Once you enter the main venue at the COP 27 climate conference (the venue referred to as the Blue zone) your eyes are greeted with swarms of people sashaying across the different meeting and conference rooms. This year COP 27 -- held in November in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt -- saw over 35,000 participants. Their faces look important, their attire looks sharp, their diction appears perfect, and their walk appears focused. All of that is of course with a reason -- you’re at the annual United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference, popularly referred to as the Conference of Parties (COP). This year, COP was in its 27th annual meeting, held in the transcontinental country Egypt, which spans the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia.
The COP venue can be compared to a giant amusement park with many rides, many attractions, many booths, and many sights to see. A child wants to go on every ride, make the most of the day at the park, and not lose out on any of the magic tricks. At COP, the magic happens behind closed doors where negotiations are underway to decide on the minute details of documents (in particular nouns, verbs, and phrases that require substantiation and explicit mention of rights and responsibilities across all Parties). The kid can only choose a few of the many rides because by the end of the day, you’ll exit feeling knowing less than before, more crumbled than before.
The utopia of COP as the perfect venue for climate discussions, for demystifying climate science and policy, is a veneer that gives way to the reality of organized chaos inside this amusement park.
Role of the Parties
COP is the supreme decision-making body of the UNFCCC Convention. All States that are Parties to the Convention are represented at each COP, during which they review the implementation of the agenda from previous conventions, review legal documents that have been mutually agreed upon by the Parties and take necessary decisions to promote the objective of UNFCCC. The Parties to the Convention also serve as representatives of the Parties that had signed and agreed to the Kyoto Protocol.** The Parties to the Convention also serve as representatives of the Parties that had signed and agreed to the Paris Agreement.***
Entering the Blue Zone
Before you make any decision to attend one of the multitude of meetings happening concurrently, you should collect "swag" -- the goodies at COP. You’re handed a cloth satchel bag with a (glass) water bottle, another (metal) water bottle, a note pad and a pair of pencils. I’m not sure if it was only my expectations that were belied, but I was hoping for a better swag from COP -- one containing local craft and including an element of Egypt. But all that I could see was a "Made in China" tag on the bottles (sigh). Over the course of one week (or two depending on how long you plan to attend), you’ll have the opportunity to gather similar other swags from different country pavilions (these are the spaces allotted inside the Blue zone where each signatory Party showcases their agenda). This global climate change conference generates a significant number of promotional items as part of "green marketing."
The Blue zone is the important location where meetings happen, plenary sessions occur. Dignitaries, country representatives, and official representatives make statements, negotiate, give press conferences. This is where participants have the chance to make their agenda heard and to look for other stakeholders who hold similar business interests -- and, as they say in consulting parlance, where participants use this platform as a networking event to create prospective clientele. (There is another zone -- the "Green zone," situated ten minutes away by bus ride, which is the space for industry, academia, NGOs, and other private entities to piggy back on the wave of climate change keywords to pitch their work.)
Michigan Tech's Delegation
In the Blue Zone, every day, you dress up to match the pulse of the crowd hoping that your attire will be noticed before you utter a word about your work. The question in your mind is, "How much information can I absorb today?" Because there is a gigantic amount of knowledge floating inside the venue and it is quite easy to wander off in that information cloud. As for me, I was present there as part of my college delegation from Michigan Technological University, which has an observer status under RINGO (Research and Independent Non-Governmental Organization) constituency. The RINGO constituency to the UNFCCC is one of the nine NGO constituencies recognized by UNFCCC with an observer status, and they represent 25 percent of the 2000 NGOs admitted to the conference.****
I was there along with my fellow colleagues to organize a panel session on the topic "Delocalizing Climate Policy through use of Knowledge of Local and Indigenous communities." This panel was part of the broad objective of the Paris Committee on Capacity Building (PCCB), which was established during COP 21. The PCCB was created to address current and future gaps that would emerge and would need focused capacity building in developing countries. The PCCB also serves the Paris Agreement and fosters collaboration among actors at all levels to promote knowledge and experience sharing.*****
Through the participation in the Capacity Building Hub organized by the PCCB, our objective was to inform climate policy making through local knowledge that has been the wealth of indigenous and other local communities for centuries and to show how their practices have helped in harboring a sustainable relationship between humans and the ecosystem. The intent was to advocate for local voices in adaptation strategies for utilizing the Loss and Damage climate fund productively to aid communities that are on the fringe lines of negative climate change events.
There has also been substantial critique in international media regarding situating COP in a country that has a chequered history of human rights and environmental policy. There has been media backlash about curtailing freedom of expression in the form of negligible subdued protests outside the venue, compared to protests at COP 26, held in 2021 at Glasgow, UK.****** As a first-time participant, I did, however, witness a handful of "protests" that were held inside the venue this time.
Yes, I refer to it as "this" and allow me to shed light on why this is the case: One cannot hold a protest in the truest meaning of the word. Holding protests inside the venue requires approvals. If you have to organize a protest, you need to have a badge to enter the COP venue; your organization should submit a proposal that details the agenda of the protest, the duration of protest, a ball park figure of protestors, so on and so forth. From an activist point of view, this is hypocrisy and an act of surveillance. However, from a logistical perspective, it only makes sense for the organizers to know beforehand what and when you’ll be protesting in the venue.
It also made sense from an economic standpoint to have COP27 in Egypt. The event boosted the economy of the region, created the need for building infrastructure investments (roads, transport, services), created many skilled jobs for the young population, and generated an influx of foreign exchange. COP 27 saw one major victory by producing a Loss and Damage fund. But this COP saw several non-successes as well -- such as failure to commit to phasing out of fossil fuels, particularly coal; failure to raise ambition on targeting global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius; and greenwashing through carbon trading schemes. Nonetheless, those failures do not take away the importance of this global venue as the space that creates hope for a utopian world, and we will get there -- one step at a time.
Notes:
* Guest author Aritra Chakrabarty is a PhD Research Scholar in Environment and Energy Policy at Michigan Tech University.
*** https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement
**** https://ringosnet.wordpress.com/
***** https://unfccc.int/pccb
****** https://unfccc.int/conference/glasgow-climate-change-conference-october-november-2021
Editor's Note: See also Keweenaw Now articles by members of Michigan Tech's delegation to COP 26 in Glasgow:
"Guest article: COP26 Reflection," by Alexis Pascaris. Jan 1, 2022.
"Guest article: COP26 -- An Indigenous Experience," by Kathleen Brosemer. Jan. 14, 2022.
"Guest article: Attending COP26: A lesson in distributive climate injustice," by Shardul Tiwari. Apr. 22, 2022.
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