Climate and Us | COP27 should address the crucial failings of COP26

The build-up to Sharm El Sheikh is not as busy as it was for Glasgow last year, which was positioned to be the most important UN climate conference after Paris in 2015. However, following Glasgow’s failure in coming up with a strong resolution, Sharm has to deliver on climate finance and the critical issues of adaptation and loss and damage.

Developing countries — some of which are extremely vulnerable to the climate crisis — are losing precious time. They need to put in place adaptation strategies that can deal with the rising severity and frequency of climate events. This requires large finances.

Some of these unprecedented climate impacts were recorded earlier this year: India and Pakistan’s spring heatwave spell that led to widespread economic impacts; a one-in-100 year rainfall event that led to monsoonal floods in Pakistan displacing hundreds of thousands of people in Sindh and Balochistan; and now, Bangladesh and West Bengal’s Sunderbans recovering from the blow of cyclone Sitrang that crossed the Bangladesh coast on Monday.

Last year, ahead of the Glasgow conference, a climate finance delivery plan produced by the environment and climate change minister for Canada, Jonathan Wilkinson, and the state secretary, federal ministry for the environment, Germany, Jochen Flasbarth, said that developed countries will likely be able to mobilise $100 billion a year only in 2023 — a delay of three years from the originally promised 2020 deadline.

This report had led to a further undermining of trust between developed and developing nations, and slowed down overall mitigation efforts at COP26. Glasgow also came out hollow on the crucial “loss and damage”. Loss and damage refers to compensation for impacts of extreme climate events and slow onset events such as sea-level rise or glacial retreat, while adaptation refers to adjustments in ecological, social, or economic systems in response to actual or expected climatic impacts, according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The G77+China proposed for a Glasgow Facility on loss and damage last year. The Glasgow pact, however, is very weak on the subject. It only speaks of enhancing our understanding of how approaches to averting, minimising and addressing loss and damage can be improved, along with changes in processes, practices, and structures to moderate potential damages. Without a mechanism for compensation in place, climate justice and equity are side-lined. It is important to remember here that Paris Agreement — a legally binding international treaty on the climate crisis adopted by 196 Parties on December 12 2015 at COP 21 — is built on the principle of equity.

The Glasgow Pact urges developed countries to urgently and significantly scale up climate finance, technology transfer, and capacity-building for the implementation of national adaptation plans by developing countries. But when the flow and nature of overall climate finance is unreliable and predictable, finance focused on adaptation is a far cry.

So, Sharm has a significant agenda ahead. Whether all of these issues make it to the formal agenda of COP27 remains to be seen.

In its latest briefing, the Third World Network — an international research and advocacy organisation involved in issues relating to North-South affairs —captured these conflicts in their published a statement of asks by the Like Minded Developing Countries (LMDC). One of the major concerns for LMDC is that developed nations are not doing enough to keep global warming under 1.5 degree C or even 2 degree C. Their action plans for the period up to 2030 are not in line with their long-term goals of net zero emissions by mid-century.

“The developed countries have taken inadequate and unambitious goals to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, while they continue to emit, and disproportionately consume the global carbon budget. They should attain net zero well before 2050. Disregarding the principles of equity, common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and the nationally determined nature of climate change commitments, mid-century net zero and carbon neutrality goals have been advocated even for developing countries, while insufficient steps have been taken to provide the promised finance and other means of implementation and support by the developed countries,” LMDC — a coalition of 20 member countries, including India and China said in their statement ahead of COP27.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Assessment Report 4 pointed out that to limit the global temperature rise to well below 2 degree C, Annex I Parties (industrialised countries) need to reduce emissions by 25-40% in 2020 compared to 1990. However, the overall emissions reduction of non-EIT (economies in transition) Annex I Parties was only 3.1% by 2018 compared to 1990 levels. Emissions reductions were even lower at 1.4% without emissions from the land-use and land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector. Between 1990 and 2019, Annex I Parties, with only 17% of the global population, have been responsible for 44% of the cumulative non-LULUCF CO2 emissions.

The LMDC has pointed that the Working Group I and Working Group III contributions to Assessment report 6 of the IPCC have revealed that as a consequence of historical cumulative emissions, only a meagre amount of the total global carbon budget remains. This amounts to only one-fifth for 1.5 degree C warming (with 50% probability) and only one-third for 2 degree C warming (with 50% probability).

Moreover, climate finance promised by developed countries has not been delivered on, and now, developed countries are also resisting a decision on a new climate finance goal for the post-2025 period. “Discussions on the new collective quantified goal on finance, where a new climate finance goal is to be agreed upon by 2025, developed countries are delaying talking about the quantum of the finance to be provided by developed countries and needed by developing countries despite the existence of reports about the needs of developing countries for their climate actions,” the LMDC said. Work on climate finance for adaptation has not even taken off. Out of the total private climate finance spent between 2019 and 2020, 99.7% went to mitigation alone.

In August last year, $650 billion of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) were allocated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), following the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on the global economy. This mainly went to developed countries, as allocations are based on a country’s quota within the IMF. There is a need to re-channel these SDRs for financing climate action in the developing countries, the LMDC said.

LMDC has demanded strong outcomes and progress on the delivery of climate finance, across the several agenda items at COP27. It’s also clear that there will be debate on finance for adaptation and loss and damage both within and outside COP27’s formal agenda.

If the developed and developing countries do not find common ground for cooperation this time, it may be too late to meet the Paris Agreement goal of keeping dangerous climate change at bay.

From the climate crisis to air pollution, from questions of the development-environment tradeoffs to India’s voice in international negotiations on the environment, HT’s Jayashree Nandi brings her deep domain knowledge in a weekly column

The views expressed are personal