries, needs to be significantly increased. We will see if at COP28 some of these countries are willing to announce new goals. 

All measures taken at the national, regional, and international levels require a significant increase in financial resources from the private sector toward green projects. Incentives must be increased for financial and non-finance institutions to raise their investments for the transformation of national economies into low-carbon economies. That will only happen if national governments make their commitment to sustainable transformation explicit in their national development strategies and plans for key sectors, especially energy, transportation, urban energy efficiency, and the food system. 

It also requires a change in the practices of international development banks, especially the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, regional banks, and financing funds for green projects. COP27 adopted a decision to request that all such entities review their procedures for providing timely concessional credit to developing countries. 

In the medium and long-term, the only way to address climate change is through increased global awareness. This change implies a cultural, economic, and political transformation that leads countries to real changes in their patterns of production and consumption of all kinds of goods. Avoiding resource waste is essential. The war against nature is real and risks the survival of humanity on the only planet we can inhabit. We must learn to stop waging this war on nature that has led to a 69 percent average decline of wildlife populations since 1970. The Earth will adapt to climate change. It always has. But that adaptation could be done without us human beings. 

The author gratefully acknowledges support from Shikha Bhasin, Prayank Jain, Nandini Harihar, Sumit Prasad, and Jhalak Aggarwal. 

Egypt assumed the presidency of the Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) during a devastating year of heat waves, droughts, lost crops, and extreme floods. These events made it impossible to ignore climate-related damages to lives and livelihoods. They also made clear that the long-held assumptions that the rich would escape the impact and the poor would need to adapt to it no longer held true. The undeniable truth is that the climate crisis is impacting vulnerable communities across the world. 

The agreement on a loss and damage finance facility was the most consequential outcome from the twenty-seventh round of negotiations (COP27) held in Sharm El-Sheikh. But the goal of keeping temperature rise to levels that could minimize loss and damage continues to slip away. Egypt, which will hold the COP presidency until November 2023, has an opportunity to orient COP away from conversation and commitments and toward action and accountability. To do so, it will need to implement a suite of reforms based on protecting vulnerable populations, ensuring party compliance, increasing transparency, and democratizing the energy transition. 

Returns Undelivered
Just over eighty years ago Sir Stafford Cripps, a member of the British War Cabinet, visited India on a special mission. In return for support for the Allied war effort, he promised that India would be granted dominion status within the British Empire. India’s leaders wanted complete independence. In response to Cripps’ proposal, Mahatma Gandhi said, “It was a post-dated cheque on a failing bank.” 

Banks are filled with money. But they run on something non-monetary, namely trust. If trust in a bank falls, depositors start pulling out their savings. If many depositors do the same, there is a run on the bank, and it collapses. 

The global climate regime is complex and multi-institutional. At its heart sits a bank called the UNFCCC. Its customers are nearly every country in the world, rich and poor, large and small, landlocked and island. For three decades, the UNFCCC has served as a “bank of commitments”. Earlier, one set of countries had to capitalize the bank with their periodic commitments to reduce emissions, give money to another set of countries, and transfer climate-friendly technology. From 2015, all clients started depositing commitments in the form of nationally determined contributions. The bank accepted all sorts of deposits: some related to emissions reduction, others related to emissions intensity reduction, some related to clean energy, and others to afforestation and adaptation. 

But banks do not run only on deposits. The deposits are, in turn, loaned out to generate better returns for all parties. If the returns on investment are poor, trust in the bank can fall. The UNFCCC, in effect, has now become a vault for more and more valuable deposits, including commitments for net zero emissions. If the near-term returns remain poor, the long-term commitments will likewise become post-dated cheques on a failing bank. 

Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen from 359.99 parts per million in 1992 to 420.14 in late January 2023. Global average surface temperatures are now 1.06 degrees Celsius—roughly 2 degrees Fahrenheit— above the pre-industrial period, or since 1880. All major industrialized countries have together reduced emissions by only 3.7 percent since 1990. Of thirty-six climate and clean energy technology initiatives launched since 2010, only four implemented technology transfer to developing countries. Sectoral partnerships and technology codevelopment are likely to be the way forward. Of twenty-six clean energy finance initiatives launched since 2011, only nine consider de-risking investments for emerging economies, and none do it at scale. For damages caused by climate change that have impacted countries that had little to do with causing the crisis, so far, no compensation has arrived. 

Repeated failures to deliver returns have already eroded trust. Every few years, the world’s leaders are called to the COP summits to “recapitalize” with more commitments but little evidence of delivering on them. In short, these are post-dated cheques. If the UNFCCC wants to avoid a run on its bank of commitments, it must transform itself into a “bank of actions”. 

Gandhi’s Talisman for the Vulnerable
The concept of loss and damage (or L&D) recognizes the adverse impacts that vulnerable communities and countries face as a result of a changing climate—including the increased incidents and intensity of natural disasters and extreme weather as well as slow-onset temperature increase, sea-level rise, or desertification—and seeks wealth redistribution as a means of addressing harm. Rich countries have resisted L&D payments for years, worried that their historical emissions would impose large calls for compensation. This year, under pressure, they could no longer duck their responsibility. The first test of UNFCCC’s conversion into a bank of actions would be how the decision on loss and damage financing is implemented. 

Once again, Mahatma Gandhi offers some guidance. Just a few days before his assassination, he said: 

“I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.” 

Following Gandhi’s talisman would mean that one of the UNFCCC’s core purposes should be to protect the most vulnerable, which can be done by prioritizing the COP27 decision on L&D and avoiding suppression by procedural wrangles. The decision includes the development of a Transition Committee dedicated to L&D, with equal representation across rich and poor countries. In order to operationalize the funding arrangements, this committee has been tasked with configuring institutional arrangements, identifying and expanding sources of funding, and coordinating with existing funding arrangements by COP28. While the sticking points of negotiations remain, the Egyptian presidency can promote five supportive steps. 

Firstly, develop a Global Vulnerability Index to quantify vulnerability to the adverse effects of climate change. In 2021, the Council on Energy, Environment, and Water (CEEW) developed a Climate Vulnerability Index for India based on exposure to extreme events, sensitivity of the communities, and adaptive capacity of local administrations. It found that over 80 percent of Indians are highly vulnerable to extreme climatic disasters. Such data and research in the public domain help map critical vulnerabilities and plan strategies to build resilience by climate-proofing communities, economies, and infrastructure. Granular-level indices like these do not exist in the public domain across countries. A global index, based on climatic risks and compounding impacts, would transparently— and scientifically—establish the sheer size of the problem that the L&D facility would have to address. 

Secondly, encourage attribution science to assess whether and to what extent human-caused climate change altered the likelihood and intensity of extreme climatic events. Unfortunately, contributions from the Global South are limited. A recent study found that only 3.8 percent of global climate research spending is dedicated to Africa; 78 percent is spent in Europe and North America. A South-led research consortium dedicated to scientific exploration of event attribution science should be encouraged to build research capacity in developing countries and strengthen the L&D framework. 

Thirdly, champion the Early Warning Systems Initiative. The Executive Action Plan for the Early Warnings for All Initiative, unveiled at COP27, aims to ensure every person on Earth is protected by early warning systems for oncoming natural disasters within five years. It has called for targeted investments of 3.1 billion dollars between 2023 and 2027, which could avoid annual losses of 3-16 billion dollars against natural hazards in developing countries. The value of early warning systems—and related administrative capacities—is demonstrated when thousands of lives can be saved. For instance, the deployment of early warning systems and last-mile administrative and community engagement ensured that less than one hundred lives were lost to cyclone Fani in 2019 in Odisha, India, as compared to about ten thousand lost in 1999’s super cyclone, which hit the same region. 

Fourthly, leverage the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI). India founded the CDRI “to promote the resilience of new and existing infrastructure systems to climate and disaster risks in support of sustainable development”. The CDRI is currently undertaking a fiscal risk assessment to support the development of a comprehensive disaster-risk financing strategy across its membership of over thirty-five countries and multilateral entities. In 2021, it kickstarted an initiative called Infrastructure for Resilient Island States. 

Fifthly, Egypt’s COP presidency and India’s Group of Twenty (G20) presidency can collaborate on promoting multilateralism for chronic risks by proposing a Global Resilience Reserve Fund (GRRF). In 2021, natural catastrophes caused 270 billion dollars in losses globally, but only 111 billion dollars were insured. With the global protection gap rising, the lack of insurance coverage imposes macroeconomic shocks. This requires a more systemic response that goes beyond disaster relief. Capitalized by International Monetary Fund (IMF) Special Drawing Rights, or reserve assets maintained by the IMF to support its members, the GRRF could pool risks across vulnerable regions, lower the peaks of risk curves in individual areas, and leverage public funds to fix a market failure of lack of insurance coverage for much of the disaster-impacted infrastructure in the Global South. 

Currency Appreciation, Not Depreciation
Another structural challenge the UNFCCC has faced is that some of the biggest polluters have bailed out on their commitments or even exited agreements with impunity. A bank’s main shareholders cannot afford to bail out before other depositors. But this is exactly what happened with the nonparticipation of major developed countries in the Kyoto Protocol (such as Canada and the United States) and the Doha Amendment (such as Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the Russian Federation, and the United States), as well as the United States’ exit from the Paris Agreement. Although partially mitigated by reentry, each time these unilateral withdrawals happen, the currency (i.e. trust) stored in the bank depreciates. This must stop. An easy exit from a climate agreement, with no punitive measures in place, not only leads to more emissions from the country in question but also undermines trust in the process and discourages other nations from undertaking ambitious climate actions. 

One way to minimize such instances is to enhance the scope of the Compliance Committee under Article 15 of the Paris Agreement. The committee’s mandate could include specific discussions on noncompliance among members and nonparty stakeholders, and the exploration of punitive measures such as a requirement of additional emissions reductions via internationally transferred mitigation options (ITMOs). 

Another approach is to formalize the role of nonparty stakeholders in the climate regime, who play critical functions in helping member states meet their obligations and in bridging transparency gaps. Their role would be even more important in providing inputs and analysis for the technical phase of the Global Stocktake. 

International regimes serve five functions to varying degrees, namely agenda-setting, negotiations, implementation, monitoring, and enforcement. The UNFCCC has primarily focused on the first two and has almost no provision to serve as an enforcement body. As part of its reform, it should organize every alternate COP to focus on implementation and monitoring of committed actions, rather than negotiating new commitments. 

Finally, increasing the integrity of commitments and credibility actions of corporations, cities, and regions could counteract non-performance by Parties. For example, 11,361 cities, 286 regions and 13,909 companies across the globe are supporting climate actions. In addition, there are many cooperative initiatives— such as the C40 Cities Clean Bus Declaration, RE100, and others—which have taken measures toward reducing emissions. The parallel announcements at Glasgow—the Methane Pledge, First Movers Coalition, and the Industrial Deep Decarbonisation Initiative, for example—must also be incorporated into an enhanced framework of climate actions. At the same time, double counting by cities, businesses, and countries must be avoided. The UN Secretary-General’s High Level Expert Group on the Net Zero Emissions Commitments of Non-State Entities recommended during COP27 that such entities should set clear interim targets, announce transition plans, invest in just transitions, and transparently report and verify their actions. 

Trust, but Verify
The finalized enhanced transparency rulebook of the Paris Agreement will drive more transparency and accountability in the international community and facilitate mutual trust. There will be more granular information, leading to comprehensive understanding of climate actions. Transparency has normative value in open societies and instrumental value in applying peer pressure and nudging action. 

However, there still exist several challenges in the enhanced transparency framework. Extensive reporting obligations can be burdensome, especially for developing countries. While these are important disclosures, sometimes it becomes difficult to relate the achievements of countries since disclosures are qualitative or are based on broad assumptions. Several gray accounting areas persist, which protect nonperformers. These include inflated base year emissions, accounting of emissions from source instead of consumption, and the definition of climate finance, to name a few. Climate reporting does not relate achievements to the socioeconomic parameters of a country or to science that would showcase the country’s achievement in real terms. And, the focus of the transparency frameworks is on creating elaborative reporting and review guidelines without assessing their usefulness. It becomes difficult to meaningfully assess the often-assumed links between transparency, progress, trust, accountability, and enhancing ambition.  

The existing arrangement must be restructured to explore ways to communicate the reported information coherently and provide evidence of what a country’s true climate progress looks like. One way of doing this is by developing environmental performance indicators that are objective, quantifiable, and demonstrate change in a country’s performance over time in both developed and developing nations, thus strengthening transparency in the process. For example, indicators such as share of global emissions, a country’s sectoral emissions versus the global sectoral average, greenhouse gas emissions per capita, investment in renewables versus fossil fuels, and market share of electric vehicles could help with reporting and reviewing overall progress and showcasing key variables salient for exhibiting a party’s climate performance. 

Moreover, given their analytical capacity, nonparty stakeholders could also carry out independent assessments of parties and collaborative platforms and initiatives (launched during the Paris negotiations). Based on the credible data, they could compare climate actions across countries, identify good practices, establish a learning process, and create conditions conducive to international benchmarking. Examples include the pre-2020 ranking by CEEW, the Climate Action Tracker, and the Climate Change Performance Index. If done right, these suggestions could result in a reinforcing cycle of verified actions that build trust, accountability, and confidence among governments, investors, and within multilateral processes of climate governance. This approach would only succeed—in legitimate process and outcomes—if nonparty stakeholders from the Global South are included. 

Bring the Energy Transition to the People
Ultimately, the COP process will draw legitimacy not only from how emissions were abated, but how energy was provided to billions of people who remain energy poor. The energy trilemma—affordability, security, and sustainability— must be overcome. For human development to progress in developing countries, the energy transition must be brought closer to the people. 

Recent studies show that 770 million people still do not have access to electricity worldwide, and that energy poverty remains one of the key barriers to sustainable development. Additionally, more than 2.6 billion people do not have access to clean cooking fuel while household air pollution, mostly from cooking smoke, is linked to roughly 2.5 million premature deaths annually. 

In the developing world, distributed renewable energy (DRE) systems can provide energy access at far lower costs than extending existing grids. DRE solutions benefited about 150 million people around the world in 2019 alone by providing new energy access. Decentralized solutions could be the least costly way to provide power to the Global South, which comprises more than half of the global population that is likely to gain access this decade. 

The DRE sector is a significant employer in emerging economies and has positively impacted job creation in many countries. In Kenya, DRE systems have created ten thousand formal jobs. A recent survey of DRE companies in India revealed that the sector provided direct employment to about 309,000 people in formal and informal jobs. The market potential is in the tens of billions. The market in India, aimed at using clean energy for productive enterprises in rural areas, is worth more than $50 billion. In Sub-Saharan Africa, an investment of $11.3 billion could support efficient solar-based appliances to provide various services, such as irrigation, cooling, and crop processing, to twelve million farms. 

Leveraging energy for livelihoods and income generation increases the overall capacity and resilience of communities to invest in their development. Yet, productive uses of DRE technologies are missing in existing donor and philanthropic initiatives. Of thirty-six programs globally that focus on DRE, only three programs explicitly focus on promoting livelihoods. 

