19 December 2023 - CISL’s Chief Systems Change Officer, Eliot Whittington, examines the COP process, what lessons we can take from this year’s UN Climate Summit in Dubai and why the outcome is always a compromise.
After two weeks of debate, record numbers of attendees, and a little bit of drama towards the end, the COP28 UN Climate Summit concluded with a new global consensus uniting nearly 200 countries in agreeing to reduce fossil fuel consumption and production. What’s more, in getting there, the talks saw the creation of a ‘supermajority’ ambition coalition of developed and developing countries that united around fully “phasing out” fossil fuels and made their position vocally clear.
But these talks require consensus – the outcome is an agreement that any one country can veto – so it was possible for a blocking group, spearheaded by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) group of oil producers to secure a more limited turn of phrase. That in itself is disappointing, but unsurprising. Getting this many countries with this diversity of needs and priorities to a common position inevitably requires compromise.
From the perspective of climate stability, this final compromise isn’t enough – it doesn’t follow through on the science of climate impacts, or the implications of previous commitments such as the goals of the Paris Agreement. It particularly isn’t enough for many of the communities already affected by, and most vulnerable to, the climate crisis.
However, the progress made, while it must be a floor to build upon rather than a ceiling to keep beneath, is significant. Finally, the world has named and shamed the main source of climate change, calling out the elephant in the room or possibly, more appropriately, the mastodon in the tar pit – dirty, anachronistic and slowly sinking, but still huge and powerful. Getting the wording ‘fossil fuels’ into the final text is groundbreaking. And that can’t be undone.
How to sum up the un-sum-up-able?
It’s hard to keep track of everything happening at a COP – the multiple and prolonged bodies of negotiated text; the plethora of new commitments and initiatives launched; the pledges and demands; the formal and informal parallel events, many of which add up to the equivalent of multiple separate trade shows; the political undercurrents and conflicting agendas; the analysis and reactions. Understandably, commentators concentrate on one or two building narratives, which, given COP’s global ability to set the agenda, is helpful for the world to make sense of things.
This year, the story of the moment was the simple semantics of what the negotiations may or may not say about fossil fuels, from ‘phase down’ to ‘phase out’, from ‘could’ to ‘should’, from ‘unabated’ to ‘unqualified’. This was an undeniably significant debate, which pushed countries out of their comfort zones and risked the collapse of the whole round of negotiations.
But the breadth of the talks was so much more than that, with particularly notable outcomes on new finance pledges and structures, improving the support available to poorer countries and growing the body of global resources aimed at addressing the issue. And while some media organisations will publish in depth write-ups from these mega events, the challenge is that what gets reported in a two-minute news segment overlaid with clips of melting icebergs, usually fails to do it justice.
Learn the COP dance, right 'til the very end (and normally past the deadline)
Seasoned COP watchers will not have been surprised by this year’s negotiations. COPs tend to take on a familiar pattern. It starts with early speculation over whether the summit will reach its desired outcome, intercut by debates over whether that outcome comes close to delivering what we need on climate change anyway. Then, outrage or optimism (or both) develops as draft texts are released, with activists, governments and increasingly businesses weighing in behind what they are looking to see. Pressure builds on the negotiators; an eleventh-hour stand-off means dark hints about ‘no deal being better than a bad deal’, and then, usually, the unveiling of a compromising final text.
This kind of consensus building will almost never be strong enough, but it moves the dial, slowly, in the intended direction of travel. COP is not known for its speed in pushing the entire world forward, but it puts the onus on nations to go away and create their own to-do list and provides a spotlight that shows up ambition, action and the lack of them.
However, cynicism about this huge talk shop is both unsurprising and not entirely unjustified. How many times can UN Secretary-General Antonio Guiterres open up a summit, telling the countries off, before they’ll simply stop listening? Even the Pope joined in with sending leaders to the naughty step this year.
COP is not a magic wand or a silver bullet. It is cumbersome and unwieldy. But every challenge connected to it also comes with opportunities. Consensus-based decision making is slow – but the COP has greater weight and legitimacy than less inclusive processes and gives more of a voice to smaller countries. The presence of business observers has raised real concerns about lobbying for vested interests but has also seen the development of a proactive pro-climate action business lobby. UN Climate talks are big, complex, jargon drenched and hard to follow, but a landmark event of this scale provides an unignorable platform for the issues, bringing the complexity of climate change into the top story lists.
At COP, we won’t solve the climate crisis in a fortnight, but it is one tool in a huge box of tricks. It’s one part of a collaborative, iterative effort. The real hard work is down to governments, business, finance sectors, academic institutions, all of us, and how we use and build on the COP outcomes to further drive things forward.
28, 29, 30… What’s coming next?
So that was COP28, but what can we expect from next year’s COP29? The decision to hold it in Baku, Azerbaijan, was only announced during this year’s summit, so there will be less time for plans and expectations to develop. Like the COP28 hosts, fossil fuels make up more than 90% of the new Presidency’s exports, so expect some of the same criticism and scrutiny that the UAE received.
However, we’re also on a long build-up to COP30 in 2025, which will be a major milestone in global climate policy – seeing the next round of new commitments from countries after Glasgow’s COP26. COP30 will be hosted by Brazil, which has committed to working with the UAE and Azerbaijan on shaping the global climate agenda, and also hosts the 2024 G20 summit.
Each of these global meetings will have their own role to play as we balance the fundamental challenge of climate action. It is both a marathon, where we have to sustain momentum and action over decades, and a sprint, where we need urgency to deliver change at pace. It’s the biggest of challenges with the biggest of consequences.
