After a busy week in Sharm El Sheikh, I’ve seen, heard and learned a lot. I feel that I am taking home a better understanding of climate change in general and the process of COP. In this blog post instead of taking you through a play by play of my recent activities at COP, I think it would be more interesting and worthwhile to explore some of my biggest takeaways from the summit. Now these are only my thoughts, nothing in this post is going to be a verbatim fact, just how COP has affected the way I look at certain things.
Here is what COP has taught me:
– Climate change is not an isolated issue area. It is intrinsically involved with every other political issue or sphere. Climate change is about community health from the most macro scale to the most micro. It is affecting both our global systems and each and every local community, albeit to different degrees at the moment. This theme felt most apparent to me whenever side events or roundtable negotiations talked about loss & damages and solutions. In these discussions advocates or delegates would talk about large statistics and macro issues such as record breaking storms and rising sea levels, but then they would also talk about small communities; villages destroyed by extreme floods or landslides, and who don’t have the resources to build climate resilience. The solutions they discussed would almost always be focused on bringing resources to local communities, so they could start rebuilding or creating resilience. Because climate change is affecting our space, the places where we live, everything is affected by it: migration, taxes, reconstruction, socio-economic justice, racial justice. All of these issues are smack dab in the middle of climate change.
– COP27 has become the nexus point for all major social justice issues at the global level. Climate change is also an issue of time. The historical origins of climate change are rooted in a lot of the same issues that have led to current inequalities in global systems like equity between the global south and global north, systemic racism, global wealth distribution. Because climate change is about reckoning with our past, COP27 has evolved to become the nexus point for global advocacy on these issues. It is about dealing with our past and making sure that we not only have a future, but an equitable, human focused future.
– Climate change is a global coordination issue, and as such climate issues are never going to be solved by one massive, holistic resolution made at COP. Now this does not mean the negotiations at COP aren’t valuable. I think that they are. However, I think our expectations of them might not be what they should be. Yes, there are slow moving actors and some actors who do not have genuine intentions. But not all of them. Progress has been made, albeit slowly. But our climate situation is not going to be solved by negotiations alone. What gives me hope is the thousands of advocates who go to COP. COP provides a central meeting place for advocates to connect, learn and take back what they get from the conference to their homes. It gives them credibility when talking with their governments and creates a platform where the whole world can see what world leaders are doing and then address their progress. There are real consequences for governments in relation to civil society when leaders prove to be disingenuous or break promises. I think it is easy for us to see the frustrations of climate negotiations and be discouraged, when we should really see that there are so many people who are working on this issue and are making progress, and the local work we implement makes a huge difference to their efforts.
I hope this latter point does not come off as an attempt to delegitimize people’s concerns with climate change or to say that everything is fine and not to worry. It is not. We are in a global crisis and there is much work to be done. What I hope to convey is that there is work that we can do, and that it is important and does have an effect. There are ways that we can combat climate change. And we are not alone in that work. What I hope is that we can find energy and comfort in the fact that there are millions of people who are also here to do the work. I know I do.