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and with the growing threat of recession in many economies, the COP presidency could draw attention to the jobs and growth potential of leveraging clean energy access for income-generating activities. Powering Livelihoods Globally—a multistakeholder platform—could drive large-scale adoption of productive uses of clean energy to stimulate jobs and growth in rural economies globally. The platform would catalyze local innovation and entrepreneurship to deploy sustainable technologies for livelihoods, such as green cold storages, agro-processing machinery, solar-based irrigation, or textile processing. With contributions from philanthropy and development finance institutions, and buy-in from the public sector, such a program could catalyze innovations from lab to market and generate value for communities at the bottom of the pyramid. Doing this at scale and tapping into the vast market would lend legitimacy to a COP process that remains disconnected from the lives of billions of people. 

A Crisis of Empathy
Climate change is only the second greatest crisis facing humanity. The first is a lack of empathy: a lack of understanding of the lived reality of people of other colors, cultures, genders, and geographies. 

COP27 began with little hope and ended (two days beyond schedule) with a faint glimmer. The success in negotiating an L&D financing facility is also an admission of the gravest failure of the COP process: accountability. Future COPs must focus almost exclusively on ensuring delivery and holding laggards accountable. Some of the suggestions in this essay could be actioned under the current framework. Others will need a rethink of the rules. Some will face stiff opposition from conference parties. Within the recommendations are embedded core principles, such as the responsibility of principal shareholders in a bank, the need to protect vulnerable depositors, ensuring the credibility of transactions, imposing independent oversight for checks and balances, and helping individual customers in using resources well for the bank to deliver better returns overall. We accept these principles as a given when we entrust our monetary savings to a bank. Protecting the value of the asset that is a stable climate demands nothing less. Egypt’s COP presidency can begin this transformation toward making UNFCCC a bank of just, credible, and accountable actions. 

Cities are central to any discussion about climate change policy if for no other reason than that they create the most greenhouse emissions. They are also where most people live and where more of the world’s population will reside in the coming decades. Cities are responsible for an estimated 75 percent of climate emissions, despite the fact that they take up only 3 percent of the planet’s land surface. In addition to their current emissions, cities are likely to contribute more in the future due to projected increases in urban population and urbanization. The Sharm El-Sheikh Implementation Plan, which was revealed at COP27, recognizes the important role of cities in addressing climate change, but according to the UN-Habitat program, urban climate challenges and climate policies and responses do not always align. Furthermore, although global climate policy stresses the importance of cities, insufficient attention has been given to the intersecting issues of population growth, urban expansion, and urban sustainability. 

The world’s urban population is expanding rapidly. In 2018, cities accounted for 55 percent of the world’s population and, by 2050, they will account for a whopping 68 percent, with an estimated 6.7 billion people living in cities alone. Most of that projected growth will occur in large cities, including new and existing megacities, which are home to a population of more than 10 million. Nine of the ten new megacities that will emerge between 2018 and 2030 will be in developing countries—two in Africa and seven in Asia. Accommodating this urban growth will have an impact on the climate and is likely to increase global greenhouse gas emissions. Although recent estimates indicate that urban growth will slow down after 2030, the current alarming rate begs the question of which development paths cities will take in response, and what impact they will have on climate emissions and policy. For instance, the UN Environment Programme estimates that 90 trillion dollars of urban infrastructure will be built by 2050 to accommodate the growing global urban population. Building urban infrastructure requires immense quantities of fossil fuel-dependent materials such as steel, concrete, and plastic. Feeding the growing urban population means increased food production which is unlikely to be sustained without increased use of mineral fertilizer, another fossil fuel input. Even with heroic efforts to minimize the carbon footprint of expanding cities, for example by implementing best green building practices, building efficient mass transit systems, and incorporating renewable energy systems, it is hard to envision that these cities can be built without risking added greenhouse gas emissions. 

Another daunting aspect of future urban expansion fuelled by climate change is the migration of people from rural to urban areas, which has historically contributed to social unrest and tension in many parts of the world. Mass migration, especially to large cities, can worsen living conditions for the urban poor, increase strain on public services, and amplify existing social and economic inequality. If the specter of rising urban populations weren’t enough, cities are gobbling up land faster than they are growing population. Land sprawl is another issue that will extend the impact of global cities far beyond their current reach. Such sprawl not only increases the geographic boundaries of cities but also threatens to take over prime agricultural land and further worsen the impact of cities on natural systems and biodiversity. 

If, as the COP27 parties recognized, we are currently falling far short of meeting our greenhouse gas emission targets, how will we meet them in a growing, more populated, and urbanized world? To do so will require future paths of urban development that are radically different from current approaches. 

Although cities present many challenges to climate change, they may hold many of the keys to climate change solutions. Cities are central to global development policy, and are enshrined in international sustainable frameworks, most notably in the UN New Urban Agenda, which aims to fulfill the sustainable development target to “make cities and human settlement inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”—a goal that we are currently about as far from achieving globally as we are to meeting climate targets. Despite the tremendous challenges involved, the success or failure of mitigating, adapting to, and recovering from climate change will increasingly reside in the world’s cities. 

Climate Change and Cities in the MENA Region
Climate change represents a major threat to cities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), but with varying degrees. The main threats to cities include extreme heat, water scarcity, sea level rise, and land sprawl. 

Heat in the region’s cities has already increased by far more than in other regions of the world. By 2050, it may surpass the global average temperature by double, which is a major threat that will disproportionately affect the driest cities. Temperature increases in cities will be exacerbated by the “heat island effect” in which urban areas experience higher temperatures than outlying areas, as well as increased water loss from already arid systems which creates a desert warming amplification effect. Urban sprawl amplifies this effect because as cities grow larger, they also get warmer. The projected rise in temperatures will intensify water scarcity in an already water-scarce region, making water shortages, water policy, and water infrastructure key challenges for many cities in the region. 

Sea level rise is another major threat for cities globally, and sea level rise in MENA is expected to cause coastal flooding in low-lying cities such as Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, and Alexandria, Egypt, which is one of the region’s most populous coastal cities. The region’s forty-two port cities, which are major economic and cultural hubs, will be affected and will need to adapt to rising seas. Egypt is especially vulnerable; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ranks the Nile Delta as one of the top three regions in the world most at risk from sea level rise. 

A World Bank report noted that a 0.5-meter rise in sea level in Alexandria would displace 2 million people and cause 35 billion dollars of loss in land and property. The United Nations Development Programme has funded an innovative project for reducing the risk of coastal flooding due to sea level rise on Egypt’s North Coast. The project focuses on building 69 kilometers of sand dune dikes to help with adaptation, and developing an integrated coastal zone management plan for the area. It is a good example of possible sustainable solutions to climate adaptation because it implements a soft engineering approach that takes advantage of the natural ecosystem and engages the communities most likely to be affected by coastal flooding. 

Alongside these environmental impacts, climate change may also drive or aggravate social and economic changes that could jeopardize climate adaptation and mitigation plans in the region. Climate change could exacerbate existing inequalities in cities, as the poorest citizens bear the greatest brunt of climate impacts. The IPCC has called climate change a threat multiplier that can exacerbate other drivers of poverty. Recent unrest due to escalations in food prices driven in part by the war in Ukraine illustrate the risks that climate-induced shocks to food production could pose to countries dependent on food imports. The costs of responding to other types of shocks induced by climate change, such as flooding and other extreme events, could detract from climate investments. 

Rural-to-urban migration is an example of another social change that could exacerbate existing socioeconomic disparities within cities. Rural populations remain high in many countries in the region, including in Egypt where 57 percent of the population lived in rural areas in 2020. Many of these rural inhabitants rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, and climate impacts on agriculture may threaten their economic security. Under such conditions, migrants in the MENA region tend to move to large urban areas. The added population could worsen climate impacts in urban centers by exposing more low-income migrants to the urban heat island effect and extreme urban heatwaves. Cities that become refuge for climate migrants may themselves be overwhelmed by climate change, making it more difficult to sustain investments in climate mitigation and adaptation. 

Climate change in megacities like Cairo is likely to exacerbate existing urban ills such as pollution, congested traffic, and aging infrastructure. On the other hand, rapid adoption of climate solutions could address many existing problems while making cities more resilient to both the environmental and social impact of climate change. For example, investing in better public transportation systems and creating incentives for switching to lower emission vehicles could help address air pollution problems. Building more renewable energy systems based on solar and wind, and upgrading the electricity grid, could also help reduce emissions. Increasing the amount of green space through planned urban renewal projects could help address the city’s abysmally low per capita green space, which has been sacrificed to road and infrastructure projects, and which will make the city even more unlivable in a warmer world. Developing better water use and wastewater strategies, including nature-based solutions, and incorporating more ecologically informed designs into urban and landscape planning designs could also improve Cairo’s climate resilience and livability. Collectively, such solutions offer a path toward the elusive goal of sustainable urban development (SUD) which must be the cornerstone to climate adaptation and mitigation in an increasingly urban world. 

Sustainable Cities According to MENA Governments
Hosting back-to-back climate change conferences in the Middle East, with last year’s COP27 held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, and this year’s COP28 in Dubai, provides an opportunity to shine a light on the region’s climate challenges and how they are being addressed. The lead-up to COP27 was a good opportunity for governments to burnish the region’s green initiatives, many of which touch upon themes of green urbanism and SUD. The Go Green initiative launched by the Egyptian Ministry of Environment is one of several green initiatives the country has adopted as part of its National Sustainable Development Strategy, with a focus on environmental protection and natural resources. Several green initiatives in the region focus on SUD and building sustainable “green” cities. The Sustainable City in Dubai incorporates sustainable development goals into its planning, design, and construction, and is being touted as “the first operational net zero energy city in Dubai, modeled to become an international showcase for high quality sustainable living”. The motivating theme for this kind of development is the recognition of the threat of climate change, and the overwhelming need for a complete transformation of human systems in response to this crisis. 

The branding for sustainable cities often offers an idealized green vision of sustainable development. The buildings are laid out in smart mixed-used conclaves and are powered with renewable and combined energy systems designed with maximal energy efficiency. All residences are within a five-minute walk to outdoor spaces with trees, shade, and other amenities. Public spaces include urban gardens and farms watered with smart water controllers, buzzing with bees and providing fresh local food. High-efficiency public transport systems are powered by renewable energy. Water systems reduce waste and include recovery of brown water for reuse with advanced sewage treatment systems that return some water through wetlands and are designed as important features of nature. Buildings and built surfaces are covered with solar panels tied to smart microgrids. This vision of the future MENA city has overtones of a green utopian fantasy, but many of these elements are being embraced globally as sustainable urban solutions for a just and livable future. 

Governments have gone full steam on building sustainable cities that match their own visions of sustainable development. Egypt, for example, is working to reinvigorate urban development along greener lines through its Sustainable Cities Initiative. Launched at COP27, the Egyptian Sustainable Cities Initiative is providing 1.8 billion dollars to support thirty-three projects that address energy efficiency and renewable energy, green transportation solutions, and urban green spaces. Other urban sustainability efforts in Egypt include thirty planned “fourth-generation” cities built or being planned across the nation, all of which aim to create more sustainable, livable cities with lower environmental impact. In December 2022, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and his cabinet celebrated the development of New Mansoura, an urban development being built on Egypt’s northern Mediterranean coast that is part of the government’s multibillion dollar effort to upgrade the nation’s infrastructure. The first phase of the project, which has a strong emphasis on sustainability, was completed last year, with ultimate plans for a city of 1.5 million people. Green aspects include an electric public rail system, buildings set two meters above sea level in anticipation of sea level rise, design-incorporated solar panels, and a minimum of 15 square meters of green space per person. 

The New Administrative City is perhaps the most grandiose example of Egypt’s urban expansion. An even more futuristic vision is being played out in Saudi Arabia in plans for NEOM city, the 170-kilometer-long vertical skyscraper city envisioned by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. It is easy to get swept up by these enthusiastic visions for more sustainable cities, but they raise important questions relevant to sustainability: How will this substantial urban expansion be sustained? What impact will it have on climate change resilience and who will benefit from it? 

Sustainable Cities and Global Climate Policy: Where the Rubber Meets the Road
Although global climate policy recognizes the importance of urban issues, it falls short in explicitly recognizing the outsized influence cities will have in finding sustainable paths forward. Future policies should explicitly emphasize the weighted contribution that cities make to both climate change and climate solutions. Globally, there needs to be better alignment between national, regional, and urban governance by establishing policies, developing plans, and investing in climate mitigation and adaptation. There also needs to be better recognition of the interrelated challenges of population growth, climate change, and environmental degradation, along with an honest assessment of energy resources, their use, and impact. 

A major achievement at COP27 was agreeing to establish a loss and damage fund for poor nations to help them recover from climate disasters. These nations, mostly of the Global South, are the same ones experiencing the greatest urban growth and suffering from the lowest per-capita resources to deal with the burdens of that growth. Nor are they increasing their income or delivering core services that typically accompany urban growth in the Global North. The path toward sustainable urban development in these countries is likely to be much different from the path followed in more developed nations. It is difficult to envision how the green city schemes being developed by wealthier nations could be applied under such conditions. General concepts such as strategic intensification that includes high-density, mixed-use developments built around efficient mass transit and microgrid energy systems based on renewables might be applicable, but the particular mix of solutions will depend on geography, resources, wealth and governance systems, and approaches tailored to the reality of the local conditions in developing countries. By adopting development strategies that are less resource-intensive, these rapidly growing cities may have a lower impact on emissions than if they adopted strategies followed by the Global North. 

The inequities between rich and poor countries may be magnified by the massive urban growth projected to occur in the Global South. There is currently a huge chasm between the stated financial commitments needed and the actual investments being made to address climate change. The current financial commitments, which range from the billions to hundreds of billions, fall far short of the actual investments needed, which likely run into the trillions. Countries in the Global South will have a difficult enough time meeting the basic needs of their expanding urban population, much less investing in climate adaptation and risk. The inequity between those who contribute the most to climate change and those who will suffer most from it is reflected in the world’s gross wealth inequity, which is as large within as it is between countries. A recent report from the World Inequality Lab shows that the wealthiest citizens are by far the greatest greenhouse gas emitters and that a modest progressive wealth tax on these top emitters could more than fill the climate adaptation funding gap. 

Beyond the sheer limitations of financial investment, there is the problem of developing countries lacking the governance structures, political will, and financial wherewithal to adopt SUD strategies. There is wide recognition of the need for multilevel governance structures that include interaction between national, regional, and city level policies. Yet, cities remain key to reaching desired climate adaptation and mitigation goals. Independent civil society organizations, including environmental NGOs, local environmental groups, and climate action organizations have an important role in ensuring that citizens have a voice in climate policy, and that they can act as effective watchdogs over government-sponsored themes. Such inclusiveness is essential if Egypt is to live up to the “people first” approach that it proclaims in its plans for a green economy transition. Much emphasis in Egypt and elsewhere is placed on grand top-down schemes, but small-scale cooperation might end up being a more effective way to combat climate change than grand global agreements, and there is evidence that participatory processes are more effective at implementing SUD goals than non-participatory ones. People at all levels need to be included and dissenting voices need to be heard. 

The allure of the green city creates an enticing vision of a future in which more people will have access to the amenities associated with a livable, sustainable future, but it raises the question of how equitably these amenities will be shared among the world’s future 6 to 7 billion urban residents. It also raises the question of how these expanded urban systems will be sustained, especially in a world with declining reserves of fossil fuels, despite an increased dependency on them. 

