The end of useful climate diplomacy?

As politicians shove the weak agreement at the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP) down the world’s throat, on the basis that it is at least a “deal”, as opposed to no deal, it is important to ask some elementary questions: What is the level of seriousness at these conferences? Do public statements made by politicians and delegates in attendance at COP reflect the level of seriousness that is proportionate to the

crisis? What does the future of COP look like? Is the COP reflecting recommendations and information produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in line with its intended purpose?

The conference’s lack of seriousness can be recognised by observing the self congratulatory statements about supposed progress made on tackling climate change, and at times delusional statements pertaining to staying below 1.5 degrees, which is virtually impossible. Here are some of those statements from the 30th COP as recorded by The Express Tribune:

1. “We need to press forward. We must keep 1.5 alive”, said the representative from New Zealand. In such moments, one is astonished that these diplomats are presumably well paid, considering their apparent lack of understanding of the IPCC’s warnings. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its most recent assessment, said that “substantial ‘emissions gap’ exists between global GHG emissions in 2030 associated with the implementation of NDCs announced prior to COP 2026 and those associated with modelled mitigation pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C (>50%) with no or limited overshoot or limit warming to 2°C (>67%) assuming immediate action (high confidence). This would make it likely that warming will exceed 1.5°C during the 21st century (high confidence).” So why is there talk about staying below 1.5?

2. “Current progress was unthinkable a few years ago”, said the UNFCCC Executive Secretary. This is demonstrably false. A few years ago we had the Paris Climate Agreement, at the 27th COP, and despite its shortcomings, countries agreed on a goal to stay below 1.5 degrees of heating. A fair assumption at the time would be that multilateralism will improve from now on as the agreed plan is now going to be implemented.

However, since then, the US, which was responsible for ensuring the Paris agreement is itself absent from the process. It would be more true if the secretary had said that the current lack of progress was unthinkable 10 years ago.

3. Ed Miliband of the UK assured us that he was “conscious of the further progress we need to make”.

The poor leadership on climate change in the UK is a testament to, or a sign of, the overall decline of Britain since the second world war. Miliband used to be the Opposition Leader in the UK, as the head of the Labour Party, and could have become prime minister, and still could in the future. Speaking of British PMs, during the Second World War an ambitious Prime Minister by the name of Winston Churchil, who used to be the only parliamentarian warning about the threat from Hitler before he was proven right - spearheaded an astounding transformation of the British economy and the mobilisation of the resources of the entire empire to this end, and in the end, succeeded. This, however, required a willingness to tell the truth even if it led to total political isolation, as it did for Churchill. All modern politicians today are hesitant to take a rigid stance of that kind. Churchill was not "conscious of further progress” on the fight against fascism, he ensured a total transformation of the economy within months to defeat Hitler within years. We likewise need a wartime approach to tackle the climate crisis.

4. The Federal Minister of Climate Change from Belgium seemed to have forgotten that he was at a climate conference, telling the conference that, “The transition is away and irreversible… the transition shouldn’t exacerbate the inequality”.

Inequality has been an unfortunate fact of life and the economy for hundreds of years, and should have been a priority to address all along. Instead, many politicians and activists alike conveniently remember to make this the most important issue during attempts to address an immediate and existential crisis.

Sticking with the World War analogy, an important tipping point in European perception of the threat posed by Hitler was when neutral Belgium was invaded by Hitler. Would that have been a good time to lecture the Belgians about inequality? The minister, of all people, should have known the difference between an existential crisis, and an ancient social injustice.

The conference was full of such remarks and truisms, including some by the UN secretary general Antonio Guterres, while he was speaking to members of the press. He insisted that we must “keep 1.5 alive”.

Fact Check: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and COP

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a UN body that produces assessments every few years on the severity of the climate crisis. They made headlines by warning us about a “code red” for humanity a few years back. One of the purposes of the IPCC is to inform the COP process. In light of the most recent COP it is important to analyse whether the aforementioned statements of decision makers and many others, reflect the severity of the climate crisis.

