Geopolitics gives COP27 a framework for fruitless debates

The website of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) states: “At COP27, countries come together to take action towards achieving the world’s collective climate goals agreed under the Paris Agreement and the Convention last year. Based on the outcome and momentum of COP26 in Glasgow, nations are expected to demonstrate at COP 27 that they are in a new era of implementation by executing on their commitments under the Paris Agreement.”

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The first, and most deadly, effect is likely to be felt by the escalating power struggle between the US and China. On the one hand, China has been rapidly expanding its economic and strategic forces, recently intensifying its fight against Taiwan. The re-election of President Xi Jinping as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China for an unprecedented third term and further tightening of his hold on the party lines up the fault lines. On the other hand, in the US, former President Donald Trump has come under fire for his export restrictions and strictness against Chinese companies, especially Huawei. President Joe Biden’s recent export ban on chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment, aimed primarily at sandbagging China’s technological and defense capabilities, deepens the red lines dividing the two superpowers.

China’s tacit support for Russian aggression in Ukraine and Crimea has intensified the power struggle and now threatens to split the world into two factions. This geopolitical development, still trying to find a solid shape and working its way through allies and multilateral institutions, is likely to cast a shadow of its foreshadowing at COP27. The US and China are both the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters and the prospect of continued shadow-boxing between the two at COP27 is ill-equipped to the world’s desperate efforts to limit global warming and climate change.

Here’s another actor: Europe, who is likely to tone down his rhetoric this time at COP27. The Russia-Ukraine skirmish, with its attendant effect on prices, has affected the energy supply to Europe, and has forced the European Union and its member states to increase their investments in various fossil fuel platforms. The need to provide affordable winter heating to almost all homes has also forced the EU to revive some energy subsidies. This turn of events is likely to deprive European nations of their customary high moral base and their general political bombardment against developing countries, in which they refuse to re-evaluate their enormous past contributions to global warming over poorer economies. demanded sacrifice.

In fact, Like Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) – a group of 24 countries representing 50% of the world’s population, of which India and COP27 host country Egypt are also members – recently issued a ministerial statement, providing the second Does the dimensions of the upcoming COP27.

This statement begins with the ground conditions required to make COP27 investments with Implementation/Achievement Cash: “Provision of means of implementation, including finance, technology transfer and capacity building, for developing countries in line with the theme of ‘implementation’.” Developed for developing countries are fundamental to our climate action, as we also strive to eradicate poverty and enable sustainable development in our countries. It is an equity-based international on climate change envisaged under the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement. is the basis for increasing cooperation.”

The statement then reminds rich countries of their commitment to providing $100 billion in funding each year to developing countries by 2020 in Copenhagen in 2009, after which several other countries joined the Paris Agreement; But, unfortunately, the $100 billion funding commitment remains on paper.

The LMDC statement then goes to murder: “In discussions on the new Collective Quantitative Target on Finance (NCQG), where a new climate finance target is to be agreed by 2025, developed countries are delaying talking about it. Despite the existence of reports about the needs of developing countries for their climate actions… the amount of finance to be provided. Instead, we are seeing efforts by developed countries to reduce their responsibilities under the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement , because they want to shift their existing obligations to the private sector and developing countries.”

Battle lines – between superpowers on the one hand, and between rich and poor nations on the other – have been drawn and the outlines of meaningless debates are reminiscent of the COPs of the past. Meanwhile, as state representatives engage in oblique, endless talks at official climate action conferences, unseasonal floods in Pakistan, Venezuela, Cuba, Nigeria or Chad have already displaced millions from their homes These defenseless lives are falling prey to disease and hunger.

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