Climate change is a symptom of the related issues of resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation. An important outcome of the COP27 meeting was the acknowledgment that these issues are interconnected and that we are pushing the boundaries of our planetary limits. President El-Sisi made implicit reference to these limits at the inaugural event for New Mansoura City where he stated, “With this level of population growth and the resources available to us, we are definitely ill-equipped.” Such a frank declaration of population and resource issues is a rare recognition that the world’s nations are reaching a tipping point in balancing growth with sustainability. Countries are also beginning to face the fact that these interrelated issues cannot be separated from issues of equality and social justice. The wealthiest nations and people have contributed the most emissions and they have a responsibility to help those who have created the least, and who will suffer the most harm. 

In 1907, Theodore Roosevelt was asked how his cup of coffee tasted, to which he responded “good to the last drop”. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is exhausting its limited water resources, and without adaptive management and alternative water sources will soon reach the “last drop”. This threatens the future of humanity in this region, as the UN recognized in 2010 by declaring that access to water and sanitation (termed the “human right to water and sanitation” or HRWS) is a basic human right due to its necessity for sustaining human life. Many MENA countries always had scarce surface waters, mainly springs, that were quickly diminished or totally lost to pumping of groundwater for agriculture. In 1990 and before placing significant curbs on pumping, Saudi Arabia had forty-six active springs. It now has only fifteen. 

Major aquifers of the region containing “fossil water” from moderate climate periods thousands of years ago have been significantly reduced in size and volume to a point where they are no longer viable water sources. Nations have recently resorted to building expensive desalination plants to supply their basic water demands. Even nations relying on major rivers (the Nile, Tigris, or Euphrates) as traditionally inexhaustible sources of water have seen both the quantity and predictability of water threatened by climate change and increased human demands in the multiple countries they flow through. Current water sources are either too expensive or too threatened politically to be wasted. 

The water-energy-food nexus is the accepted standard for evaluating the three sectors governing resource sustainability and their interactions at the national level. Most MENA countries are struggling in at least two sectors, food and water, with the situation expected to become progressively worse throughout the remainder of this century. Average per capita water availability has declined by 85 percent since 1950, with twelve countries currently suffering from an absolute shortage. The challenge is to embrace adaptive management in the face of climate change and population pressures to avoid total societal collapse and political instability, as have happened in Yemen and Syria. 

The shift from surface and groundwater resources to dependance on expensive desalination alternatives clearly points to the urgent necessity of finding alternative water resources throughout the region. Rainwater harvesting, especially of rare but significant storm runoff, can add to water resources, but reuse is the only feasible alternative water resource for most of the region. Desalinated water is simply too expensive to use once and discard. 

Wastewater Treatment and Reuse
Currently, 86 percent of water resources in MENA are used for agriculture. Although only 50 percent of wastewater in the region is treated, 83 percent of that volume is used for irrigated agriculture, while urban and peri-urban agriculture rely exclusively on untreated wastewater. Sixty percent of the MENA’s total population is concentrated in urban areas; 15 countries have greater than 70 percent of their populations in cities. Such highly urbanized populations present a dilemma. Although it becomes easier to collect wastewater, the cost of conventional treatment options is extremely high, and it is difficult for traditional infrastructure to keep up with population demographics. 

Egypt has invested in traditional infrastructure and has 146 treatment plants with a new plant under construction that has a capacity exceeding that of all its other treatment plants combined to treat both urban and agricultural wastes for reuse. Sadly, while a significant investment, Egypt will not be able to keep up with expanding population growth, the finite life of treatment plants, and expected climate change. Treatment infrastructure will have a positive impact on wastewater generated by middle and upper class areas, but rapidly expanding irregular developments by the marginalized poor crowding into metropolitan areas will remain without treatment options. 

This author has proposed key agenda items for the COP27 climate conference sponsored by the UN and held in Egypt in 2022 that recognized the critical need to consider water quantity, quality, and reuse issues, and the importance of nature-based solutions for promoting sustainability in the water-energy-food nexus. Sadly, the focus of the conference was on climate and population impacts on water quantity, with little attention to designing with nature to provide alternative sources of water for both urban populations and agriculture. Nature-based solutions (NBS) provide cost-effective and equally reliable wastewater treatment as traditionally engineered infrastructure, and unlike the latter do not have a finite lifespan of operation. They do not rely on the large-scale, highly centralized treatment of wastes and can be adapted to meet population demographics and specific contaminants from agriculture and industry in parallel with climate change impacts. Examples of NBS options include rooftop gardens and green-walled buildings to treat grey and stormwater in urban centers, and constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment. Unlike traditional engineered infrastructure, NBS can serve multiple purposes including nature conservation, passive recreation, agriculture, product development, and water reuse. 

Nature-based Solutions as Alternative Water Resources
NBS treatment can be tailored to meet the quality concerns of the anticipated user—from irrigation requiring the lowest quality water, to potable water requiring extremely high quality. For the latter, constructed wetlands are often operated in tandem with traditional engineering infrastructure, either to handle waste overloading the system or to improve the treatment quality of aging, poorly maintained infrastructure. Constructed wetlands are used extensively globally where infrastructure construction and operation cannot keep up with urban expansion. Given the additional cost for water consumers, regardless of treatment option, urban and peri-urban farmers often resist moves to treat wastewater because of traditional reliance on raw sewage as their irrigation source at little or no cost. 

Although state-of-the-art wastewater treatment removes most contaminants, it also removes essential nutrients needed for plant growth and can actually reduce agricultural productivity. Convincing subsistence farmers to switch to treated wastewater is a daunting problem as they lack the funds to pay for water, while being willing to take a chance with contamination from free wastewater. 

MENA nations relying partially or solely on desalinated water have begun to recognize the futility of single use of such expensive resources, and the need to maximize recycling of generated wastewater. While advanced wastewater treatment plants can be highly efficient at resource recovery, they are energy-intensive and raise the question as to whether the added recycling cost of already expensive water has any advantage over single use desalinated water. 

The potential of constructed wetlands to treat wastewater and add to local water resources can be significant. The amount of wastewater generated annually by the current population of the MENA (approximately 583 million), assuming 60 m³ per capita per annum, is 34,980,000,000 m3. If passed through constructed wetlands for treatment and accounting for a 70 percent water loss via evapotranspiration during passage, 10,494,000,000 m³ of recycled water could be added to the water resources base for the region at a fraction of the cost of conventional treatment facilities. 

Adaptive management is a strategy that focuses on a frequent reassessment of environmental conditions as programs develop, and on adapting resources to promote environmental and human sustainability in the face of challenges like population growth and climate change. Increased reliance on desalination plants to meet domestic and agricultural water demands is without question, but emphasis on nature-based solutions—especially constructed wetlands— to reduce wastewater treatment costs and add recycled water to the resource base must be considered critical. It is clear that rapidly increasing urbanization not only increases demands on water resources in the MENA, but also makes supplementing water resources via nature-based solutions a critical component of the overall approach. The key link in the success of this approach is governance and adaptive management. 

For decades, nations have debated, negotiated, and reached agreements through mutual understanding and compromise to build a seemingly universal narrative on the causes and effects of climate change. This narrative culminated with the Paris Agreement in 2015. We are currently entering another stage in which one of the greatest challenges of global climate governance is the construction of mechanisms that can be translated into concrete actions and that can enforce climate legislation at the international level. 

The twenty-seventh Conference of the Parties (COP27) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) had special relevance due to the expectations it placed to implement climate change initiatives, and was consequently dubbed by media and participants alike as the “conference of implementation”. 

Egyptian Foreign Minister and COP27 President-Designate Sameh Shoukry pointed out that this edition of the conference was considered decisive for climate action and therefore it was crucial to demonstrate a significant increase in ambitious commitments and expectations, as well as clear strategies. The proposed goals included immediately reducing and eliminating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in economic sectors to protect our planet from the increasingly negative impacts of climate change, and also deal with greater losses and damages. 

Reviewed climate action plans provided alarming signs indicating that we are still far from reaching the Paris climate goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. One example of global shortcomings in climate change action given the current trajectory is that GHG emissions will have been reduced by 10 percent in 2030 compared to 2010, far short of the 45-percent reduction required in the 2015 Paris Agreement. This is taking into account all the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of the 193 Parties to the Paris Agreement, including new or updated contributions made between COP26 in Glasgow and up until two months before COP27. 

The impacts of climate change that we are experiencing are palpable, but it is also clear that they are unequal and vary depending on the economic capacities of the regions and communities to combat them. The current economic system that favors competition must be transformed to put cooperation as a priority value to face the climate crisis. In this sense, financing is a central issue since it is clear that the poorest regions urgently require resources that developed nations can provide. 

Decisions made to resolve the climate crisis require the broad participation of all social actors, placing the human rights approach at the center. Both issues, climate and human rights, continue to be matters in which various disagreements must be resolved through diplomatic channels. The fact that the decision-making process in Egypt was marred by an environment of geopolitical strife amid multifaceted crises should not be overlooked. One example is the economic crisis from the COVID-19 pandemic, which made it difficult for nations to allocate resources to climate issues. On the other hand, the energy and security crises caused by the Russia-Ukraine War produced a similar effect by placing geopolitical issues above environmental concerns. In this sense, it is fair to recognize and doubly value the diplomatic efforts of the Egyptian presidency during COP27. 

With this context in mind, the three main objectives from the Mexican perspective—mitigation, adaptation, and financing—highlight what is in my opinion meaningful progress and at the same time emphasize the pending tasks and the lessons learned from negotiations at COP27. 

Mitigation: The Sonora Plan
One of the main objectives which kickstarted COP27 was to recognize the urgency of accelerating climate action to achieve a substantial reduction in polluting gas emissions by 2030, in response to the urgent call contained in the February 2022 Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). For this reason, a work program on mitigation was launched during COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh in November to increase climate mitigation ambitions in all sectors. 

During the conference, governments were also called on to review and strengthen the 2030 targets in their national climate plans, so as to accelerate efforts to phase out the use of energy from hydrocarbons and eliminate subsidies to inefficient fossil fuels. To this end, Mexico presented its clean water Sonora Plan, which could involve its North American partners, taking advantage of both the availability and potential for the generation of renewable energy and the great demand in the United States. 

The plan includes several renewable energy developments that will satisfy the demand of various industries in Mexico and in the region. A clear example is the construction of Latin America’s largest solar energy plant in Puerto Peñasco, in the Mexican state of Sonora. Up to 5 gigawatts will be generated to supply the region. 

Adaptation: A Global Goal to Reduce Vulnerabilities
The Paris Agreement established the global goal on adaptation. This global goal aims to enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience, and reduce vulnerability to climate change and promote effective adaptation responses. At COP27, countries identified various priority elements that the global goal on adaptation should include for its effective implementation, such as: monitoring and verification, financial support, and definition of strategies that allow for cross-cutting implementation. This was done while taking into account the wide range of elements that make up climate change adaptation policies, such as the conservation of ecosystems, tangible and intangible cultural heritage, and their relationship with compliance with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. 

The progress made at COP27 will also serve as the basis for the Paris Agreement’s first Global Stocktake, assessing its implementation, with the aim of improving the resilience of the most vulnerable. In this regard, there is a delay due to the lack of agreements on issues such as “collective adaptation” since the methodologies and metrics to evaluate this item are still being debated. 

Moreover, new contributions of up to 230 million dollars were promised to the Adaptation Fund and it was also agreed that these resources should be allocated mainly to vulnerable countries. This result demonstrates progress in approaching financial matters with justice, which brings us closer to the establishment of concrete structures for climate action. The UN Climate Change Finance Standing Committee was also requested to prepare a report on doubling down on adaptation finance for consideration at COP28 in 2023. 

Despite having the objective of establishing the mechanisms for financing adaptation, at COP27, the discussion still stalled at defining methodologies, instead of finding a common ground to move toward a more resilient world. Once again, the discussion on the access of developing countries to new and additional climate financing is made clear, as well as the historical responsibility of the main greenhouse gas emitters, developed countries, to provide them—if they want to meet the mitigation and adaptation objectives acquired in the Paris Agreement. 

Financing: A Fund for Loss and Damage
A special mention is due regarding the efforts made on the financial arrangements for loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, especially with the creation of a new fund. In this sense, considering the importance of the economic and non-economic costs of losses and damages caused by climate change, mainly for those countries and regions that are in greater vulnerability, it has been essential to turn our attention to the repercussions of the climate crisis and repairing the damage, having a fundamental basis in the principle of climate justice. 

During negotiations the most vulnerable countries expressed their concern regarding the increasing urgency of enhancing efforts to avert, minimize, and address loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change. Considering that the global temperature has already increased 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, this means that the vulnerability of already-vulnerable countries has gone up, putting the lives of people and the ecosystems of those countries at risk. In addition, the need to mobilize resources exclusively for loss and damage was underlined, since climate finance previously only focused on mitigation actions. 

States have yet to decide on the amounts and the origin of resources provided to the fund, as well as the criteria for requesting such resources. The risk is that in future negotiations the momentum achieved on this issue will be lost and the final rules will not reflect the initial spirit of the initiative or its proponents. For this reason, the work in the framework of the “transition committee” will be key to making recommendations on how to implement the new financing agreements. 

Climate Finance: The Need for New Objectives
The principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” is based on historical evidence regarding the origin of the highest GHG emissions attributable to countries with higher incomes. For this reason, as an act of justice, in 2009 the richest countries made a significant pledge to jointly mobilize 100 billion dollars per year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries. 

Nevertheless, the promises have not been fulfilled. According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), just 83.3 billion dollars was provided and mobilized by developed countries for climate action in developing countries in 2020 (13.1 billion dollars of which was mobilized private finance). In addition, 67 percent was focused on mitigation, and 24 percent on adaptation. The situation is even more worrying when we find that loans constituted up to 71 percent of climate finance in 2020, putting the most vulnerable countries further in debt instead of supporting them, while for every dollar pledged to address the climate crisis, four dollars are spent on fossil fuel subsidies. 

Acknowledging that the richer countries have failed to mobilize 100 billion dollars per year by 2020, COP27 continued the discussion to set a New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance that will be adopted in 2024. The goal must be consistent with Article 2 of the Paris Agreement and consider the needs and priorities of developing countries as well as consider the lessons learned from the previous objective. At COP27, countries also agreed to the Sharm El-Sheikh Implementation Plan. It stated that to achieve the global transformation toward a low carbon economy, investments of at least 4 to 6 trillion dollars per year would be required. However, raising that amount of funds will only be possible if a rapid and complete change of the financial system is achieved. Hence, the participation of governments, central banks, private banks, multilateral development banks, investors, and other financial actors such as investment funds and stock markets are essential. 

However, greater participation of companies that contribute capital to combating climate change would necessitate adequate transparency mechanisms to prevent them from disguising highly polluting daily activities. That is why the construction of an institutional framework is essential: first, for the development of capacities on the application procedures and access to resources and, second, so that it can account for the destination and use of financing in a transparent manner before suffering from the paradox of the slow obtainment of resources against the vertiginous effects of climate change. 

The results of COP27 on the matter are recognized as positive, since a need for balanced support was recognized to address the most relevant aspects of climate policies: adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage. In addition, COP27 will serve as a reference and basis for future work in the construction of a new international climate finance scheme, including the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance, where new investors such as the private sector and financial institutions will take part. Moreover, guidelines and tools must be established for easy and transparent access to support, as well as to ensure that resources reach the most vulnerable communities. 

