A Tale of Two COPs
COP28 Travelogue
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…
It’s Saturday here in Dubai (as I guess it is everywhere… though not quite at the same time), which means the metro ride to COP28 from downtown wasn’t quite as crowded. We were only squished on two sides of our bodies, instead of all four like yesterday. That meant you could bend forward and backward, but not side to side.
I was struck today primarily by the two different COPs that seem to run on different tracks and have little connection between them. On the one hand, the COP is a spectacle. There are some 90,000 people here this year, and it is a massive event with an almost carnival-like atmosphere. The only thing I can compare it to in my experience was attending the World Cup in South Africa in 2010. The logistical infrastructure of moving around this many people, feeding them, and tending to the messier consequences thereof, is pretty remarkable.
At any given time out in the carnival track of the COP, you could attend a session where a professor is giving a lecture about satellites detecting methane plumes (OK, maybe that’s not quite a carnival to most people!), an indigenous drum circle is playing, an important government official is getting interviewed out on the sidewalk, a protester has a crowd around her with their phones out filming, there is line waiting to get into the Google multimedia pavilion, there is a synchronized drone show, people are trying to get some food at a kiosk, booths are trying to give you trinkets and merch, and about everything else in between.
I don’t want to be too hard on this part of the COP (maybe just the right amount of hardness). It is a good deal of what draws significant numbers of people and attention to the climate crisis. Many of these events result in networking opportunities for people who are genuinely trying to do good for the planet. And they can be inspiring. But they’re not the real work of a COP.
Running on a disconnected track is the negotiations of the parties. The whole point of the COP is to produce a document that everyone agrees on and that will force responsible action addressing climate change. I got to see some of this today.
Yesterday I reported on being in the room where the president spoke and then allowed representatives from different countries to make speeches. That was part of the official meetings, but compared to what I did today, even that seemed more like spectacle and grandstanding.
Today, my first stop was the “2023 Annual High-level Ministerial Roundtable on pre-2030 Ambition.” This was a much smaller room than yesterday’s, but opened with speeches by Sultan Al Jabar and the Executive Secretary about the necessity of taking bold action now, of compromising when necessary, and so on, in order to get the work done that the world desperately needs. Then they left and a few reports were given, and the floor was opened for 3-minute statements by country representatives. That seemed to be getting closer to the real work, but I didn’t quite see the connection between that and the document that needs to be produced.
Then I went to a negotiation called, “Rules, modalities and procedures for the mechanism established by Article 6, paragraph 4, of the Paris Agreement and referred to in decision 3/CMA.3” And there I found the real work going on.
I used to be on faculty committees, so I know something about the level of scrutiny and careful attention to subtle meanings of words. This was that on steroids. Evidently this group had worked on a section of the text yesterday, and the leadership stayed up most of the night incorporating suggestions as best they could, and brought back a new draft of the text for the group to consider. Again it was like the United Nations with representatives from all the countries seated at desks with microphones. They would have to flag the chairperson that they wanted to speak, and she would recognize them and turn their microphone on. What follows is my transcription of a bunch of the comments
European Union: The text needs to be effective and fair, we have questions about both of these. It also needs to be clear and comprehensive, about which we also have questions. With respect to paragraph 16, sub-point b, we think this is confusing in parts and problematic in others. We can’t agree that all activities are jurisdictional, and if we were to do so, that statement would need to be amended.
Small Islands Developing States: In the opening paragraph, we see the word “offsetting” but we are uncomfortable with that. A word like “adjusting” would be better. And don’t say “commends” for the work that has been do so far, as it has been insufficient to address the needs of the world. We think it should say “recognizes” instead. Moving to paragraph 20, we have strong concerns and want it to be deleted.
Switzerland: Paragraph 30 says we may reopen negotiations, but it should be “shall” and not “may”.
The LMDC (like-minded group of developing countries) cannot support the text in paragraph 13 as stated right now. It is not that we object to the language that is there, but what is missing from the text.
The delegation from Argentina would feel more comfortable if the amounts are presented as a percentage rather than a number.
And so on, and so on. Then finally the time is up and the chair says she’s going to take all of the comments into consideration and will produce the next iteration of the document tonight and they’ll reconvene tomorrow to keep working.
I appreciate the concerns for clarity and all that. It was pretty amazing for awhile… and then not so much. So I went to meet up with some of the CCOP group to talk to Rev. James Bhagwan, who is the General Secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches. He’s really amazing, and kind of prophetic in calling on the church to act like Christians. The South Pacific Islands are among the worst impacted by climate change already, and he wants everyone to know that unless we keep temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, the cultures there are done. He was jovial, but didn’t pull any punches. “Are we not your neighbor?” he asked, referring to the parable of the Good Samaritan. “Are our lives not worth more than your comfort?”
Ouch.
Aside from our CCOP group, the presence of the American church is breathtakingly underrepresented at COP28. There are plenty of people of other faiths around, and even many Christians from other countries. But the church in America is glaringly absent.
In the High-Level Ministerial Round Table this morning, the first country to speak was the representative of Tuvalu. He spoke passionately about his small island nation in the South Pacific, where the highest elevation of the islands is just 2 meters above sea level, and people are already having to relocate away from the shore because of sea level rise and the influx of saltwater onto fields and into wells. He rued the lack of meaningful progress to cut greenhouse gas emissions at the COP and said, “How can I go home to my country from this meeting and tell them that our country’s future security has not been secured, and that the world doesn’t seem to care?”
Ouch again.
I ended the day by staying late for a plenary session by the president of the COP, the aforementioned Sultan Al Jabar. He has taken it on the chin this last week for holding side meetings to make business deals for his oil company, and for claiming that science doesn’t show that we have to stop producing oil in order to stay under 1.5 degrees (right, it’s not the drilling so much as the burning, but evidently he doesn’t think the oil companies should be held responsible for burning it).
He continues to present himself as sincere in his desires for the outcomes of COP28. Here are a few highlights from his brief opening speech: “I am committed to a paradigm shift that is led by the science to limit temperature increase to 1.5 degrees. There are still more areas of divergence than agreement. We are making progress but not fast enough. My message to parties is simple: work faster, work smarter, work harder. Now is the time to put aside self interest for the common interest.”
Then several other people gave reports about what has been accomplished over the last 48 hours. This session didn’t have the carnival atmosphere, but neither did it strike me as the important work of the COP, more like the best spin that could be put on it, and instead of hyping it with smoke and lasers, it was presented dryly. The young woman sitting next to me fell to sleep.
Now I need to head that direction too.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” — Dickens