The disconnect between countries was palpable at the recent COP27 climate conference, as small island nations fought with developing countries to get their issues onto the agenda and into negotiations.
Addressing the COP27 plenary, Pacific Islands Forum ecretary General (SG), Henry Puna expressed his frustration, saying, “For us, ‘urgent and immediate action’ is not just a rallying cry; it is a statement of survival.”
He continued: “I am disappointed that interest groups are hampering the process of transitioning to clean and renewable energy, using global events as a pretext for a lack of change,” he said.
The ‘African COP’, also dubbed the ‘implementation COP’ was seen by many as a defining COP for delivering ambitious outcomes for the African region and climate vulnerable countries. Now that it has wrapped up, the question remains: did COP27 deliver?
The Regional Policy Coordinator at Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN), Lavetanalagi Seru, says there were both wins and losses.
“It was frustrating to see how a number of countries kept stalling and blocking any progress of the negotiations, we saw how united the Pacific negotiators were, together with the Alliance of Small Island States, and the G77 plus China, despite the efforts of some developed countries to divide the G77 plus China,” Seru said.
“We saw our negotiators’ unwavering efforts, working late into the night to ensure and secure nothing less than what we needed to achieve in order to secure our future here in the Pacific,” he added.
For Seru, a passionate environmentalist, the environment, particularly the restricted civil society space, was challenging. This challenge was lightened when Pacific Island nations stepped in and granted delegation badges, allowing civil society and youth delegates access to negotiation rooms.
“This year more than half of the delegates had ‘Party of Party’ overflow badges,” Seru says. “This is a welcome sign that indicates our Pacific Island Governments’ trust in civil society actors to work collaboratively to push our climate demands.”
Loss and Damage
A key issue for the Pacific was ‘loss and damage’ but it did not make it onto the agenda until the last minute.
The head of Fiji’s delegation to COP27, Permanent Representative to the United Nations Dr. Satyendra Prasad, stressed, “For simplicity’s sake, when the adaptation option is no longer available, when you have to relocate communities, you see a totally lost and damaged space.”
He continued, “For other regions, loss and damage is a thing for the future, so they are thinking about what will happen to their global farmland, that may be in a decade or two decades.
“But the Pacific is not speaking of the future, it is happening in a very powerful way today, so the Pacific is able to speak with a real lived experience, with great frustration, and urgency.”
This frustration and real experience is what pushed civil society to create the KIOA Climate Emergency Declaration. KIOA is an island located in Buca Bay off the coast of Vanua Levu in Fiji, and was purchased by the Matai of Vaitupu, Tuvalu in 1946. It is a 30-minute boat ride away from Rabi, which is home to a migrant community originally from Banaba/Kiribati. Naming the declaration for a place where communities whose rich culture, traditions, and the loss of their land and ocean resources to climate change are real and heart-breaking, was a deliberate decision to bring reality to the loss and damage discussion.
At Kioa, Pacific Conference of Churches General Secretary, Rev. James Bhagwan, called for less talk and more action from leaders at COP27.
“We see the need for our struggling communities to be resilient. They have the indigenous knowledge and understand the context; they are willing to do what it takes to adapt to the impacts of climate change, but they need help, and they need it now, not when polluting countries finally feel charitable,” Bhagwan said.
So COP27’s decision to finally agree to establish a historic loss and damage fund was welcome news for small island nations globally.
COP President H.E. Sameh Shoukry said, “Millions of people around the world can now feel a glimmer of hope that their suffering will be addressed quickly and appropriately.”
1.5 to survive
The establishment of the loss and damage fund was a long overdue win for all Pacific Island nations and small island nations, however, the call to phase out fossil fuel and the promises of the 1.5 degree promises of the Paris Agreement did not fare as well at the negotiation table.
PICAN’s coordinator, Lavetanalagi Seru says this was a huge disappointment. “This year we saw unprecedented access for fossil fuel lobbyists, who made up 636 delegates and outnumbered some of the official delegations.
“And they were granted spaces to promote a false solution,” he continued.
The Paris Agreement, which was adopted by 196 parties at COP21 in Paris, is a legally binding agreement on climate change. It is a goal to limit global warming, preferably by 1.5 degrees Celsius, however based on the National Determined Contributions Registry the majority of the countries have not updated their progress.
Despite the plea from the Pacific delegation to achieve the Paris 1.5 degree target and put pressure on major emitters, the outcome has only reiterated the need for countries to push for 1.5 degrees and has not produced anything substantial.
UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Simon Stiell, said there were several issues that complicated this outcome. “2022 has been a year of ‘permacrisis’, with rising energy and food prices, prolonged impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, an economic slowdown, and not least, geopolitical tensions,” he said.
This makes the prospects of reducing emissions and providing the necessary climate finance to meet the 1.5 goal in the short term difficult, he believes. But perhaps the most challenging of all is that countries continue to hold different views on the target.
Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP) Director General, Sefanaia Nawadra shares this view. “In the negotiation room, delegates have opposition; you can’t expect everyone to have the same positions, and it’s the negotiation process that will try to shift them from whatever position they are at to the position we would like them to be.”
The COP27 was held near Mount Sinai, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described as fitting because “climate chaos, is a crisis of biblical proportions; instead of a burning bush, we have a burning planet.”
He said while the loss and damage fund is welcome news, there is a need to drastically reduce emissions now, “and this is an issue this COP did not address.”
“To have any hope of staying at 1.5, we need to massively invest in renewables and end our addiction to fossil fuels,” Guterres said.
So the work continues. As Lavetanalagi Seru passionately said, “As we head to COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, we… really need to push back hard.”