More Progress is Needed: Taking Advantage of Human Rights, Gender, and Youth
The parties that have submitted new NDCs have reinforced their commitment to reduce or limit greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 and/or 2030, thus demonstrating greater ambition in climate change action. However, the number of countries that have implemented their NDCs is still limited and the aforementioned 45 percent reduction target is far from being fulfilled. 

In the same way, greater involvement of relevant actors in each country to join the processes of defining and implementing projects aimed at increasing ambition in climate action, or in other words finding effective ways for financing, innovation, technology transfer, and capacity building, is pending. The lack of clear procedures for participation, particularly from the private sector, continues to lend itself to harmful practices such as greenwashing. 

Mexico has promoted the incorporation of a transversal perspective of gender equality and human rights in all multilateral negotiation issues for effective climate action. Hence, the achievement of an improved version of the Lima Work Program on Gender and its Action Plan during COP25 should be valued as a positive precedent in the construction of multidimensional solutions. 

References and inclusion are key to women’s autonomy, gender equality, and the fight against climate change. Examples include references to sexual and reproductive health; the need to eliminate multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, gender-based violence, and harmful practices; just transition of the workforce; the enjoyment of a clean, healthy and sustainable environment; and the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples, which is in line with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 

Young people had a greater role in COP27 and played a vital role in decision-making and policymaking. The presence of the first pavilion for children and youth, as well as the first Youth-led Climate Forum, is a step forward for their involvement in decision-making beyond rhetoric. 

Empowering people to take ownership of the environment and help protect it is essential. With this perspective, Mexico carried out the project “Operation COP: Youth Ambassadors for the Climate,” which allowed young people, including a representative of an indigenous people, to join the Mexican Delegation, lead negotiation sessions on priority issues, and be part of the decision-making processes. 

Looking Forward to COP28
In the next negotiations, greater multisectoral participation should be promoted, as should an increase in the ambition and scope of adaptation and mitigation strategies in order to ensure our planet is more sustainable for all people. 

In terms of financing, we must once again review the lessons learned from other initiatives that started with great momentum but that were later unable to scale up and raise the promised funds, along with facing a lack of transparency and the difficulty in implementing. It is important to avoid repeating this, as it undermines credibility between the parties, and also weakens the global public opinion that expects consistency in the commitments and actions of world leaders. 

It is undeniable that 2023 will be a fundamental year for defining the processes, actors, and mechanisms necessary to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement, and to achieve global climate action. We must continue with an approach that leads us to close the inequality gap and empower us collectively to face this great challenge that is climate change. 

Each year, a Conference of the Parties (COP) for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is hosted in a different city, and each year there is disappointment at the lack of tangible and binding outcomes. The scarcity of ambition at UN climate conferences is not surprising since the nature of these meetings perennially disappoints everyone except oil executives; these meetings essentially become “empty” sets of institutions. This is what political scientist Radoslav Dimitrov calls agreements without substantial, binding regulatory commitments. The near-thirty years of COPs have woefully failed in their objective to prevent dangerous planetary warming despite celebratory press releases issued by the UN at the end of every COP. 

Empty institutions are encouraged in a neoliberal international political economy, where regulation is and has been reduced or eliminated, to make way for business and industrial activities; these apparatuses normalize rhetoric and window dressing over substantive state restrictions. In the case of climate change, empty institutions are a poisonous menace to people and the planet. 

Only days before COP27, the UN released an assessment of current commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement. The report indicated that current commitments will increase emissions 10.6 percent by 2030 compared to 2010 levels, and will result in warming of 2.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Oddly, this is better than a similar assessment done last year. These trends will be a priority at COP28 when the first Global Stocktake—assessing the Paris Agreement’s implementation—concludes. COP28 will be presided over by CEO of the United Arab Emirate’s state oil giant, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Sultan Al-Jaber. That may be the only information we need to take stock of climate politics. 

Certainly, there was no serious progress toward reducing emissions at COP27. However, after little progress in twenty-six other COPs, this is also not surprising. 

Mitigation through Empty Institutions
When we had the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which mandated specific greenhouse gas reductions, there was a lack of participation from some countries, key among which was the United States. Skip ahead to the 2015 Paris Agreement which, as noted above, did not get the job done because the cuts are not ambitious enough; unsurprisingly, the agreement was designed to be that way. 

The Paris Agreement was devised to accommodate even the most reticent state because it only asked parties to the accord to say what they want to cut and how, and then report it. These are called nationally determined contributions (NDCs), and they are not binding under international law for countries to achieve their commitments—only that they have NDCs and report them every five years. The agreement hopes that commitments “ratchet” up but the language—in Article 4, Section 3—holds that, “Each Party’s successive nationally determined contribution will represent a progression beyond the Party’s then current nationally determined contribution”. Given the current language, a “progression” can represent even the slightest of marginal improvements, whereas if the agreement had said that “each successive NDC must reduce X percent of emissions,” it would have been much clearer and more demanding. 

Perhaps the most ambitious international climate institution we have is the Montreal Protocol to remove ozone-depleting substances from the stratosphere. It is a landmark protocol because it does have regulatory, binding commitments that have become steadily more strict, and it has saved us from considerable warming because of its regulation of substances that have warming effects. 

In contrast, Paris is an empty institution, par excellence. To succeed in the climate battle, we need transformative institutions and courageous leadership—we need high-level champions for real. The effect of this failure is that the cost of loss and damage will be more deadly, more expensive, and more widespread due to more numerous extreme climate events, without serious cuts to emissions. 

Will Incrementalism Reign Supreme over Loss and Damage?
Despite the emptiness of so many of the UN climate decisions, there was what the UN press release at the end of COP27 called a “breakthrough agreement” when governments agreed to create a fund specifically for climate-related “loss and damage” in developing countries. Loss and damage has no official definition but typically means dangerous climate-related impacts to which communities cannot adapt. 

The term was first used in the Bali Action Plan of 2007 and in 2010 at COP16 where a committee was formed to consider approaches. In 2012, the creation of a mechanism to deal with loss and damage was agreed upon, so the following year the COP created the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with climate change impacts. This mechanism only facilitates capacity building, including fund building, but it does not include funding for losses and damages. The Warsaw mechanism avoided financing while making it look like the issue was being addressed, so that no one at the time would object. Its goals had uninspiring phrases like “enhancing knowledge,” “strengthening dialogue,” and “providing technical support.” It was also apparent from the history of negotiations around loss and damage that developed countries have kept the agenda to a snail’s pace and clear of substantial commitments. 

Financing loss and damage nevertheless remained a priority for developing countries for well over a decade, but has been blocked by their developed counterparts. This intransigence deeply angered delegates from developing countries at COP27. The progress made at the conference came with a last-minute capitulation from the European Union (EU), though the EU wanted more countries to contribute to the mandatory emission reductions under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which places binding responsibilities on the shoulders of wealthy countries. The EU wanted this shift because over the last few decades, emerging economies and those heavily dependent on oil, like those in the Gulf Cooperation Council, have become more capable of contributing given that they are ranked in the top 30 countries for purchasing power parity-adjusted GDP per capita. Qatar, for example, ranks first in the world for purchasing power as well as CO₂ emissions per capita (35.59 metric tons in 2021). However, the delegate from China (which ranks 79th in the GDP per capita rankings and produces 8.05 metric tons of emission per capita) disagreed, and said that, “It is not the obligation of China to provide financial support under the UNFCCC.” So, the decision to create a fund, while late, is clearly a significant political victory for developing countries given the successful stonewalling by wealthy nations to write a check. The scale of the “loss and damage” problem is truly profound as developed countries fear that the check would functionally need to be a blank one. For instance, one example of loss and damage is the submergence of a small island state, making it uninhabitable and potentially eliminating that country. What would the compensation be for such existential threats? Traditional ideas of national security are simply not adequate to cover the magnitude of the threat, and it sounds like something no one can afford, especially small island inhabitants. This very risk is behind the 2015 Suva Declaration on Climate Change by the Pacific Island Development Forum, which calls for authentic regulation of emissions and international climate justice. Item 7 of the Suva Declaration says: 

irreversible loss and damage caused by climate change goes beyond adaptation and is already a reality for PSIDS [Pacific small island developing states] if there is inadequate mitigation action, and that climate change is already resulting in forced displacement of island populations and the loss of land and territorial integrity and further highlight that such loss and damage results in breaches of social and economic rights. 

The COP27 loss and damage decision puts in place a transitional committee “with a view to operationalizing the funding arrangements”. Naturally, when a decision is made on the last day of a COP, as this one was, it is difficult to discuss and finalize the many details associated with the move. It is concerning that except for the initiative to start organizing the committee which will produce a report on loss and damage progress, many necessary details have been left out of the decision. It is worth noting that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are invited to consider what they could contribute to loss and damage during their 2023 spring meetings. 

Whether this turns out to be a serious weapon to combat loss and damage is yet to be seen, but the discussed history of drastic incrementalism means there is considerable reason to worry. Remember that in 2009 at COP15 in Copenhagen, wealthy countries pledged 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to fund adaptation and mitigation in poorer countries. That promise was never honored. 

Some pledges went through the Green Climate Fund, an investment scheme established during the Cancun COP in 2010 and funded by developed countries as well as private financial institutions. Half of the funds are spent on mitigation and the other half on adaptation matters such as scaling up decarbonization tactics. An analysis by the Frankfurt School-UNEP Centre shows that 24 percent of the fund’s projects are related to loss and damage. 

Financing loss and damage is complex and more than just creating relief aid for disasters. According to the Paris Agreement, it should avert (reduce greenhouse gasses), minimize (build more resilient communities), and address loss and damage (help people after they experience a problem) which can occur at a slow onset (for example, desertification) or through extreme events (such as tropical cyclones). 

The transitional committee will have to wrestle with other questions as well beyond who will be expected to contribute. Will it act as an insurance policy like the African Cities Water Adaptation Fund? Launched at COP27, this is an African-led insurance that will cover climate-related losses up to 14 billion dollars. How anticipatory will funding be? Will it, say, be used to build a Pakistan less vulnerable to flooding? Clearly, proper funding for loss and damage should be very proactive to avert more harm. Will civil society groups who help in a place like Pakistan be eligible to receive funding or will this only be directed to governments? Certainly, civil society groups will end up doing a lot of the work so they will need a share, but what do we expect that to look like if the money first goes to governments that run patronage-based authoritarian economies? What will oversight of spending look like? How will contributions be determined—perhaps by the scale of legacy emissions? Domestic politics in the United States would curdle any resolve Washington might have if this is the case, even though calculating contributions in this way would be just and appropriate. 

The United States already fosters a virulent and effective conservative social countermovement to cast doubt on the basics of climate science which in the past empowered two presidents to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol (George W. Bush) and the Paris Agreement (Donald Trump). President Biden re-committed the United States to Paris, but the point is that the world now knows that it cannot trust the United States to remain committed when the next conservative Republican president is elected. This is looking more and more likely for 2024. Many conservatives in the United States see climate change as a hoax and conspiracy that will be used to create a world government and redistribute wealth. Climate denial runs on the fear that climate policies like the loss and damage decision are meant to drain the United States of power, rob people of freedom, and arrest Western progress. Since the loss and damage problem is so enormous and the liability so potent, the decision to finance it is exactly the kind of international agreement conservatives have feared. 

In any case, there is a lot of uncertainty and it remains to be seen if the decision to set up a committee with a view to operationalize a loss and damage fund ends with real assistance for monumental problems or more vague promises. 

Parallel Processes
One promising result that transpired at COP27 was that the United States and China agreed to resume bilateral climate talks. This agreement, however, is fragile and uncertain as the U.S.-China relationship goes through periods of tension—witness the shooting down of suspected Chinese spy balloons over the United States. Their talks are critical because the two countries have the highest cumulative emissions. Sometimes these processes that run alongside but are not part of the COP can be productive. 

Another parallel process is related to methane reductions, because it is a powerful greenhouse gas. Currently, there are 150 countries which have signed the Global Methane Pledge and promised to voluntarily reduce its emissions by 30 percent. This would be significant if it bears out—there is good reason to think it might—because cutting methane emissions does not necessarily mean reducing fossil fuel use, but does require fossil fuel production to be cleaner. The Biden administration has already put policy tools in place for this to begin, and the easy sell to the majority of the world indicates these cuts in emissions are a low-hanging fruit. 

Another, developing effort is The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative which is being proposed by global civil society groups and some governments. This is an effort to make a treaty to end fossil fuel exploration and expansion, while phasing out existing production. If this were to materialize, it would put climate policy on the supply side of emissions. The European Parliament, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, 76 sub-national governments, the World Health Organization, and over a thousand non-governmental organizations around the world have so far endorsed the effort. 

The strategy behind the campaign is to identify “first mover” states willing to start international talks. The campaign does not expect fossil fuel-intensive states like the United States to join, but the hope is to build anti-fossil fuel norms which see fossil fuels as existentially dangerous like nuclear weapons (thus the language of non-proliferation). There are some glimmers of hope for a non-proliferation agreement. Several states have moratoria against oil exploration and production including New Zealand, France, Belize, and Costa Rica; and, twenty-five countries have joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance, promising to phase out coal including no further coal-fired power plants. One important problem though is that poorer countries may view fossil fuel development as a lifeline, thus to fairly expect countries to leave fossil fuels in the ground would be to radically expand renewable energy in developing countries—which again highlights the need for financing at climate scale. All of these problems are tightly bound since without the financing, mitigation strategies are limited, causing more loss and damage, and raising the need for more and more financing—but that also means that the solutions have impacts across issue areas. 

False Victory
A laudable idea was agreed to at COP27 because it is undeniable that loss and damage will cause immense harm and mortality, as in the 2022 floods of Pakistan, and preventing and compensating this harm requires financing at an equally immense scale. However, the failure of wealthy countries to fulfill the 2009 promise to raise 100 billion dollars a year while the international community has desperately failed to seriously mitigate greenhouse gas emissions through ostensibly empty institutions is all monstrously irresponsible. 

Each COP sees the world kick the can down the road, waiting for someone else to take on this growing burden. Emissions continue to grow, not fall. Though each COP president and UN organizers are eager to declare victory for their COP, each year the conferences offer little more than thin soup. The world deserves a much bigger and more nutritious meal. The world deserves sincere, effective climate policy. 

In the late 1980s, the world was waking up to a crisis of global proportions; climate change was beginning to be seen as a serious issue and policies and protocols were being drawn in response. The Montreal Protocol, an international treaty established in 1987 to limit the use of ozone-depleting substances, had just gone into force as public concern around the environmental impact of human activity was growing exponentially. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had been established in 1986—a year which saw particularly destructive droughts and heatwaves. The fossil fuel industry, under intense pressure from international efforts to address this budding crisis, now infamously seized this opportunity to build narratives around uncertainty and characterize mass concern as ill-informed hysteria. 

