Throughout COP27, which ended on Friday, there was the usual
juvenile sniping at the engagement in the climate-change mitigation process of
the oil-producing countries, as if anything could possibly be achieved without
their collaboration.
اضافة اعلان
The UK Guardian, which can always be relied upon to
bash the Gulf states on the slightest pretext, dedicated a long article to what
it considered to be the shocking revelation that the UAE, which will be hosting
COP28 next November, had taken the perfectly normal step of sending a large
delegation to Sharm El Sheikh.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s grand strategy for carbon
capture, far more ambitious than anything else currently on offer in this vital
field, endorsed by the UN as an essential weapon in the world’s necessarily
multifaceted armory in the battle against global warming, has been dismissed by
Greenpeace and its media enablers as a “false solution” and “a waste of time
and money”.
But the real waste of time and money at COP27 was …
well, COP27.
Not because the entire conference was undermined by
the supposedly sinister Gulf lobby, but because it was hijacked and fatally
compromised by the superficially righteous “loss-and-damage” brigade.
“Loss and damage” is the idea that poor countries
that are suffering the effects of climate change, such as floods, storms and
rising sea levels, should be financially compensated by the rich nations
responsible for historic carbon emissions.
This might sound like a great idea, a virtuous
exercise in “climate justice”. But in reality, it is an insane distraction from
the all-important job in hand – saving the planet.
Thanks to the focus on “loss and damage”, no
progress at all was made at COP27 towards the world’s already shaky
climate-change goals. Worse, the stage has now been set for years of continuing
inaction over the only thing that truly matters.
The actual mechanics of the “guilt” tax – which
countries will pay which, and how much – have yet to be thrashed out. This
means that, for the foreseeable future, instead of getting on with the business
of saving the planet, the entire COP process is in danger of being shunted into
a cul-de-sac of bickering and horse trading over the loss-and-damage issue.
… for the foreseeable future, instead of getting on with the business of saving the planet, the entire COP process is in danger of being shunted into a cul-de-sac of bickering and horse trading over the loss-and-damage issue.
The irony is that while the squabbling over
compensation goes on, the impact of uncontrolled climate change on the nations
demanding compensation will grow only worse. It is difficult to see what consolation
a pocketful of gold will be for a nation already under water.
The despair among the “guilty” nations who felt
obliged to sign up to this self-defeating agenda at Sharm El Sheikh is
palpable.
“We went with … the agreement … because we want to
stand with the most vulnerable,” said Germany’s climate secretary Jennifer
Morgan, who was, as Reuters reported, “visibly upset” that the far more
important goal of stronger climate-change ambition had been compromised for the
sake of the deal.
Even the World Wildlife Fund has declared that the
plan to pay compensation to countries hit by the effects of climate change
“risks becoming a down payment on disaster unless emissions are urgently cut in
line with the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal”.
That goal, agreed in Paris in 2015, was already
deemed by the UN to be almost out of reach before COP27.
The UN, constitutionally obliged to stand up for the
underdog, has been backed into a corner by the special pleading of the “victim”
states.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres looked tired and
defeated as he welcomed the loss-and-damage agreement as “an important step
toward justice”, while adding: “We need to drastically reduce emissions now –
and this is an issue this COP did not address.”
We now face a catastrophic scenario in which, as the
impacts of global warming become ever worse – more of the stuff like the floods
we have seen in countries such as Pakistan and Nigeria – instead of working to
attack the cause, the world will be squabbling about which countries should be
paid how much in compensation.
Inevitably, this will go on, unresolved and sucking
up bandwidth, for years. In the face of the impending and increasingly likely
disaster predicted by numerous and increasingly alarming reports from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this amounts to a criminal waste of
precious time and money, both of which would be better spent on solving the
central, existential problem.
The UAE, which signed up to host COP28 in good
faith, is doubtless braced for the slings and arrows that will come its way,
and is to be applauded for nevertheless sticking its head above the parapet.
But now it also finds itself in the invidious position of being expected to
pick up the ball that was dropped in Egypt while simultaneously trying to progress
the loss-and-damage agenda.
It simply cannot be done. Addressing climate change
demands a single minded united global effort, and loss and damage is a
divisive, politically motivated distraction.
At the very
least, this issue must be cut out from the truly urgent business of the
Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change, and handed over to a completely different body, with no overlapping
engagement.
Between now and next year, the UN and the Parties to
the Convention need to get a grip. If they do not, COP28 in the UAE will be
swamped by this self-defeating nonsense, and all of us – including the
aggrieved nations of the global south – will pay the price.
Jonathan
Gornall is a British journalist, formerly with The Times, who has lived and
worked in the Middle East and is now based in the UK. Twitter:
@JonathanGornall. Syndication Bureau.
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