Do the climate COPs still have a reason to exist?

Every Thursday, we return to a significant subject in the world, thanks to the perspective and expertise of a researcher from the Center for International Studies and Research, the University of Montreal, or the Raoul-Dandurand Chair, from UQAM.

Hugo Séguin

Fellow at the Center for International Studies and Research of the University of Montreal (CERIUM) and General Director of COPTICOM, Strategies and Public Relations

Since the 2015 Paris Agreement, which sets objectives, frames and encourages international action, the climate COPs have been crumbling under the weight of their own complexity. The COP28 in Dubai promises to be one of excess – record attendance is expected -, paradoxically chaired by a senior oil and gas company executive. What to do with these climate COPs?

The climate is getting carried away and our diplomats are getting bogged down. Global temperatures are the highest on record, we are choking on smoke from our burning forests, large parts of the world are devastated by fires and floods, and construction workers are dying of heat stroke in India, the Persian Gulf and everywhere else. Panic is waiting for you? Me too.

What to do with these COPs, these annual high masses on the climate, which we would like so much to “save the planet” once and for all, but whose successive failures only fuel our eco-anxiety and a feeling of great anger? . This year, some 90,000 people – politicians, diplomats, business people, scientists, NGO representatives – are expected there. “Honestly, I would prefer that these people stay at home and do their work,” recently declared, exasperated, the one who was one of the architects of the Paris Agreement, Christiana Figueres.

The climate COPs have become very strange happenings world events where fireworks of commitments from hundreds of actors, small and large, follow one another, pep talks on the theme of “we are capable” and declarations from scientists at the end of their nerves carrying catastrophic news.

While it is true that it is not necessary for tens of thousands of people to burn tons of kerosene each year to save a burning planet, the COPs still have their reason for existence. Faced with a global issue, we are condemned to seek global solutions. But the very functioning of the COPs still needs to be profoundly reformed.

Rethinking COPs

First, our expectations of COPs must change. No conference will be able to “save the world”. Yet this is how they are regularly portrayed. With the Paris Agreement, we now know what to do – reduce emissions to zero, adapt and find ways to finance it all. What remains to be negotiated is a matter of mechanics. The challenge today is that of implementation on the ground, “doing your job”, to use the words of Christiana Figueres.

Second, we must respect the commitments made. COPs are too often used as gigantic photo shoots for leaders seeking to shine in front of the cameras and on the screens of our mobile phones. We are committed to countering deforestation, reducing methane emissions, protecting mangroves, developing hydrogen, transferring the necessary resources to vulnerable countries and collaborating during climate disasters. It’s good. But it would be even better if all these commitments were respected.

A great classic: at COP26 in Glasgow, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered “another major commitment”: “We will impose a cap on emissions from the oil and gas sector, starting today, and ensure that they will decrease tomorrow at the pace and scale necessary to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.” Obviously, Canada has not imposed such a ceiling “as of today”, regulations in this sense have not even been implemented. not yet been adopted, let alone put into force.

We are also sorry for the recent setbacks by the Trudeau government on carbon pricing, a policy branded internationally as Canada’s main contribution to reducing emissions.

Finally, and this follows from the above, COPs must become places where leaders make decisions – and no longer just commitments – and be responsible for them. After 27 consecutive COPs, wrote last March a dozen specialists in climate negotiations, including former Minister of the Environment of Canada Catherine McKenna, “all efforts must have only one objective: to meet expectations” .

Go to COPs for the right reasons

The action has now moved to every one of our cities, states, businesses and organizations. This is where the bulk of the work must now be done.

The COPs will still remain important. They will focus attention, enable discussions and serve as platforms to announce decisions that will have immediate impacts.

In this context, governments, businesses and organizations that choose to participate can no longer show up empty-handed, or only armed with fine words adapted to the circumstances.

We go there if we have something to bring.

Otherwise, we stay at home.