In Search of Hope at COP27
By Eda Kosma
Innovative and informal Technical Dialogue format of the Global Stocktake bringing together Party and Non-Party Stakeholders.
Participating in the first week of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh with the Tufts delegation was eye-opening and exhilarating. As a first time COP attendee, the entire experience was at times overwhelming – trying to keep tabs on rapid updates to the many elements being negotiated and making hard choices between interesting speakers and surprise announcements. Having followed climate negotiations from afar, the process has often seemed maddeningly slow to me. It was much the same in Egypt, with agreement feeling just out of reach on many critical issues and backsliding becoming a real possibility. Resistance to including the 1.5C warming target in the COP27 final text directly contradicts the agreement signed just last year in Glasgow, and it’s clear that the trillions of dollars in climate finance needed globally are a far way from being realized.
Hengrui Liu, Eda Kosma, and Emily Dahl with Jacob Werksman, Chief Negotiator for the European Union, and Professor at The Fletcher School.
Despite these and many other frustrations, there were a few developments that I tried to pin my hopes on. In a stunning move, negotiators agreed to create a financing facility for loss and damage to help developing countries address the destructive impacts of climate change that cannot be avoided. Similarly, as fellow Fletcher student delegate Lily Hartzell noted, clear progress is actually being made on climate finance standard-setting and reform of the multilateral development banks. Innovations in satellite-based emissions monitoring announced by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore will make it more difficult for countries to greenwash and overstate their decarbonization efforts. And there is something profoundly encouraging about seeing delegates from all over the world converge in one place to discuss the most crucial wicked problem of our time. After a particularly tense meeting, I would stop and remind myself that all of the countries present had reached agreement in the past, and could certainly do so again.
Eda with former Vice President Al Gore and Fletcher School Academic Dean Kelly Sims Gallagher.
Most of my time at COP27 was focused on the Global Stocktake, the main accountability measure written into the Paris Agreement. I was given the opportunity to volunteer with the UNFCCC as an official notetaker, giving me a front row seat to the process. Countries have made their climate pledges and it has come time to judge whether they have actually upheld their commitments so far. The stocktaking process will not single out any particular country, rather, it will assess collective progress towards the implementation of the Paris Agreement’s goals – to reduce emissions, adapt to our changing climate, and provide the finance necessary to developing countries to enable both in a timely fashion.
Interestingly, the Stocktake ‘Technical Dialogues’ have been designed to be more informal and inclusive than what you normally think of as a UN process. Country delegates sat side by side with non-governmental organizations – sometimes on the ground – to discuss the climate actions they’ve taken and how to shape the progress assessment itself. The findings of the Stocktake will be announced next year at COP28 in the United Arab Emirates and, in what I hope will be another cause for optimism, they might provide the necessary pressure to catalyze greater climate action across the global community.
Eda Kosma is MALD student (F23) at The Fletcher School, Tufts University. This is the third post in the COP27 blog series from the Tufts University delegation.