[ At COP27, nations in the Global South have been increasingly
focused on securing the means to address the impacts of climate change
that are already here.]
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AT COP 27 DEMANDS FOR LOSS AND DAMAGE COMPENSATION GROW LOUDER  
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Tina Gerhardt
November 11, 2022
Tina Gerhardt
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_ At COP27, nations in the Global South have been increasingly
focused on securing the means to address the impacts of climate change
that are already here. _

Young activists demand a Loss and Damage Fund to compensate
developing countries for the impacts of climate change at the COP27 UN
Climate Change Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt., Dominika
Zarzycka / NurPhoto // The Nation

 

On Sunday, November 6, the annual two-week UN climate negotiations
kicked off in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with over 35,000 delegates, NGO
workers, journalists, and activists from around the world in
attendance. One hundred and twenty heads of state will join, including
President Biden, who attended briefly on Friday and will attend again
after the G20 for the final days.

The climate talks focus, as usual, on nations’ commitments to
reducing greenhouse gas emissions and on transferring funding and
technology from developed to developing countries. But this year’s
climate conference, also known as the Conference of the Parties or COP
27, addresses two additional issues: compensation from developed to
developing countries for loss and damages incurred due to climate
change; and human rights violations in Egypt under the current
authoritarian regime.

According to the Paris Agreement
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which was adopted in 2015, nations from around the world will work to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions (ghgs) to limit global warming to 1.5
Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit), a commitment that was renewed at last
year’s COP 26 in Glasgow. The ghg reductions to achieve that goal
are known as “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDCs), which
are then tallied by the UN to ascertain the collective reduction. The
climate accord stipulated that nations must provide details about how
much they will reduce their ghgs and by when.

Initially, nations were to put forward these NDCs by 2020 and then
submit new NDCs every five years. But at last year’s COP 26, it was
proposed that the NDCs be submitted annually, both to keep nations on
track with their commitments and to increase the pressure to ratchet
up commitments more frequently, given that action must be taken by
2030 to avoid the irreversible impacts of climate change. As COP 27
kicked off, only 24 of almost 200 nations have submitted new or
updated climate plans. Last month, the UN Environment Programme’s
“Emissions Gap Report 2022
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that the current commitments to ghg reductions were insufficient,
currently putting the world on a path of 2.8 C by the century’s end.

At the UN climate conferences, nations of the Global North and of the
Global South often clash, since the former have historically benefited
and continue to benefit from, among other things, the burning of
fossil fuels, while nations from the Global South have already been
disproportionately experiencing the impacts of the climate crisis,
ranging from floods to heat waves to drought, though they have
contributed the least to CO2 emissions. In 2009, Global North nations
agreed to pay $200 billion per year by 2020 for mitigation
technologies (to help reduce emissions) and adaptation programs (to
address the impacts of climate change; for example, protecting
existing and restoring mangroves and coral and oyster reefs, or
managed retreat), but the Global North has failed on this commitment.

A 100-page UN report, Finance for Climate Action
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released on November 8, 2022, stated that $1 trillion per year is now
needed by 2030 to help nations in the Global South address climate
change. These moneys would come from a variety of sources, so this
report is not demanding that sum from the UN alone. But it does point
out that the issue of climate justice must address historical and
present-day inequities.

Meanwhile, the impacts of climate change have continued unabated, so
nations in the Global South have been increasingly focused on
demanding compensation to address those impacts, pointing out that
they have already been suffering. At least year’s COP 26, they
pushed for a mechanism for compensation to be created. In what was a
first, a draft of the agreement included language acknowledging
“loss and damages,” but this, to the outrage of nations from the
Global South, was struck from the final agreement. And the opening of
this year’s UN climate conference was delayed in large part because
of the insistence that loss and damages remains a topic. It is now on
the agenda.

Nations from the Global North are concerned about establishing a fund
for loss and damages, since they would become legally liable for
climate crisis damages, which the majority of the globe is already
experiencing and which will only increase. The demand for compensation
for loss and damages pushes the legacy of colonialism and resulting
global economic inequalities to the forefront. Although no major
agreement is expected t0 come out of this year’s COP, the issue is
sure to dominate the negotiations.

At this year’s COP 27, attention is also focused on human rights
violations of the authoritarian regime of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. In
2013, then-Gen. El-Sisi toppled Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first
democratically elected leader, who came into office after the Arab
Spring forced Hosni Mubarak to resign in 2011. El Sisi, who has been
president since 2014, has banned protests and free speech. In 2019, a
law came into effect restricting both. Organizations such as Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch have for years been calling out
the crackdowns. To date, over 60,000 dissidents have been arrested and
imprisoned. This explosion of arrests of dissidents has prompted a
spree in the construction of prisons; one-third of Egypt’s prisons
have been built during El-Sisi’s regime.

Alaa Abd El Fattah, a pro-democracy British-Egyptian activist who has
been in prison for nine years for speaking up about human rights
violations and who has been on a hunger strike for over 200 days,
which he escalated to drinking no water as COP 27 began. He is
protesting his prison conditions and demanding his release as well as
the release of other political prisoners. Fifteen Nobel Laureates have
called for El Fattah to be freed.

According to the Egyptian-based media organization Mada Masr
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as of October, hundreds have been arrested in Egypt in their homes and
workplaces and on the street. They are being held in pretrial
detention, accused of “spreading false news and joining a banned
group.”

Many global climate and human rights activists who have spoken up in
support of El Fattah are from countries under authoritarian regimes.
This shines the spotlight on the twinned repercussions of
authoritarian regimes: They are often as detrimental to human rights
as they are to the planet. As Putin invaded Ukraine and Biden imposed
sanctions on Russia, leaders of authoritarian regimes such as Xi
Jinping of China and Narendra Modri of India swooped in to buy gas and
oil from Russia. (Neither Putin nor Xi Jinping plan to attend COP 27.)

And environmental activists are at great risk in authoritarian-led
nations. According to a report
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by Global Witness in September, over 1,700 environmental activists
have been killed over the past decade, with the largest numbers in
Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Mexico, and Honduras. Activists
from Indigenous communities are disproportionately impacted, making up
39 percent of those killed, though they are only 5 percent of the
global population. At COP 27, both human rights and environmental
justice will remain at the forefront.

 

_[TINA GERHARDT is an environmental journalist who covers
international climate change negotiations, domestic energy policy and
sea level rise. She is author of Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a
Rising Ocean (University of California Press, 2023). Her writing has
been published in Grist, The Nation, The Progressive, Sierra
Magazine, and Washington Monthly. You can follow her on
Twitter @TinaGerhardtEJ
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_Thanks to the author for sending this to xxxxxx._

_Copyright c 2022 The Nation. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
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Distributed by PARS International Corp
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* COP27
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* Global South
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* Climate Crisis
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* Climate Change
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* Paris Agreement
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* Egypt
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* Human Rights
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* environment
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* carbon emissions
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* fossil fuels
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