COP27 in a nutshell
The 27th session of the International Climate Negotiations held in the resort city of Sharm El Sheikh represents a decidedly mixed outcome - a breakthrough on loss and damage, yet only narrowly avoiding backsliding on mitigation and adaptation.
The negotiated outcome reflects the paradoxical, turbulent yet powerful times we live in. The chaotic reality of transition requires deep changes across all the known structures that uphold the world's current economy and societies, highlighting profound divisions that show us how far we still are from our objectives of building a safe future.
The end-of-the-year negotiations is an adjudication moment where citizens and civil society everywhere judge government, and progress made by non-state actors in climate action. Negotiations are a slow and lugubrious process but COPs provide world leaders with an opportunity to show how they wish to reset the climate agenda as a key part of an effective global response to tackling linked crises.
COP27 was successful in placing a spotlight on the increasingly severe climate impacts being felt around the world, necessitating a fit-for-purpose delivery mechanism to scale up climate finance, reduce emissions, tackle adaptation and address loss and damage.
The two historic breakthroughs at COP27 reaffirm a signal of confidence - albeit feeble - of political commitment to accelerating climate action amidst a tumultuous geopolitical context and intertwined crises.
The most salient signal of progress is the decision to establish a new fund for loss and damage. With opacity still surrounding the modalities of the fund, it is nevertheless a major breakthrough that should be followed by ensuring financial flows to this new funding arrangement.
The backdrop of the challenging geopolitical context was front of mind in many country statements that reflected concern for the simultaneous challenges posed by climate impacts, debt distress and the importance of delivering on climate commitments with no backsliding.
The other prominent breakthrough includes strong calls for structural reform of the international financial architecture to better service both climate and development goals in support of the Bridgetown initiative to revisit the Bretton Woods system.
Barring a few headline-grabbing commitments the Leaders' Summit did not live up to the promise of an The way forward requires weaving 'Implementation COP'. There was scant these two dual tasks through the CBD evidence especially from developed COP15 next month, and then through countries leaders on how they proposed Japan's G7, India's G20, the spring and to demonstrate credible delivery on autumn World Bank-IMF meetings, their climate promises. and the Bonn intersessional negotiations,
The overall outcome is insufficiently among others in preparation of ambitious compared to the scale the Global Stocktake at UAE's COP28 of the climate emergency and reflective for setting the global 2023 agenda. of deeper divides that demonstrate serious The paucity of announcements on fault lines dominating international finance as a transformational enabler climate politics. dampened hopes of a vision story that
Progress can come from (i) building could close gaps and infuse the New on issues that COP27 has injected Collective Quantified Goal with political momentum into by recognising the energy. need for scaling up finance and Private finance did not cut through enabling a just economic transition a cohesive package of measures and across critical sectors of climate policy, public finance commitments paled in and (ii) building alliances and partnerships comparison to need. Competing narratives for ambition to deepen collaboration on the urgency of action and the for bridging the climate agenda presence of hundreds of oil and gas with wider issues on food systems and lobbyists at the negotiations raised concern restoring ecosystems. about the legitimacy and integrity of the process.
As the leader of one of the world's largest emitters and geopolitical powers, President Biden's presence at COP27 played an important role in demonstrating US climate commitments to the world, particularly in the wake of the midterms.
Commitments on adaptation finance and international energy transition finance provided a small bump in momentum but left many looking at these announcements as too little and too late to inject the political impulse needed to build trust.
The 'G2' of Biden and Xi ahead of the G20 signalled a resumption of working-level bilateral climate dialogue, sending a message of hope on finding a consensus around cooperative ambitious climate action as a crucial path for easing geopolitical and economic tensions.