It is now widely documented that, while attempting to underplay the science projecting the serious consequences of under-regulated and unsustainable fossil-fuelled capitalism, companies like Exxon systematically strategized to continue with business as usual. On February 22, 1989, Duane Levine, Exxon’s then-Manager of Science and Strategic Development, delivered a presentation to the fossil fuel giant’s Board of Directors, stating that: “In spite of the rush by some participants in the greenhouse debate to declare that the science has demonstrated the existence of PEG (potential enhanced greenhouse) today, I do not believe such is the case. Enhanced greenhouse is still deeply embedded [sic] in scientific uncertainty, and we will require substantial additional investigation to determine the degree to which its effects might be experienced in the future.” 

What arguably began in this period was a war of narratives between the fossil fuel industry, organizations working to stem environmental disaster, and the media that reported on them. This war continues, albeit in a more evolved manner, to this day. Amid damning evidence of engaging in willful manipulations of information and the burying of scientific proof of the damage being done, the roots of a deep mistrust in any assertions by the fossil fuel industry to transition to more sustainable practices also began to grow. 

Throughout the late 1980s, 90s, and into the 2000s, the fossil fuel industry invested heavily in repositioning climate science to reflect uncertainty in public messaging, and characterized reporting on future scenarios as hysteria and falsehood. Mobil, for its part, ran paid advertorials in some of the most widely distributed publications often coinciding with major international climate conferences. With headlines like “Lies they tell our children,” “Apocalypse No” and “Unsettled Science,” these advertisements disguised as news pieces slammed educators and the media for propagating sensationalized doomsday scenarios while at times passive-aggressively criticizing environmentalists for hypocrisy. 

“Everybody, of course, remembers the Earth Summit and the tons of paper used up in reporting on it—paper now buried in landfills around the world,” one such advertorial proclaimed alongside dubious mentions of unseasonably cool temperatures proving the sky was not falling as the media would have you believe. 

Incidentally, this same advertorial cited in detail the infamous “Heidelberg Appeal,” a document signed by nearly 500 scientists to counter concerns around global warming being propagated by the IPCC, scientists, environmental activists, and the media. It ultimately emerged that the appeal was coordinated by proponents of industry-funded scientific research, among them the tobacco, chemical, and fossil fuel industries alongside climate change-denying organizational fronts, including the Science and Environment Policy Project and the Global Climate Coalition. 

At the core of the industry’s public relations was climate change denialism, more specifically the strategy of emphasizing the unreliability of climate models. A 1988 Exxon memo called into question the soundness of the science around the greenhouse effect: “The climate models are not very reliable because approximations are used to represent poorly understood interactions.” 

However, in the decades since, these models have been proven to be by and large accurate. As veteran climate scientist Mark New put it: “If you look at projected global temperature changes for a given amount of greenhouse gas forcing, the best estimate is pretty much the same as it was thirty years ago. If you’d asked me to forecast the temperature now, based on what the historical emissions have been up to today, the climate models would have done a pretty good job of telling you that the Earth has warmed by a bit more than a degree over the last thirty years globally.” 

More broadly, the fossil fuel industry has a long history of both indirect and direct participation in and influence upon UN Climate talks. This is likely a strategy to ensure they have skin in the game as global leaders meet to negotiate and draft energy and environmental policies that, in theory, could significantly impact their ability to continue to operate as usual. In recent years, perhaps because of the newfound momentum to codify reducing carbon emissions on an international scale, the extent of their participation seems to have expanded. At COP22 in Marrakech, held the year after the 2015 Paris Agreement was signed, representatives from major oil, gas, and coal companies participated through national and corporate bodies including the World Coal Association and various national and regional business councils. COP24 in Poland was sponsored by several companies benefiting from the exploitation of fossil fuels, particularly coal, including PGE, the country’s largest power company, and JSW, a major producer of metallurgical coal. The Royal Dutch Shell company was platformed via a side event to present their so called “Sky Scenario” detailing what they describe as a “technologically, industrially, and economically possible route forward.” 

With more than 500 attendees from the sector, the sheer number of industry representatives at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, was widely criticized. This staggering number, however, was surpassed during last year’s COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, where reports indicated upwards of 600 representatives from the industry attended. In a recent address at the American University in Cairo, Egypt’s Environment Minister Yasmine Fouad explained the inclusion of the sector in the conference’s Decarbonization Day. “We included them because we wanted to make sure that they were given the space to discuss, to make commitments, and to show us how they can be committed. Leaving them away from the discussion is not doing anyone any good,” she said. 

How the Media Failed
The media has also often failed to provide balanced, thorough, and consistent coverage of the climate crisis. In the past, the media’s shortcomings created fodder for climate deniers and those in the fossil fuel industry to continue to thrive and drag their feet in transitioning to cleaner energies. The traditional reporting mechanisms have meant that coverage around major environmental catastrophes or global climate conferences project a temporary urgency that fades as the news cycle shifts to another crisis or event. A 2022 study published in the International Journal of Press/Politics examining legacy media coverage of UNFCCC events found significant spikes in coverage of climate issues around major international events such as COPs as well as inconsistency in the tone of coverage during these events. Reporting tended to emphasize the agency of those most at risk of the negative impacts of climate change, while reporting during the rest of the year was characterized by a language of vulnerability when describing those same groups. The techniques used by media organizations to increase reach and elicit emotional responses from audiences have both been adopted by the fossil fuel industry in their campaigns to sway public opinion (such as when they invoked the so-called manipulation of children through educational initiatives around environmental issues in the abovementioned advertorial “Lies they tell our children”) and have been cited as justification for claiming a lack of media credibility. 

Levine made reference to the tendency toward what the industry characterized as fear mongering, warning against the risks posed to their interests by overexposure, which he predicted would cause public disquiet and further galvanize international efforts to reduce emissions. “We can expect continued pressure to overstate current scientific understanding. The media role, already prominent, is likely to increase public awareness and concern, and there will be continuing initiatives to extend international negotiations. As the degree of these efforts exceed understanding (or ability to respond constructively) there is a tendency towards a ‘crisis mentality.’” 

The Trend Continues at COP28
In the years since the denial campaigns of the late 1980s, the industry has pivoted in its tactics, touting questionable alternatives such as carbon capture, biofuels, and liquified natural gas (LNG). However, the distrust cultivated over decades of dishonest and manipulative narrative construction, coupled with their omnipresence in negotiations, has increasingly undermined the global institutions developed to combat the climate crisis. This is arguably the biggest concern among climate activists and stakeholders around the appointment of Sultan Al Jaber, head of the UAE’s national oil company, to the presidency of the climate conference. There is precedent for individuals involved in the oil and gas industry taking up major posts in environment and international climate negotiations. The EU’s lead negotiator during COP23 in Bonn, Germany, was Miguel Arias Cañate, who held the position of European Commissioner for Energy and Climate Action from 2014–2019. Cañate, who divested his substantial shares in two oil companies based in the Canary Islands during his nomination for the post, has been widely criticized for his support of unsustainable energy practices, including a move to approve fracking in Spain while Minister of Environment. 

Al Jaber’s appointment, however, comes at a different moment, and he is a different figure representing a different context. Over the last several years the world has existed in this visceral push and pull between the economic consequences of COVID-19 and energy insecurity emerging in large part from the war in Ukraine on the one hand, and a newfound and increasingly mainstream urgency around the climate crisis on the other. In many ways, Al Jaber is an embodiment of this conflicting dichotomy. As CEO of Adnoc, the UAE’s national oil company, he greenlit plans to almost double oil production by 2027. But Al Jaber is also chairman of a massive multinational renewable energy company with a stated capacity to displace over 19 million tons of CO2 annually. In theory, his two roles could represent real progress toward energy transition; however in practice, given the objective of increased fossil fuel production from the UAE, their coexistence seems to signal a general uptick in energy production rather than a political or economic to move toward a green economy in any revolutionary way, at least for the time being. Economic interests compounded by historical reliance on fossil fuel production have almost certainly stymied the development and implementation of relevant policy initiatives to roll back the UAE’s oil and gas industry, as competing interests create friction in the energy space. 

In Levine’s 1989 presentation, he stated that “policy initiatives are being advanced now and they could well out-pace scientific progress.” This was an argument for blocking policy that would hurt the fossil fuel industry’s commercial interests. In reality, the opposite has happened: As early projections have increasingly proven accurate and the science of climate change has continued to advance, it is policy that has failed to move forward with sufficient speed. The decades-old, coordinated campaigns of the fossil fuel industry have played no small role in this failure. 

On November 6, 2022, all eyes focused on the twenty-seventh cycle of the United Nations Climate Change Conference—more commonly known as COP27—which was held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. It was used as a platform for which nations of the Global South could practice climate diplomacy. The centering of the Global South in the climate conversation will continue at least until next year when COP28 will be held in Dubai. 

The location for these yearly gatherings is significant on multiple fronts. By holding COP27 in a North African nation, representatives of countries from the Global South were not only able to highlight the climate plague impacting Africa, but also bring to the world’s attention how the wealthiest countries, which often contribute the most to worsening climate conditions, tend to be spared the worst consequences of these events. The poorest, most vulnerable countries in the Global South, on the other hand, remain the most impacted. 

Africa: The Least Emitter, The Most Impacted
Recent reports by the United Nations show that by 2030, acute water shortage is expected to impact around 250 million people on the continent and displace up to 700 million. Four out of five African countries do not have the capabilities to manage water resources sustainably, making the continent one of the most vulnerable spots on the planet. 

Water shortage and severe droughts are not the only climate-related stresses impacting Africa. Temperature increases have made 2021 the third or fourth warmest year on record, and since 1961, the continent has experienced a reduction of about 34 percent in its agricultural activity, more than any other region on the planet. Sea level rise along African coastlines and wildfires have made climate-related hazards one of the primary contributors to food shortage, conflict, displacement, and political instability. In fact, according to the UN Environment Programme, an increase in temperatures equivalent to 2 degrees Celsius would reduce agricultural yields in sub-Saharan Africa by 10 percent by the 2050s. 

An increase by 3 degrees Celsius would create conditions unsuitable for growing maize, millet, and sorghum—some of the most important crops on the continent. If these scenarios come true, it would be extremely troubling, especially since Africa contributes only around 3.8 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions—the smallest share in the world—compared to other developed nations like the United States, which contributes around 26.4 percent. In other words, while the continent that is home to 15 percent of the Earth’s population contributes the least to global emissions, it is one of the worst impacted regions as a result of changes in climate patterns. 

Beyond Africa: Climate Vulnerability in the MENA Region
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, too, is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change, and no country will be spared. This includes the affluent Gulf countries that will experience a lack of access to fresh water supplies in the next three decades. The region is home to twelve out of the seventeen most water-stressed countries in the world. According to estimates by the World Bank, climate change is expected to impact the region’s economic stability or, more specifically, devastate about 6 to 14 percent of its GDP by 2050. 

Beyond the decline in water resources due to severe droughts and mismanagement of resources, the region is experiencing an increase in temperatures that—if left uncontrolled, according to some estimates—can make parts of the region uninhabitable for humans. Temperatures are also rising twice as fast as the global average and are expected to increase by 5 degrees Celsius in MENA by the end of the century if no action is taken. This is particularly an issue because when compared to the global average, the region could experience an additional increase of 1.4 to 1.8 degrees Celsius for every degree of global warming. However, while Africa is one of the least contributors to global emissions, the MENA region lags behind other regions in terms of controlling emission goals, having transparency with Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) compliance—an international non-profit organization that helps companies and cities disclose their environmental impact—and meeting the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) approved targets. The CDP helps mobilize the private sector to take urgent climate action. 

However, not all MENA countries are equal contributors to global emissions. For example, Iran, Oman, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia have failed to effectively decouple their economic growth from being strongly associated with the consumption of fossil fuels. On the other hand, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Djibouti have achieved relative decoupling, and Bahrain and Jordan have achieved absolute decoupling. As a result, economic dependency on oil and gas production in some countries in the region has significantly contributed to worsening regional climate conditions. For example, CO2 and CH4 accounted for 91 to 96 percent of gas emissions in the past five decades, with Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia being the three largest emitters of the greenhouse gas CH4, and Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Iraq the biggest producers of CO2 in the region.All of these have contributed to increases in temperatures over time and to the growing frequency, duration, and intensity of extreme weather. 

Climate Crises Traversing Borders
Beyond the immediate impact of extreme weather patterns, like floods and wildfires, climate change can be considered a threat multiplier or an event that can exacerbate and expose already existing weaknesses and limitations. As a result, countries—many of which in the Global South—with limited state capacity, weak institutional structures, undiversified economies, outdated infrastructure, and that are conflict-prone are more likely to experience aggravated climate impact than countries with better resources. 

Yemen is a good case in point when looking at climate-related displacement. More than 4.7 million Yemenis have been internally displaced since the outbreak of the war in 2014. Combined with a collapsing infrastructure, the conflict led to unprecedented famine, which left around 23.4 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, 17 million people food insecure, and 3.5 million children and breastfeeding or pregnant women suffering from acute malnutrition. Climate-related events have magnified the situation. One such example was the coastal flooding affecting northern and central Yemen in 2022, which came after a severe drought in the first half of the season, impacting more than 300 thousand individuals (many of them were already displaced). These events forced families to migrate either externally, if they could afford it, or internally to other parts of the country that were also experiencing a crisis. This climate migration trend generally increases the odds of further conflict over diminishing resources. 

Overall, the continuous deterioration of climate conditions in the MENA region and in Africa is creating circumstances for mass internal and external displacement that will imminently be knocking on the doors of Europe. Furthermore, climate-related events are likely to have a substantially negative impact in poorer, hotter, and lower-lying countries, which, combined with migration from rural to overpopulated centers, will increase conflict over increasingly scarce resources and job opportunities. 

This fuels political instability and conflict which will increase displacement and ultimately affect energy markets, especially since countries in the region are some of the world’s main oil and gas exporters. These events will majorly impact political, economic, and social stability in Europe and the United States. 

Global South in the Climate Conversations and Solutions
While richer countries have long evaded the consequences of their economic and political policies, they cannot continue to escape the effects of the conditions they have created. It is also no longer possible for the West to marginalize the Global South decision-making processes of climate response or evade its responsibility toward the poorest and most vulnerable of these countries. Certainly, the wealthiest nations have been lagging behind on these fronts. 

For example, Global North countries still do not provide enough to support and strengthen Africa’s climate change response. Africa’s role in fighting climate change and its potential for renewable energy is massive and untapped; progress in that direction requires both industrialization and decarbonization and massive investment. Most importantly, Africa should receive a commitment from the main contributors to the climate disaster, mainly developed countries in the Global North, to fulfill their promises, cut their emissions, and invest in renewables in countries and locations that are most impacted by climate change. 

These steps can slow down the negative impact of worsening climate changes in the region and globally. Yet, many top carbon-emitting countries are far from taking these steps. For example, despite estimates that the United States contributed approximately 1.9 trillion dollars in climate damage to affected countries between 1990 and 2014, U.S. president Joe Biden in 2021 pledged a meager $5.7 billion per year for developing countries by 2024 while also pushing for more oil and gas production at home to bring down energy prices that spiked due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Even with the healthcare and climate change bill, or the Inflation Reduction Act, under Biden’s belt, the United States remains behind in its efforts to support the Global South, with Biden announcing at COP27 a modest 150 million dollars as a “down payment” to tackle climate change, despite the immensity of the obstacles ahead. But are there better alternatives for climate action? 

