While the UN's climate conference is being criticised for failing to achieve its goals, a treaty aimed at wiping out fossil fuels is gaining traction, writes Sacha Shaw.
AT LAST YEAR'S COP28 climate conference, Anne Rasmussen, lead negotiator of the Samoan delegation and chair of the Alliance Of Small Island States (AOSIS), began:
“We didn’t want to interrupt the standing ovation when we came into the room, but we are a little confused about what happened. It seems that you just gavelled the decision and the small island developing states were not in the room.”
Moments earlier, Ahmed Al Jaber, president of COP28, had taken many by surprise, rushing the final text of COP28 through the conference floor.
Outside, I found Joseph Sikulu, Pacific Director of 350.org, head in his hands. “It was strategic,” he told me; they didn’t want a formal objection to the passage of the Global Stocktake.
Later, Tina Stege, the climate envoy for the Republic of Marshall Islands, faced waiting media:
“It was shocking because we were not there when it happened. AOSIS wasn’t in the room... you need everyone in the room, everyone at the table.”
And what made it all the more crushing, days earlier, campaigners and some activists had allowed themselves a guarded optimism, exchanging furtive looks in conference halls — calling on negotiators, hand in hand, to “hold the line”. Rumours that there might actually be language on “phasing out” of fossil fuels, leaked out to hungry media. Some saw desperation in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)’s public letter calling on oil-producing nations to reject mentions of a phase-out of fossil fuels, evidence that maybe, just maybe, OPEC might be scared about the direction of negotiations.
But the release of the first draft text completely uprooted that optimism and spilt paralysis and devastation on the hopes of any talk of phase out. Press and high-profile commentators, like Al Gore, described it as terms directly “dictated by Saudi Arabia”. Digestible and familiar tropes emerge: bad-guy spoilers like Saudi Arabia on the one hand and morally lofty podium speeches from the likes of U.S. climate envoy John Kerry or Australian Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen on the other.
And caught in the ever-increasingly terrible no man’s land were people and communities on the frontline of the climate crisis, like those in the Pacific. It would be easy to write off the whole theatre. And many do.
Consensus: yay or nay?
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a beast of power politics and bureaucracy. It is slow to act, often self-contradictory, and controlled by uneasy coalitions and blocs, to name just a few. But the biggest complaint that dominates headlines in the West is the need for consensus. Parties to the Convention – national governments – must agree on every letter, every comma and dangling modifier.
On top of that, the final text produced by COP is rarely legally enforceable and the Convention lacks clear mechanisms to punish transgression or unfulfilled promises.
Anthony Burke, Professor of Environmental Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales, told me:
“COP has no mechanism to [limit global warming to 1.5°C] and its consensus voting system will destroy those hopes. It gives one state the power to crash the system.”
Many onlookers see the need for consensus as the COP’s critical flaw, allowing one state to completely derail any prospect of substantive agreement on addressing the climate crisis.
But Stege explains it goes both ways:
“The reason the UNFCCC process matters to us is that we have been able to be at the table, we have a voice.”
The COP process is far from perfect, but despite dirty tricks like the one played on AOSIS at the conclusion of this year’s conference, it remains a platform that tries to empower every state. And a platform that has the potential to bolster innovative solutions to the climate crisis amid geopolitical posturing.
Last year’s COP was the first with a mandate that included producing an assessment of global progress towards the Paris Agreement, called a “Global Stocktake”. This assessment, far from a simple measure of how much countries are tracking against the target of keeping global warming to 1.5°C, we already knew from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — not well, by the way.
Instead, the Global Stocktake is designed as a “course corrector” and a response to that science. Consequently, it is a deeply political document.
The significance of the Global Stocktake – and arguably the whole UNFCCC process – is often chalked up to its ability to influence the direction of national policies and markets, where, as the argument goes, is the real site of emissions reductions. Many commentators and journalists, motivated to clinch a success in the aftermath of COP28, described it in these terms.
Of course, yes, the outcome of the Global Stocktake, notably wording around a ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels ‘in a just, orderly and equitable manner’ – though not what many hoped for – is still the strongest text any COP has produced to date. But is that really what the premiere intergovernmental platform purposed to address the climate crisis boils down to — a market directive?
Well, no. This COP made strides to increase the supply of renewable energy and we finally got a Loss and Damage Fund to address the impacts of the climate crisis on vulnerable communities.
However, taking a step back from the immediate political throes of what was and what was not achieved, we glimpse the metaphoric albatross around the necks of not only COP or the UNFCCC but, indeed, much of the UN system: a crisis of reputation and the yawning trust deficit between Global South and Global North countries.
Take, for example, the Loss and Damages Fund. After three decades of advocacy from countries like Vanuatu and Pakistan, the Fund was operationalised this year and some countries immediately contributed to the Fund in the order of $700 million: $100 million from both the UAE and Germany, $14.5 million from the U.S. and nothing so far from Australia.
Yet these figures are an absolute pittance compared to what Global South countries are confronting. Take, for instance, the bill Pakistan accrued in last year’s flooding – exceeding $30 billion in flooding damages and economic losses. And that was one country in one year. Synthesis research published in 2019 predicted the cost of loss and damage in developing countries may range between $290–580 billion by 2030 and $1.1–1.7 trillion by 2050.
The loss and damages, as well as the adaptation costs, rise consummate with failures to mitigate global warming, adding to the frustration that the COP system is critically failing. Leading some nations to look elsewhere for mechanisms to address these failures, perhaps the slimmer of saving grace for the annual COPs, or more accurately, on their sidelines.
Sidelines to headlines: The growing case for a treaty on fossil fuels
This year, ten countries signed up to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, a treaty that up until then had been a largely ignored activist campaign confined to the sidelines of discussion. The treaty, modelled off previous treaties like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and similar treaties on landmines, aims to shift the normative frame on fossil fuel supply globally, committing its signatories to phasing out fossil fuels.
At this year’s COP, especially during moments of tense gridlock at the main plenary, many countries and organisations saw the treaty as a meaningful mechanism that would work outside the challenging procedures of the UNFCCC and, by extension, leverage significant pressure on the main negotiations.
Tzeporah Berman, chair and founder of the Treaty told me:
“Momentum is growing here at the climate negotiations and around the world for a Fossil Fuel Treaty. Four countries have joined the growing bloc of nations states calling for a treaty just since we arrived in Dubai.”
The Treaty currently boasts Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Niue, Timor-Leste, Antigua and Barbuda, with Palau, Colombia, Samoa and Nauru joining during COP28. The Treaty also has significant support from intergovernmental organisations and subnational governments, as well as NGOs, faith organisations and academics, including the European Parliament and the World Health Organisation.
The results from this COP have been mixed. But Berman is convinced support for the Fossil Fuel Treaty will only grow, especially as gridlock on the main floor of the conferences continues. With the next conference stage finally confirmed to be Azerbaijan’s Baku – yet another petrostate – and the following one in Brazil, and perhaps 2026’s in Australia, it is to be seen if the UNFCCC will remain the preeminent platform or whether initiatives outside of the system will outgrow the sidelines.
Sacha Shaw is an independent journalist with an interest in climate negotiations and other topics relating to the climate crisis.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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