Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

The process isn’t per­fect, but it’s the best one we have at the mo­ment. That was the feel­ing from small is­land stake­hold­ers in re­sponse to a let­ter that Con­fer­ence of Par­ties (COP) sum­mits are ‘no longer fit for pur­pose’.

The let­ter was penned by a group that in­cludes for­mer UN sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Ban Ki-moon, the for­mer pres­i­dent of Ire­land Mary Robin­son, the for­mer UN cli­mate chief Chris­tiana Figueres and the promi­nent cli­mate sci­en­tist Jo­han Rock­ström.

In the let­ter sent to the Unit­ed Na­tions, they ad­vo­cate for fu­ture UN cli­mate con­fer­ences to be held on­ly in coun­tries that can show clear sup­port for cli­mate ac­tion and have stricter rules on fos­sil fu­el lob­by­ing. The let­ter al­so calls for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to have a greater voice.

“It is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for pur­pose. We need a shift from ne­go­ti­a­tion to im­ple­men­ta­tion,” they wrote.

The group of ex­perts went on to write, “We need strict el­i­gi­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria to ex­clude coun­tries who do not sup­port the phase out/tran­si­tion away from fos­sil en­er­gy. Host coun­tries must demon­strate their high lev­el of am­bi­tion to up­hold the goals of the Paris Agree­ment.”

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta analysed by the Kick Big Pol­luters Out ac­tivist coali­tion, 1,773 coal, oil and gas lob­by­ists have been grant­ed ac­cess to COP29 in Baku, Azer­bai­jan. The host coun­try has come un­der crit­i­cism, with oil and gas ac­count­ing for half of its ex­ports. Last year’s hosts, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, al­so faced harsh crit­i­cism with the pres­i­dent of COP28, Sul­tan Al Jaber, keep­ing his main job of head­ing the coun­try’s na­tion­al oil com­pa­ny, Ad­noc.

How­ev­er, in re­spond­ing to the let­ter yes­ter­day, the cli­mate fi­nance ne­go­tia­tor for the Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS), Michai Robert­son, said while Glob­al North coun­tries have been hav­ing their own sep­a­rate meet­ings, COP re­mains the best place for small is­land states to air their con­cerns.

He was re­spond­ing dur­ing a joint press con­fer­ence held by AO­SIS and the Least De­vel­oped Coun­tries (LD­Cs). Robert­son said, “What I would say gen­er­al­ly about the UN­FC­CC and what it means to us as Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States as well as Least De­vel­oped Coun­tries, I as­sume, is that oth­er spaces where things are dis­cussed in the con­text of cli­mate change where we’re see­ing a lot more promi­nence be­ing placed on cli­mate fi­nance, for ex­am­ple, the Group of 20, we’re not a part of that. We’re not a part of those dis­cus­sions and so it’s ex­treme­ly im­por­tant for fo­rums like the UN­FC­CC to con­tin­ue to ex­ist and to con­tin­ue to be le­git­i­mate. So, you have the G20 over in one cor­ner, you have the BRICS over in an­oth­er cor­ner and we’re see­ing per­sons go­ing to these cor­ners as op­posed to the le­git­i­mate cor­ners where all of us can be around the ta­ble, so while oth­ers may have their crit­i­cisms of the COP process, it is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant for us be­cause that is the on­ly time that our voice can be clear­ly heard.”

Mean­while, T&T’s lead cli­mate ne­go­tia­tor, Kis­han Ku­mars­ingh, who has al­so spent over two decades in the COP process, al­so weighed in on the let­ter.

He said that an is­sue recog­nised in ear­ly COPs was the need for pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness, and now the COP at­tracts tens of thou­sands of del­e­gates and oth­er stake­hold­ers trav­el­ling to the con­fer­ence every year to be in­volved in the process in one way or an­oth­er.

He asked whether the COP is now be­ing viewed as self-de­feat­ing and how could this be rec­on­ciled with what it was in­tend­ed to achieve. He added that the COP was the on­ly mul­ti­lat­er­al plat­form for ad­dress­ing cli­mate change. In the end, he said, it is for coun­tries to im­ple­ment cli­mate ac­tion, not the COP.

He added, “The process has evolved to a place where I think there is more aware­ness, the youth is more in­volved from 20 or 30 years ago, the pri­vate sec­tor is more en­gaged, so I think it’s a pos­i­tive growth tra­jec­to­ry. How it is man­aged is per­haps the ques­tion that needs to be asked, but cer­tain­ly not to curb par­tic­i­pa­tion be­cause in­clu­sive­ness and par­tic­i­pa­tion are key un­der­ly­ing prin­ci­ples for cli­mate change suc­cess.”

Ku­mars­ingh went fur­ther in say­ing mar­gin­al­is­ing oil and gas-pro­duc­ing coun­tries does not mean they will stop pro­duc­ing fos­sil fu­els. In­stead, he said, it was crit­i­cal to en­gage with such coun­tries to en­sure a so­lu­tion was found.