Some activists have called for the Global North to accept a “loss and damage (L&D)” approach rather than implementing the usual neoliberal economic policies, which they say do more damage to local communities and to the climate itself. Alternatively, they suggest taking the humanitarian aid approach, which in itself is a form of rent that creates dependency and rarely helps countries build resilient institutions that are needed to engage in more effective climate response. Discussion of the loss and damage approach was first initiated and adopted with the 2007 Bali Action Plan and later in the Cancun Adaptation Framework, which called for the establishment of compensation mechanisms for developed and rich countries to financially support efforts for mitigation and adaptation climate policy in developing and poorer nations. While later conventions such as the Warsaw International Mechanism and the Paris Agreement have created language to “advance knowledge gathering, coordination and support to address L&D,” there is no indication that developed countries will consider financial support of that nature. Despite that, progress toward prioritizing climate-related policy, where the Global South is the center of the conversation, is being made. 

However, that progress is slow and not adequate for the level of crisis at hand. Future efforts need to incorporate the interest of local communities and activists through knowledge-sharing, but also through directly targeting state capacity and building institutional quality in the most impacted nations. Without these steps, the climate crisis will have a wider-reaching and inescapable impact within the Global South, and the cold (or hot) claws of climate will reach the Western countries sooner rather than later. 

How to Achieve Progress
Meanwhile, while progress is slow on some of the more radical and meaningful steps that the wealthiest nations can take, there are important steps that can be taken to pave the way further toward impactful solutions. These steps, which include holding high-profile climate events and gatherings in the Global South and making the region the focus of the conversation, can significantly mitigate the global impact of climate change. 

First, no effective climate action can be taken on a global scale without including affected countries as part of the conversation. Second, including countries of the Global South as equal partners is necessary because these countries, in the form of their governments, activists, and local communities, have a clearer understanding of their own needs and their own contributions to the climate crisis, which ensures a more impactful response. For example, some of the key moments of COP27 were the visit from then Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as well as the resumption of climate discussions between China and the United States, which highlighted key cooperation between major actors that can hopefully go further into COP28. Third, it is important to not view all countries of the Global South as victims in the climate change game. 

While African countries are some of the most impacted yet least responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, some MENA countries, especially those with rentier economies, do play an important role in the climate crisis. As a result, solutions and analysis must take into account the unique social, economic, and political makeup of different countries in the region, as each has its own distinct conditions. This could be a potential challenge in the upcoming COP. 

Combining accountability from the wealthiest nations with the knowledge and tools from local communities, while also creating spaces and resources that focus on building resilient institutions, is not only important, but is also necessary for global social, economic, and political stability. 

Egypt played a pivotal and bridging role in delivering the long-overdue loss and damage fund, a planned fund to compensate vulnerable countries for loss and damage sustained due to climate change. The fact that it has taken three decades of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to come to this decision reflects the outcome’s importance, as well as the difficulty with which it was achieved. During COP27, India voiced the concerns of the Global South across various agenda items, and is proud to have supported Egypt and other like-minded developing countries in achieving the fund. 

With most of the member states, particularly developing countries, still struggling with multiple recovery challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, prevailing economic slowdowns, crises in fuel and food supply chains, and delays in progress toward achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs), COP’s theme “Together for Implementation” was both ambitious and challenging. 

While the loss and damage fund may have captured much global attention, COP27 under Egypt’s leadership also successfully negotiated important aspects of climate action, including mitigation, adaptation, and climate finance. These efforts rectified the skewed emphasis on mitigation work programs in previous COPs which fell short of developing countries’ expectations. Given the constant efforts by some to shift the burden of responsibility for climate action toward developing countries, it will continue to require efforts from the latter, including India and Egypt, to preserve this balance. 

The Sharm El-Sheikh Implementation Plan emphasizes the urgent need for immediate, deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by parties across all applicable sectors. At the same time, it underlines that developed country parties need to urgently and significantly scale up their provision of climate finance, technology transfer, and capacity-building for adaptation so as to respond to the needs of developing country parties as part of a global effort. It aptly expresses serious concern that the commitment of developed countries to mobilize climate finance of 100 billion dollars per year by 2020 has not yet been met. 

The largest share of historical and current global emissions of GHGs originated in developed countries, and the current per capita emissions in developing countries, such as India and African countries, are relatively low. For example, India, despite being home to around 18 percent of humanity, has contributed approximately 4 percent of global cumulative emissions from 1850 to 2019. In sharp contrast, just twenty-three developed countries are responsible for half of all historical CO2 emissions. 

India, despite having significant energy needs in order to develop, is actively pursuing low-carbon development strategies. Today, India is the world’s third-largest producer of renewable energy with 40 percent of its installed electricity capacity coming from non-fossil fuel sources. India is progressively decoupling economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions. 

According to the 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Africa is one of the lowest contributors to GHG emissions, yet key development sectors have already experienced widespread losses and damages attributable to human-induced climate change, including biodiversity loss, water shortages, reduced food production, loss of lives, and reduced economic growth. In Africa more than any other region, agricultural productivity growth has fallen by 34 percent since 1961 due to climate change. Over 2.6 million and 3.4 million new weather-related displacements occurred in sub-Saharan Africa in 2018 and 2019, respectively. The IPCC report also mentions that annual finance flows targeting adaptation for Africa are billions of 

U.S. dollars less than the lowest adaptation cost estimates for near-term climate change. Similar challenges exist for many developing countries across the world. 

It is therefore imperative that developed countries take the lead in global climate action, including in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. For the world to achieve net zero emissions by 2050—and considering the historical emissions of the developed countries as well as the accepted legal principles of Equity, and Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC)—developed countries should reach net zero emissions well before 2050, while developing countries may take longer. 

In fact, one significant outcome of COP27 is that the decisions adopted have taken into consideration the principles of the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement, including climate justice, equity, and CBDR-RC. While the principle of CBDRRC, which is fundamental to the entire climate negotiations framework, should have been the default, there were serious attempts from some parties to dilute these principles and shift the burden of responsibilities for climate action. 

Raising the COP27 Curtain on Other Outcomes
Among other major outcomes from COP27 are work programs for mitigation, just transition, and climate action in agriculture. On technology transfer, expectations have been raised with the launch of the first joint work program of the Technology Mechanism for 2023–2027, which aims to facilitate the transformational change needed to achieve the goals of the Convention and the Paris Agreement. Hopefully, the newly adopted work program on agriculture, true to its letter, will aim at safeguarding food security, ending hunger, and addressing vulnerability of food production systems from adverse impacts of climate change. On the Global Goal on Adaptation, established in the Paris Agreement, the implementation plan recognizes that adaptation is a global challenge faced at multiple levels and is a key component of global response to climate change. The COP27 decisions also capture the spirit of inclusive participation and recognize the important roles of non-state stakeholders in addressing and responding to climate change. Much to the delight of various sections of civil society, COP27 adopted the work program on Action for Climate Empowerment, which calls for meaningful engagement of youth in climate actions at all levels, facilitating the inclusive participation of children, women, indigenous peoples, and persons with disabilities, in climate action, according to national circumstances. 

Another commendable takeaway from COP27 was the launch of an ambitious Executive Action Plan 2023-2027 for the “Early Warnings for All” initiative, aiming to provide access to early warning systems around the world by 2027. The COP27 decision rightly points out the existing gap that currently leaves one-third of the world, including 60 percent of Africa, without access to early warning services. India, which has always been committed to sharing its expertise for the benefit of partner countries in need, also joined the initiative. Early warning systems based on targeted climate services can be effective for disaster risk reduction, social protection programs, and managing risks to health and food systems. 

The COP27 decisions, emphasizing the importance of transition to clean energy, clearly underline that a just and equitable transition should encompass pathways that take into consideration energy, socioeconomics, workforce, and other dimensions. India is also determined to implement an ambitious, just, equitable, and inclusive pathway to low-emission and climate-resilient development suitable to its national capabilities. As per India’s enhanced Nationally Determined Contributions submitted in August 2022, India stands committed to reducing the emissions intensity of its GDP to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. India also is committed to achieving about 50 percent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by 2030 with the help of transfer of technology and low-cost international finance. During COP27 itself, on November 14, 2022, India submitted its “Long-Term Low-Carbon Development Strategy” to strive toward net-zero by 2070. 

India’s Role at COP27
India has also undertaken global initiatives to fight climate change and its severe impact. Together with partner countries, India has pioneered initiatives like the International Solar Alliance and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) along with CDRI’s dedicated initiative of Infrastructure for Resilient Island States. India has also engaged in various bilateral and regional projects and capacity-building activities in developing countries, including in Africa, which directly or indirectly contribute to climate action. The India-UN Development Partnership Fund has supported, among other things, renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies, as well as the provision of training and workshops on utilization of these technologies to reduce carbon footprint and reverse climate change. 

Just a month before COP27, a Mission “Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE)” was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the presence of the UN Secretary General. Mission LiFE is a global campaign which aims to promote sustainable lifestyles and encourage individuals across the world to undertake simple environment-friendly actions in their daily lives. The importance of sustainable lifestyles and sustainable patterns of production and consumption was a welcome inclusion in the COP27 cover decision. 

As the Chair of the Group of Twenty (G20), India is committed to driving a consensus on a Green Development Pact of the G20 Leaders, which will be a blueprint of strong actions for the next decade powering green development all over the world. This will be through investments in sustainable lifestyle, leveraging green hydrogen for climate action, and accelerating progress on SDGs. Moreover, as Modi has stated, “India’s G20 priorities will be shaped in consultation with not just our G20 partners, but also our fellow travellers [citizens] in the Global South, whose voice often goes unheard.” In that spirit, India warmly welcomes Egypt as a guest country during India’s G20 presidency and looks forward to working closely with Egypt in putting forward the priorities of the Global South. 

India’s G20 presidency amplifies the unheard voices, perspectives, and priorities of the Global South in G20 debates. In a show of commitment to South–South Cooperation, India organized the Voice of the Global South Summit as a platform for developing countries to share their concerns, perspectives, and priorities. Over 120 countries participated in this virtual summit on January 12–13, 2023. A session was devoted to the environment and was themed “Balancing growth with environment friendly lifestyles,” where participating countries shared their concerns and perspectives related to climate change and also exchanged experiences on climate actions. India stands with Egypt in solidarity with the Global South, and should continue to lead the demand for the fulfillment of climate finance obligations by developed countries. 

The bilateral partnership between India and Egypt is time-tested and multifaceted, and this year marked the 75^th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. In honor of the momentous occasion, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi concluded in January 2023 his state visit to India, during which he graced India’s 74^th Republic Day as Chief Guest. The two leaders decided to elevate the relationship to a “strategic partnership,” bringing further momentum and robustness to the mutual ties in times to come. 

India, which has been a solution provider in many global issues as evident in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, recognizes that climate change is a global collective action problem. It is, therefore, committed to engaging in multilateral negotiations actively and in a forward-looking manner toward preserving an effective, cooperative, and equitable global architecture based on climate justice and the principles of equity and CBDR-RC. At the same time, India will continue to voice the genuine requirements of developing countries while working closely with like-minded developing countries such as Egypt, striving for an equitable carbon and development space to achieve sustainable development and the eradication of poverty. 

Looking beyond, India looks forward to meaningful progress with respect to climate finance and the new collective quantified goal. The Sharm El-Sheikh Implementation Plan encourages cooperation under technology mechanisms, and India looks ahead to operationalizing technology transfer and ensuring access to technology for developing countries, thereby mainstreaming the importance of a shift to sustainable and environment-friendly lifestyles. 

 

Dr. Jennie Stephens is the Dean’s Professor of Sustainability Science and Policy at Northeastern University. She is also a feminist, scholar–activist, writer, and social justice advocate whose interdisciplinary work has articulated the need to move past “climate isolationism”—approaching climate change through a narrow technological lens— and into “climate justice,” which is beneficial to people and communities. The author of the 2020 book Diversifying Power: Why We Need Antiracist, Feminist Leadership on Climate and Energy, Stephens is a strong advocate of a “people-first” approach to climate policy, and she is critical of viewing climate change solely as a technological issue. Rather, her book refocuses the conversation around the transformative power that a feminist and anti-racist approach can leverage in climate and energy policy. 

Stephens began her career in climate advocacy as an environmental scientist. Throughout her twenty-five-year career, Stephens began directing her research to the socio-political aspects of climate and energy policy after realizing that a technocratic approach to combating climate change was largely ineffective. Stephens argues that the most effective policy must come from leaders that recognize and work to resist the inequalities and disparities perpetuated by the pervading policies and structures of power. As the current climate leadership struggles to make progress in fossil fuel phaseout, the future must be rooted in the idea of energy democracy, which acknowledges the potential of redistributing wealth, power, jobs, and health more equitably as the world transitions to renewable energy. By utilizing a perspective that incorporates social justice, climate policy can encapsulate a larger structural transformation of society in order to be truly impactful. 

Cairo Review Assistant Editor Ana Davis sat down with Dr. Stephens to discuss climate justice, the future of renewable energy, and her thoughts on COP27 and COP28. 

CR: In the past, you’ve discussed extensively the intersections of class, race, and gender with climate change. Could you talk about what that connection is between climate action and social justice? 

JS: It is becoming increasingly clear that the climate crisis is not the problem, but a symptom of a larger structural challenge. If we continue to focus narrowly on climate and say to ourselves, “oh, we need to fix the climate crisis,” we end up being ineffective. I think that is why we have been inadequate in our responses over the past couple of decades. So now, more of us are recognizing that the changes that are needed to address the climate crisis require deeper structural, economic, and financial changes that go way beyond greenhouse gas emission reductions in the energy system. 

Most of my work has been on energy systems moving away from fossil-fuel-based energy systems toward renewable-based energy systems. But I see over and over again how so many clean energy policies end up advantaging rich people and corporations and excluding the most vulnerable people and households that are struggling. So I think we have very clear evidence at this point that the kind of narrow approach to climate ends up perpetuating and reinforcing injustices and increasing vulnerabilities of people, which is exactly the opposite of what we need to do. Embracing a climate justice lens, moving beyond a narrow technocratic view of the climate crisis, broadens out and calls for big investments in people and communities in all kinds of things beyond energy. Energy is critical, but investments in housing, food, education, and health are also needed, and are required if we are to be effective in reducing climate vulnerabilities. 

CR: You’ve also written about looking beyond the idea of “climate isolationism,” and instead shifting to “climate justice.” You’ve also written about “diversifying power” which is discussed in a book by the same name. Could you explain these terms and describe how they might be applied to achieving more holistic and transformative climate action? 

JS: I think it comes down to the fact that we really need bigger, transformative, structural, systemic change. So I was trained as an environmental scientist and started working on the climate issue from a scientific perspective where we focused on greenhouse gas emission reductions and technologies to reduce climate risk and climate impact. But throughout my career over the past twenty-five years, I’ve been increasingly aware of how that narrow technocratic lens which I call climate isolationism—thinking about the climate as a problem that needs to be fixed, and then coming up with technologies or narrow policies that focus only on trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—has just been completely ineffective. There are more renewables now than there were, but on the fossil fuel side, the fossil fuel companies and the countries that benefit most from fossil fuels have no plans to stop their fossil fuel extraction. So until and unless there is a global, collective initiative to constrain fossil fuel supply, we will not be moving in the right direction. 

