Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Is the COP process re­al­ly work­ing? Does it meet the needs of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in 2025? And why, af­ter ten years, has the world moved fur­ther and faster away from the Paris Agree­ment? The Unit­ed Na­tions has some an­swer­ing to do.

COP—short for Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties—is the an­nu­al UN cli­mate change con­fer­ence that ro­tates among dif­fer­ent re­gion­al blocs across the world. This year, it is be­ing host­ed in the north­ern re­gion of Brazil, in the city of Belém, fa­mous for the Ama­zon’s vast rain­forests. It marks the 30th edi­tion of the glob­al event.

This past week, the Sun­day Guardian sought a sober­ing con­ver­sa­tion on the ef­fec­tive­ness of COP and sat down with Dr James Fletch­er, a cli­mate change stal­wart from St Lu­cia. In Jan­u­ary, Cari­com ap­point­ed him as its cli­mate en­voy.

Fletch­er, a for­mer Min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for En­er­gy, Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, and Cli­mate Change in his coun­try, was an in­te­gral part of the “1.5 to Stay Alive” cam­paign in Paris in 2015 that led to the land­mark sign­ing of the Paris Agree­ment. Since then, how­ev­er, the world has veered off course in its ef­fort to re­main with­in the sci­ence-rec­om­mend­ed 1.5°C lim­it on glob­al warm­ing.

In this in­ter­view, Fletch­er dis­cuss­es his dis­ap­point­ment over how glob­al cli­mate com­mit­ments have de­railed since Paris—and why the cur­rent COP process ur­gent­ly needs re­form.

Q: Are you sur­prised that ten years on, just be­fore COP30, the world has reached a cli­mate tip­ping point?

A: When we adopt­ed the Paris Agree­ment in De­cem­ber 2015, we all had very high hopes—in­clud­ing Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS). I re­mem­ber ad­dress­ing the ple­nary and say­ing that, for the first time, SIDS felt that our voic­es had been heard. We felt the world un­der­stood the chal­lenges we were fac­ing and that, to­geth­er with de­vel­oped coun­tries, we would take the nec­es­sary steps to en­sure we didn’t ex­ceed 1.5°C.

Al­though we knew there was a slight chance of a tem­po­rary over­shoot, we were con­fi­dent that hav­ing ac­cept­ed 1.5°C—and not 2°C—as the long-term tem­per­a­ture goal, and hav­ing agreed to com­mis­sion a spe­cial IPCC (In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change) re­port to con­sol­i­date the sci­ence around that tar­get, the world would take de­ci­sive ac­tion to pre­vent reach­ing the point we are at to­day.

Q: The COP30 pres­i­dent said, “Rich coun­tries have lost en­thu­si­asm for tack­ling the cli­mate cri­sis.” Do you share that sen­ti­ment?

A: In some cas­es, yes. We haven’t seen the same lev­el of ur­gency or com­mit­ment that we saw lead­ing up to Paris. Paris was a spe­cial mo­ment—the stars re­al­ly aligned. Many fac­tors con­tributed to that suc­cess. The Unit­ed States played a key role. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma had em­barked on a se­ries of cli­mate diplo­ma­cy ini­tia­tives—he met with Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping of Chi­na and Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di of In­dia. The Pope had re­leased an en­cycli­cal on the en­vi­ron­ment. Civ­il so­ci­ety was high­ly en­er­gised.

If Paris hadn’t hap­pened ten years ago and we were try­ing to ne­go­ti­ate a new cli­mate agree­ment now, we would not get what we achieved in 2015. To­day, the geopol­i­tics are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. We’re in the mid­dle of two wars. The Unit­ed States has with­drawn from the Paris Agree­ment—not pas­sive­ly, but while ac­tive­ly cam­paign­ing against de­car­bon­i­sa­tion and the tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fu­els. So yes, I think it’s fair to say that some coun­tries have lost their ap­petite for ac­tion.

Q: Is COP serv­ing the pur­pose it re­al­ly needs to serve?

A: A mul­ti­lat­er­al process that brings to­geth­er all the coun­tries on the plan­et to act on this cli­mate cri­sis is ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial. COP serves an im­por­tant role in bring­ing every­one to­geth­er and main­tain­ing on­go­ing di­a­logue—not just at the an­nu­al con­fer­ence, but al­so at the sub­sidiary body meet­ings in Bonn in June and through­out the year. It keeps the cli­mate cri­sis on the glob­al agen­da.

We’ve had some gains, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing the long-term tem­per­a­ture goal. So yes, COP is nec­es­sary—but we need to re­think how we ap­proach it. I’ve seen re­ports show­ing that in some years, there were more fos­sil fu­el lob­by­ists at COP than there were com­bined del­e­gates from SIDS. That can’t be right. This must be a par­ty-dri­ven process, not one in­flu­enced by out­side forces that have a vest­ed in­ter­est in pre­vent­ing progress.

An­oth­er prob­lem is that we spend far too much time ne­go­ti­at­ing text—quib­bling over words—while the world burns. I al­so have a sink­ing feel­ing that this will get worse fol­low­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice’s opin­ion that COP de­ci­sions now have the force of law.

Q: What have you made of this COP so far?

A: One thing I point­ed out to the Brazil­ians is that they can­not keep say­ing, “We are the pulse of the plan­et, where we go, the plan­et goes,” and that “we are the ones most af­fect­ed,” yet make de­ci­sions with­out con­sult­ing us as much as they con­sult oth­ers. That must change.

As part of my role as cli­mate en­voy, it’s my du­ty to en­sure that Caribbean and SIDS voic­es are heard in every sin­gle room. If we have to knock on doors to make sure they’re opened and we’re in­clud­ed in those dis­cus­sions, then we will do that.