Here are some of the several important quotes that demonstrate how out of touch our politicians are. The quotes are from the report titled “Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report”, with the subtitle “Summary for Policy Makers”. These quotes are specifically relevant to the geography of Pakistan.

“Climate change has reduced food security and affected water security, hindering efforts to meet Sustainable Development Goals (high confidence). Although overall agricultural productivity has increased, climate change has slowed this growth over the past 50 years globally (medium confidence), with related negative impacts mainly in mid and low latitude regions but positive impacts in some high latitude regions (high confidence).

Ocean warming and ocean acidification have adversely affected food production from fisheries and shellfish aquaculture in some oceanic regions (high confidence). Roughly half of the world’s population currently experience severe water scarcity for at least part of the year due to a combination of climatic and non-climatic drivers (medium confidence).” This is particularly relevant to Pakistan, a predominantly agrarian and agriculture-dependent economy. In the province of Sindh, much of the non-urban population has historically relied on fisheries and farming. Millions of people in Sindh alone are employed in this industry, according to the government of Sindh website. In a much cited study by the Jinnah Institute, approximately 1.3 million people have migrated to Karachi from interior Sindh.

“Key barriers to adaptation are limited resources, lack of private sector and citizen engagement, insufficient mobilization of finance (including for research), low climate literacy, lack of political commitment, limited research and/or slow and low uptake of adaptation science, and low sense of urgency.”

This paragraph in the report could very well be a description of the 30th COP. Statements such as this redescribe the problem instead of asking deeper questions about why things are the way they are. Redescribing the problem does not add anything of value to the overall state of affairs and discourse. Rather, there must be a critical approach that asks the more elementary questions: why is it that the status quo does not change? Why is there this gap between policy recommendations and practical implementation? Perhaps this does not fall within the domain of the official IPCC process, but it raises an important question as to the individual moral obligations of individual scientists and experts that are involved in this process.

“Hazards and associated risks expected in the near term include an increase in heat-related human mortality and morbidity (high confidence), food-borne, water-borne, and vector-borne diseases (high confidence), and mental health challenges.36 (very high confidence), flooding in coastal and other low-lying cities and regions (high confidence), biodiversity loss in land, freshwater and ocean ecosystems (medium to very high confidence, depending on ecosystem), and a decrease in food production in some regions (high confidence). Cryosphere-related changes in floods, landslides, and water availability have the potential to lead to severe consequences for people, infrastructure and the economy in most mountain regions (high confidence). The projected increase in frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation (high confidence) will increase rain-generated local flooding (medium confidence).”

We have already seen this becoming truer by the day in Pakistan and India. This year, we saw at least 1,000 people being killed due to enormous and sudden floods, sweeping away entire villages within a short period of time.

The flooding in Punjab killed many crops as it will continue to in the future, and the flash floods in the mountain regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa killed hundreds of people in a short period of time. If things continue in this trajectory, as they seem to be, thousands more are almost guaranteed to die from floods, whereas the number of deaths caused by crop failure could be astronomical.

“Multiple climatic and non-climatic risk drivers will interact, resulting in compounding overall risk and risks cascading across sectors and regions. Climate-driven food insecurity and supply instability, for example, are projected to increase with increasing global warming, interacting with non-climatic risk drivers such as competition for land between urban expansion and food production, pandemics and conflict (high confidence).”

According to this paragraph, even the risk of pandemics goes up with rising temperatures. The Covid-19 Pandemic is not a distant memory. Covid-19 caused unforeseen suffering through death by the virus, and a recession in the economy. The deaths during Covid were often of the elderly, and we could very well have a pandemic in the future that disproportionately targets our young. The global climate disaster is talked about on all levels of society, primarily as an abstract issue, as is evident with repeated statements from diplomats at COP. This is often because we do not remind ourselves of what this means concretely. As highlighted in the IPCC reports, although still in euphemisms, this means mass displacement, crop failure and floods.The IPCC avoids emphasising what all of the above means concretely, which is mass death and suffering.