One of the reasons that climate policy has been ineffective for so long is that we have not been talking about fossil fuel phaseout, which has to be front and center. The Paris Agreement does not even explicitly mention fossil fuels, and COP27 didn’t mention oil and gas. Powerful interests have prevented genuine discussion on what needs to happen globally, which is fossil fuel phaseout. And climate isolationism, this narrow technocratic perspective, has fed into that delay strategy. 

The other phrase that I use is climate justice—a term that really focuses on who’s benefiting, who’s being excluded, and where and why vulnerabilities are increasing. A climate justice lens considers that systems, policies, practices, and priorities are either perpetuating injustice and marginalization and vulnerability, or they are resisting, reversing, and repairing. A climate justice approach focuses on changing structures and relationships so we do not perpetuate the concentration of wealth and power and continue exploitative and extractive economic systems that maintain injustice. Climate justice focuses on investing in people and communities to resist continued marginalization. 

Compared to more narrow climate action that focuses solely on emissions reductions, climate justice is a much more holistic approach. Climate justice means investing in people and communities around the world in a more equitable way, so that people are not as vulnerable to the disruptions that are now inevitable with climate change. There is a massive need to expand investment—big public investment in education, food systems, and health systems. There’s been a gradual complacency growing, a kind of acceptance of people not having their basic needs met, which I think is completely unnecessary and unacceptable. It’s an issue of more equitably distributing resources and recognizing that our current structures have not incentivized investing in the ways that we need to. Unfortunately the inequities and disparities have been getting worse rather than better. Last year in 2022, many of the fossil fuel companies made their biggest profit ever, while billions of people are struggling more than before. So I think that’s a big piece of what climate justice is about. 

In my book, I explore climate isolationism, and the reason it is perpetuated. This has to do with who’s involved—and a lack of diversity. Conventional, male-dominated, patriarchal approaches to climate assume technology can “fix the climate”. This perspective assumes control over the climate system. But when we have more diversity of perspectives and experiences included in our processes, different policies are prioritized. I encourage feminist anti-racist leadership, which is an invitation to all of us to change the systems that advantage some while marginalize others. We don’t just need women to consider themselves feminist leaders, and we don’t just want people of color to consider themselves anti-racist leaders. We need leadership that acknowledges the power structures and the systems and policies and practices that perpetuate disparities and injustices at every level and on lots of different scales. In the book, I highlight many innovative, creative, diverse leaders who are doing amazing things that are connecting climate and energy to economic justice, food justice, health, and transportation justice. There is so much going on at a grassroots level that we don’t hear about—the book is an attempt to showcase some of the innovative and creative leaders and inspire people to get involved at different levels. 

CR: Speaking about international climate policy, a lot of the indicators that we see coming out of these big conferences for measuring progress are very much based in numbers and seem to take more of the technocratic perspective that you discussed. So with a framework of climate justice, what indicators can we look to when assessing our progress that could help us look beyond isolationism? 

JS: Great question, and there are a lot of different metrics to assess whether, if, and how we’re reducing climate vulnerabilities. Metrics of human well-being, in terms of health and education metrics, and metrics that show moving toward more healthy and equitable societies are indicators we can look at. If we consider the sustainable development goals, with many of those goals, we’re actually going in the wrong direction. The narrow focus on greenhouse gas emissions obfuscates responsibility for what’s happening in people’s lives and how the concentration of wealth and power is increasing. So I think metrics focused on the distribution of human wellbeing are important in a climate justice framework. 

Another problem with focusing only on greenhouse gas emission reductions is the legitimization of market-based mechanisms, including carbon credits, that actually don’t have integrity, which then devalues the whole approach. It’s emerging that some organizations are buying credit to claim benefits now for saving some forest ten years ago. There’s all kinds of complicated and questionable approaches with the market-based mechanism that just focuses on carbon and emission reductions, and it’s really missing the point and delaying the transformative changes that are needed. This approach ends up reinforcing systems that do not value and incentivize investing in people and communities. Focusing more explicitly and clearly on people, a people-first approach, rather than the abstraction of greenhouse gas emissions is critically important. An additional metric that could be useful is tracking the supply of fossil fuels. Are we reducing fossil fuel extraction or not, and which companies, which countries are continuing to expand fossil fuel extraction and fossil fuel use? Leveraging publicly available data on fossil fuel supply, rather than only on emissions, allows for greater accountability and transparency, and that is another way to think about metrics from a climate justice perspective. 

CR: What is your assessment of the current state of the energy landscape, especially with increased fossil fuel reliance due to the War in Ukraine? 

JS: The global instability in energy markets, energy systems, and the energy landscape that has emerged in response to the War in Ukraine has highlighted how volatile fossil fuel reliance is. Countries, organizations, people, and households that rely more on fossil fuels are actually worse off right now, because the prices have gone up. 

Households, communities, organizations, and countries that have already invested a lot in renewables are more stable and less vulnerable. Also, regions of the world where communities have invested in renewables that are locally owned have more control over their energy supply. The War in Ukraine reinforces why we need to accelerate the phasing out of fossil fuel reliance. Rather than continuing to be beholden to these geopolitical forces, renewable energy offers more stability. 

In some places around the world, and in Europe in particular, governments have been offering people public funds to help pay their energy bills. This is actually another way for the government to subsidize fossil fuels even more. An alternative approach would be to leverage this opportunity to invest in reducing fossil fuel reliance. Governments could offer people either zero interest loans or negative interest loans, which means actually paying people to upgrade their home heating system so it’s no longer relying on fossil fuels. Air source heat pumps are non-fossil-fuel-based heating systems and investing in renewable generation for households gives people more local control over their energy system, allowing them not to be as vulnerable to this volatility of fossil fuel. So I think there’s some optimism and this past year’s volatility has helped people realize that, so more investment can be made to encourage people to reduce their fossil fuel reliance. 

CR: As we’re talking about reducing fossil fuel reliance, can renewable energy sources fulfill all of our energy needs, either now or in the future? 

JS: So this is always an interesting question, and it’s easy for people to say no, it’s impossible. But I would disagree. If we change our assumptions about the way society is run and what we need energy for, renewable energy could definitely fulfill our energy needs. The world would look different, and we would have different consumption patterns. We could change our assumptions about buying products from all over the world. We could change our assumptions about transport and transportation for both goods and for people, how big our houses are, how far we travel. So it’s not like, “oh, we have to just look at the total quantity of energy used right now, and map on a renewable-based future.” The vision is that regions of the world and different communities would adjust their expectations to leverage the resources available to them. 

Each community could have their own locally appropriate mix of distributed renewables in different regions—it’s different in different places. Coastal communities could have offshore wind as well as wave and tidal energy. Inland communities could have geothermal, as well as solar and onshore wind. There are many options, and it’s not one size fits all. Once people are paying more attention to, “where is the energy coming from?” and “how can we leverage our local energy resources?”, then you can imagine changes in how we use energy. So it is not a simple substitution, and there are so many co-benefits if we reimagine society as a renewable-based society. A very different system is possible with a different structure and different ownership, different profits, a different sense of control, and potential local ownership. 

This is where this idea of energy democracy, which I’ve actually written about quite a bit, comes in. Energy democracy acknowledges the many broader socio-political changes of economic and political power that could be associated with the transition toward a more renewable-based future. And there’s so many potential benefits in terms of social benefits, health benefits, and economic benefits. 

CR: What do you think is the relationship between local and indigenous leadership and action and big international events like COP? And how does one impact the other? 

JS: I guess I would start by saying there’s been an increased concentration of wealth and power among a narrow group of elite leaders—political leaders, but also economic elites. The COP process represents this concentration of power and wealth. Fossil fuel interests and corporate interests are very well represented at COPs. I’ve been to a few COPs. I was in Copenhagen in 2009, I was in Paris in 2015, and I was in Glasgow in 2021, and the presence of corporate interest has just increased over time. Also, a decline in the number of civil society and grassroots organizers and activists has been very visible. 

I think this is why revealing and acknowledging the power of corporate interest in all of this is really critical, so that people understand what we’re up against. It’s really hard for indigenous and local and feminist perspectives to be integrated because the powerful vested interests don’t really want to integrate those perspectives. At COP, youth, indigenous, and feminist voices are increasingly given an opportunity to give a speech or make a statement, but then powerful interests do not integrate those priorities into the negotiations. A transformative approach requires more than listening but actually integrating those perspectives into what’s going on. And that’s been hard [to achieve]. 

CR: Which groups or individuals do you find most inspiring and effective in their climate action leadership? 

JS: In the COP process, when I’ve attended, I’ve been part of the Women and Gender Constituency, which is an amazing group of advocates from all over the world who are bringing a feminist, climate justice perspective to the talks. It’s a network of all kinds of different organizations around the world, and I just want to emphasize that there are so many inspiring people and organizations who are committing so much initiative and innovation to advancing these ideas. It’s hard work, because we’re up against very mainstream, well-funded, more traditional interests, and corporate interests with a lot of money. So the Women and Gender Constituency at the COP process has been the constituency that I have been most inspired by. 

Another organization that is really important and rapidly expanding is the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. This is an international network that is calling out the fact that fossil fuel interests are actively investing to slow everything down, not bring a climate justice perspective, and sustain fossil fuel interests. So the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative is a network of people from all over the world calling out fossil fuel interests, and saying we need a global coordinated commitment to phase out fossil fuel supply. People can sign and be a part of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty as an individual or as part of an organization. There are whole countries and cities that have now signed on to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as governments, health institutions, Nobel laureates, civil society organizations, academics, scientists, and faith-based organizations. All kinds of people around the world and organizations have signed on and are part of this growing movement. So I think that is another key organization to watch or to get involved in. And they have a lot of resources for people who want to expand fossil fuel phaseout in their community or in their organization. 

CR: How do you think funds like the recently agreed upon loss and damage fund will impact future climate action leadership? 

JS: The [agreement to establish the] loss and damage fund at the last COP is a big deal. It’s something that many countries didn’t want and fought really hard not to have. The United States, in particular, is one of the countries that didn’t want to sign on to it, but it did eventually. So just the establishment of it is, in some sense, a big win. But from a justice perspective, it is sad that this simple agreement was so hard to get. So it’s important to recognize that it’s a big step, but it is also important to acknowledge the problems around the implementation of it. There have been commitments before for climate adaptation funds to be made, and countries have not fulfilled their obligations or their commitments. So there’s still a lot of work to be done in this space. Given the devastation and the suffering that’s already occurring around the world in so many places, the scale is insufficient. 

CR: As you said, sometimes there are commitments made and then not a lot of follow through. So what are some immediate steps that you think rich countries in the Global North can take domestically to not fall through on climate mitigation and financing commitments, and also to create pathways toward those more sustainable transformative solutions? 

JS: I think this is where all policy is now climate policy. One of my graduate students and I have written about a Green New Deal framework which represents a new era of climate policy that moves beyond greenhouse gas emission reductions and the “oh, let’s use this technology to reduce emissions a little bit” [approach], to a broader approach of investing in communities and households that have been underinvested in. In that framework, it is recognized that health policy is climate policy, education policy is climate policy, and housing policy is climate policy. 

Different communities and different cities, different regions of the country and the world, have different opportunities to invest in new and different ways that reduce these inequities and disparities. What we’re talking about here is a larger structural transformation of society. I think the first step is embracing a transformative lens and not giving up on what’s possible, and acknowledging that it’s about allocation of resources. There are many ways to reduce the concentration of wealth and power, including taxing the rich, increasing minimum wage and supporting workers, and ensuring access to healthcare and good education. Fossil fuel interests have been strategically investing for decades, particularly in the United States, to undermine public investments in everything, from education to health, to housing and transportation. It’s now becoming more and more apparent that the lack of investment in the public good doesn’t really work well for anyone. We need more collective investments, public investments, and a stronger public sector that is not co-opted by the private sector. Changing this is hard, especially when so much of the power is concentrated in corporate interests influencing the government. Each community, each organization, each place has a different landscape to navigate this. 

As the climate crisis is getting worse, the need for bigger structural change and a bigger vision for what’s possible is more urgent. I maintain optimism that larger change is possible. Maybe things have to get worse in order to make the larger structural changes that are needed. 

CR: And lastly, looking ahead, what are some things that you would hope to see at COP28 later this year? 

JS: COP28 is in Dubai, hosted by the United Arab Emirates. I think having such a fossil fuel-strong country hosting it is delegitimizing the whole process. There’s been outrage already among many climate justice advocates and climate activists, saying, “why and how is a fossil fuel-focused nation that has no plans to stop their fossil fuel extraction leading and hosting?” It almost represents and elevates the paradox, or the hypocrisy of it all. So I think that it’s actually going to bring to the fore more of this discussion about fossil fuel phaseout, and how that has to be the focus. The powerful interests won’t want that to be the focus, but that will definitely be the focus among the climate activists, among the Women and Gender Constituency, and so we’ll see how it all unfolds. There is an opportunity for holding accountable the fossil fuel interests in this process more explicitly—we’ll see how that works out. 

While climate change impacts all nations and peoples of the world, not all nations take an equitable stance to ameliorate climate damage. Environmental diplomacy is full of lofty goals and ideals, but disagreements have historically been commonplace from nations with high carbon emissions. For this reason, global leaders have not always been able to reach agreements at the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and to this day environmental activists condemn diplomats for not doing enough. This timeline will cover key moments in environmental diplomacy from the historic “Earth Summit” held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992 up to COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, in November, 2022.  

June 3 to June 14, 1992: World leaders gathered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). This conference created a new framework for countries to take action toward sustainable development. For example, UNCED created Agenda 21, which detailed how nations could preserve natural resources and encouraged governments to make international trade policies centered around sustainable development. Also known as the “Earth Summit,” this conference was the catalyst that sparked the global conversation about environmental diplomacy. 

March 21, 1994: The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) entered into force after being adopted in 1992, committing signatories to work toward stabilizing the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere to prevent “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. 

1995: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a Second Assessment Report and concluded that evidence suggested that, “carbon dioxide remains the most important contributor to anthropogenic forcing of climate change.” This marked the first definitive statement that humans are responsible for climate change. 

March 28 to April 7, 1995: The first Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC took place in Berlin. The conference resulted in the Berlin Mandate, which established a process for dealing with climate change. The conference also created a separate body called the Ad Hoc Group on the Berlin Mandate, which would hold a series of negotiating sessions from 1995 that would culminate with the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol.

December 1 to December 10, 1997: At COP3, leaders agreed to the first legally binding climate treaty entitled the Kyoto Protocol, which committed industrialized economies and economies in transition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions according to country-specific targets. The protocol focused on developed countries like the United States and its carbon emissions rather than placing the greater burden on developing countries like China or India. 

November 2 to November 13, 1998: The fourth COP took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and it culminated with the Buenos Aires Plan of Action. The plan was not able to fully realize ideals set forth within the previous Kyoto Protocol. 

October 25 to November 5, 1999: At COP5 in Bonn, Germany, leaders discussed transitioning the ideas within the Kyoto Protocol into realities. One of the achievements, according to the White House Initiative on Global Climate Change, was to more than double the time dedicated to negotiations at the upcoming conference. 

November 13 to November 25, 2000: Diplomacy surrounding COP6 at The Hague was not productive, as leaders from the United States and Europe could not reach consensus over “carbon sinks” and nuclear energy. According to climate change analysts, developing countries were sidelined from this dialogue. 

March 2001: Former U.S. President George W. Bush withdrew the United States from the Kyoto Protocol. While former U.S. Vice President Al Gore participated in the creation of the protocol in 1997, and former U.S. President Bill Clinton signed it in 1998, the U.S. Senate never ratified the treaty. One of the reasons that Bush withdrew was because the protocol would allegedly harm the U.S. economy while not penalizing developing countries. 

July 23, 2001: Global governments agreed upon an operational rulebook in reference to the Kyoto Protocol known as the Bonn Agreement. The agreement established a climate change fund for less developed countries to assist in the adoption of green technology and in efforts to lower carbon emissions. 

October 29 to November 10, 2001: Finance was a focal point of COP7 in Marrakech, Morocco. Leading finance companies were encouraged to innovate products and services designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

October 23, to November 1, 2002: COP8 in New Delhi, India, began with acknowledgement of the poor progress made regarding previous climate agreements and was dubbed “a COP between COPs”. Without the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by the United States, climate progress appeared dismal. 

December 1 to December 12, 2003: Leaders at COP9 in Milan, Italy, agreed to use the Adaptation Fund to help developing countries with climate change finance. 

December 6 to December 17, 2004: Discussions at COP10 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, focused on climate change adaptation measures, technology, and enforcement potential of the Kyoto Protocol. Observers pointed out that this COP, like climate issues in general, did not get enough coverage by “mainstream” media. 

February 16, 2005: The Kyoto Protocol entered into force. 

November 28 to December 9, 2005: At COP11 in Montreal, the “rulebook” of the Kyoto Protocol was adopted, which set up the mechanisms for countries to follow through and measure their progress for commitments made in the Kyoto Protocol. The United States, having withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, made clear its position: that matters under the Kyoto Protocol should be separate from matters of the UNFCCC. 

November 6 to November 17, 2006: Acting Secretary-General for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Mohammed Barkindo delivered a speech to the twelfth COP session in Nairobi, Kenya, stating that “for developing countries, poverty alleviation, economic development and social progress are the overriding priorities”— a reminder that although developing countries were not major contributors to carbon emissions, they were still facing negative ramifications from climate change. 

December 3 to December 14, 2007: COP13 adopted the Bali Action Plan, containing five categories: shared vision, mitigation, adaptation, technology, and financing.

December 1 to December 12, 2008: COP14 in Poznan, Poland, included discussions about a post-Kyoto international agreement on climate change to be implemented in 2013. Leaders reiterated the urgency that climate change presents. While significant progress was made in some areas, such as the Adaptation Fund, most negotiations made little progress. 

September 2009: Prior to COP15, former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hosted a United Nations summit, which he stated was the largest ever gathering of heads of states and governments on climate change. During the meeting, then-Chinese President Hu Jintao announced an unprecedented plan for China to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, while former U.S. President Barack Obama did not offer any proposals. 

December 7 to December 18, 2009: COP15 took place in Denmark and produced the Copenhagen Accord. This document outlined a goal to limit global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius. Additionally, it delineated another goal that called for the creation of a Green Climate Fund to support climate projects and policies in developing countries. 

November 29 to December 10, 2010: A temperature target was set at COP16 in Cancun, Mexico, via the Cancun Agreements. As 2000-2009 was recorded as the warmest decade at the time, leaders pledged to keep global temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius. 

November 28 to December 9, 2011: COP17 in Durban, South Africa, almost failed with regard to diplomacy, as China, India, and the United States rejected a climate deal. This deal would have reflected a legal commitment to curb carbon emissions. COP leaders, however, agreed to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. 

June 20 to June 22, 2012: At the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), member states adopted “The Future We Want” outcome document, outlining a plan to launch a new set of sustainable development goals, along with other measures for future programs. They also launched the Global Partnership on Plastic Pollution and Marine Litter (GPML), a multi-stakeholder project bringing together actors to prevent marine littering and plastic pollution. 

November 26 to December 7, 2012: Negotiators extended the Kyoto Protocol to 2020 at COP18 in Doha, Qatar. 

November 11 to November 22, 2013: Leaders from developing countries, known as the Group of Seventy-Seven, walked out of COP19 in Warsaw, Poland, after leaders from developed countries declined to approve a near-future funding mechanism designed to aid with losses and damages experienced by developing countries due to climate change. 

December 1 to December 12, 2014: COP20 in Lima, Peru, laid groundwork for the subsequent Paris Agreement in 2015 with a draft text, which included two weeks of difficult negotiations. Preceding this conference, climate protesters rallied in the streets, demanding action.

December 12, 2015: At COP21 in Paris, 196 parties adopted the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty that included a goal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Starting in 2020, parties began submitting their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are country-specific plans to contribute to the goal of limiting global warming. NDCs are meant to be updated every five years with more ambitious plans as progress is made. The agreement emphasized that developed countries should assist less developed countries with climate finance. 

January 1, 2016: After a historic UN Summit in September 2015, the seventeen UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) came into force. These goals were created as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. While the goals are not legally binding, all countries are expected to promote the SDGs in an effort to end poverty, fight inequalities, and address climate change. 

November 7 to November 18, 2016: COP22 in Marrakech, Morocco, opened with uncertainty following the election of former U.S. President Donald Trump. Despite global uncertainty, this COP prepared for the Paris Agreement to enter into force. This included the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement. 

June 1, 2017: Trump announced that the United States was withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. 

November 6 to November 17, 2017: COP23 took place in Bonn, Germany, and included a “sustainable innovation forum” as a side event. This forum focused on economic innovation regarding the transition to green energy. After the Paris Agreement, international leaders were looking for sustainable carbon transport and finance solutions to make the agreement a reality on the ground. 

August 2018: Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg began her climate advocacy by spending her Fridays camped outside of the Swedish parliament, urging representatives to increase climate action. Since this initial school strike for climate, Thunberg has spoken at the UN, met with the Pope, and encouraged people across the world to protest for increased climate action. TIME named her a person of the year in 2019. 

December 2 to December 14, 2018: The Katowice Decisions were an outcome from COP24 in Katowice, Poland. The decisions make a distinction between developed and developing countries with regard to implementing goals outlined in the Paris Agreement. 

December 2 to December 13, 2019: COP25 in Madrid, Spain, included the presence of climate activist Greta Thunberg. Thunberg joined a march in Madrid with 500 thousand others to encourage world leaders to make more substantive gains regarding climate change. In a speech to the UN assembly, Thunberg called for holistic solutions, arguing that world leaders were misleading the public by making dramatic goals that go unreached. 

2020: Lockdowns and travel restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic drastically reduced air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, which gave scientists a new perspective on climate change. NASA scientists noted that the most surprising result was that, while carbon dioxide emissions fell in 2020, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued to grow at about the same rate. 

September 2020: China announced the goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. 

October 31 to November 12, 2021: Leaders reached a new global agreement entitled the Glasgow Climate Pact at COP26. For the first time at COP, there was an explicit agreement to reduce the use of coal (coal was responsible for 40 percent of carbon emissions in 2021). Additionally, the pact pledged an increase in money to assist less developed countries adapt to climate change realities and to make a clean energy transition. Also established at COP26 was the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance with smaller countries leading the transition away from fossil fuels. The Global Methane Pledge was also launched at COP26, with 150 countries signing the pledge to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent within the decade. 

January 20, 2021: U.S. President Joe Biden announced that the United States would rejoin the Paris Agreement. 

November 6 to November 20, 2022: COP27 in Egypt ended with an agreement to, for the first time, establish a fund for the losses and damages sustained by poor and vulnerable countries due to climate change. Parties also called for the modification of practices by global financial institutions in light of the climate crisis. However, parties removed the goal to reach peak emissions by 2025 from COP27’s final decision and did not commit to phasing out the use of fossil fuels. 

Adaptation: Adjusting systems to the current or expected effects of climate change 

Adaptation gap: The gap between adaptation goals and the actual implementation of adaptation measures, which is often impacted by resource limitations and competing priorities 

Carbon sinks: Anything that absorbs carbon-containing chemical compounds from the atmosphere, including the ocean, soil, and forests 

Climate change: Long-term changes in temperature and weather patterns; since the 1800s, human activities such as burning fossil fuels have been the main contributors 

Climate isolationism: A technocratic approach to climate action that tends to focus on narrow policies with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and “fixing” the climate 

Climate justice: An approach to climate action that focuses on systems and policies that perpetuate the concentration of power and further extractive economic practices; this approach aims to recognize and resist the concentration of power and wealth through climate action 

Common But Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDRRC): A principle within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which calls for widespread cooperation and acknowledges the differentiated responsibilities and capabilities of countries differing in social and economic conditions; countries within the CBDR-RC category “Annex I” have a greater mitigation responsibility than “non-Annex I” countries 

Conference of the Parties (COP): The supreme decision-making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which meets every year to make decisions regarding the implementation of the UNFCCC and to review progress; COP27 is the 27th Conference of the Parties, which took place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt in November 2022 

Energy democracy: A growing social movement that acknowledges how fossil-fuelbased energy systems and multinational energy companies perpetuate social inequities, vulnerabilities, and disparities; the aim is to use renewable energy transformation as a means of redistributing power to the people 

Fossil fuels: Hydrogen-containing fuels that are extracted from the Earth, including coal, oil, and natural gas; burning fossil fuels leads to greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming 

Green Jobs: Jobs that are meant to preserve or restore the environment, be they in traditional sectors such as manufacturing and construction, or in new, emerging green sectors such as renewable energy and energy efficiency 

Greenhouse gas (GHG): Gasses in the earth’s atmosphere that trap heat, the most common being carbon dioxide; human activities have caused an increase in the release of GHGs, leading to global warming and climate change 

Group of Twenty (G20): Intergovernmental forum addressing issues related to the global economy; comprises of nineteen countries and the European Union 

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): Intergovernmental body of the United Nations established to provide governments with scientific information to be used in the creation of climate policy 

Kyoto Protocol: First adopted in 1997 before entering into force in 2005, an agreement that operationalizes the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that legally binds developed countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in alignment with agreed individual targets; the protocol includes the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities,” which places a greater burden of climate mitigation onto developed countries 

Loss and damage fund: Established at COP27, a fund designed to provide financial assistance for climate-related loss and damage sustained by countries most vulnerable to climate change 

Mitigation: Reducing or preventing the release of greenhouse gas emissions in order to limit climate change 

Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC): A non-binding national plan that focuses on a country’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change; the Paris Agreement requires that each party to the convention submit an NDC every five years 

Nuclear energy: Energy obtained from nuclear reactions, which can be used to produce electricity 

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC): An intergovernmental organization of the world’s leading oil-producing countries

Paris Agreement: Legally binding international treaty on climate change adopted at the 21st Conference of the Parties in 2015; the overarching goal is to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels 

Renewable energy: Energy that comes from a source that can be replenished at a higher rate than it is consumed; common sources include the sun and wind 

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): Effective since 1994, a convention that established an intergovernmental treaty to combat human interference in the climate, specifically around greenhouse gas emissions 

Climate change and sustainability policies are processes, not events. The COPs— summits of the Conference of the Parties who signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—are celebrated for their ability to focus global attention on mitigation, adaptation, and energy transition. The COPs review and assess progress toward environmental sustainability as well as commit to mechanisms that ensure the just sharing of burdens, responsibilities, and benefits. While each COP achieves progress on some fronts, much work stays on the agenda for future COPs. 

But we are running out of time. At COP21 in 2015, the world agreed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050. To do that, the world needs to halve carbon emissions in the next seven years. We are far behind. To get there, we need to commit trillions of dollars to equitable economic, social, and cultural transformational measures. 

In this issue of the Cairo Review titled “COP27: A Climate Tipping Point?”, Ambassador Miguel Ruiz Cabañas asserts that COP27 in Egypt was a diplomatic success that gave hope for climate justice, but that left many challenges to be addressed in COP28 in Dubai. In COP27, a breakthrough was achieved with a loss and damage fund to help poorer countries that are battered by climate disasters. Further work on the loss and damage fund needs to take place; the fund has to hammer out details in terms of exact amounts and mechanisms of disbursement. In COP27, the international community failed to commit to tougher measures for limiting global warming. More work in this respect is still ahead. 

Another piece of unfinished work is the transition out of fossil fuels and other harmful extractive industries. We need to build on the achievements attained in Glasgow in 2021 (COP26), in Sharm El-Sheikh in 2022 (COP27), and in the G20 meeting in Bali, Indonesia in 2022. In Glasgow, South Africa announced an 8.5 billion dollar “Just Energy Transition Partnership” (JETP), and in Egypt the following year further specifics regarding JETP were hammered out. At the G20 meeting in Bali, Indonesia announced a 20-billion-dollar partnership fund to support its own energy transition. Those funds are important steps to help specific countries finance their just energy transition. Yet, vastly larger volumes of funds are needed to graduate from national funds to a global and just energy transition fund, and to achieve that fund, we still need to formulate equitable criteria and mechanisms for disbursement. 

It would be welcome if an oil producer like the UAE could continue the march away from fossil fuels. And yet, the appointment of a CEO of an oil company to the presidency of COP28, though not without precedence in COP history, is causing global concern among energy transition advocates, argues Sarah El-Shaarawi in this issue. 

The welcome message on the official COP28 page manifests the tensions ahead. The conference commits to “help align efforts on climate action,” “bridge the gaps in progress,” and “rethink, reboot, and refocus the climate agenda”. COP28’s UAE Presidency understands this to mean the prioritization of “efforts to accelerate emissions reductions through a pragmatic energy transition, reform land use, and transform food systems”. It remains to be seen what pragmatic energy transition means, given “the long history of both indirect and direct participation in and influence upon UN Climate talks” by the fossil fuel industry, as El-Shaarawi argues. As to reforming land use and transforming food systems, sustainable water policies will be key. Professor of Geosciences Thomas L. Crisman (University of South Florida) and researcher Malak Altaeb explain in this issue the centrality of inclusive water management issues, nature-based solutions, and adaptive management that may hold the key to water conservation in the region. 

COP28 also promises to make the summit inclusive. Zeinab Shuker, associate professor of Sociology at Sam Houston State University in Texas, argues in this issue that if progress on climate change is to be made, voices from the most vulnerable Global South and African countries must be heard and included in conversations at climate conferences. Inclusion of civil society, the private sector, and other stakeholders at COP27 produced a mixed record of achievements and disappointments. For this reason, inclusion will continue to be a work in progress in future COPs. 

By the same token, the inclusion of voices representing the future of work conversation is a must. In her essay, Associate Professor of Public Policy at GAPP Ghada Barsoum explores how the pressures of climate change could define the future of work as green. She shows why green initiatives are limited and questions who pushes for them to grow. 

Finally, Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of India’s Council on Energy, Environment and Water, writes about the COPs as chances to reframe such climate summits as forums for action and accountability. This is a most crucial point. Looking at every conversation for climate change as an accountability dialogue will allow important transformations to happen. 

I invite you to read this issue of Cairo Review of Global Affairs and follow GAPP’s “chat with the dean” interview series as well as GAPP’s policy briefs on climate and public policy, covering policy issues such as work, urbanism, and accountability. 

Noha El-Mikawy 

Dean of School of Global Affairs and Public Policy