What was agreed at the COP27 talks?

The COP27 climate summit in Egypt has recently wrapped up, and the results of the meeting have had a mixed reception. With a new and significant agreement in one respect came very little climate action elsewhere, and the stilted progress now has some green experts asking whether these conferences are of any use at all. Here’s what was agreed, and what wasn’t, in Sharm El-Sheikh, and what it means going forward.

The idea is that wealthy nations, and particularly historical industrial powers, would compensate developing states for the effects of climate change

The major headline at the summit was the concept of climate reparations: low and middle income countries came away with an agreement on a new ‘loss and damage’ fund, which will help them cover the costs of climate change impacts. This is a significant step that these nations have been pushing for for over 30 years. The idea is that wealthy nations, particularly historical industrial powers, would compensate developing states for the effects of climate change – especially natural disasters such as droughts, floods, cyclones etc.

It was a challenge to get the issue on the agenda in Egypt at all, so the agreement is a huge milestone for developing countries. The Egyptian hosts have also been keen to hype it up – as they stressed their sensitivity to issues confronting the developing world before the conference – therefore the fact that this COP meeting has resulted in such an outcome is a major diplomatic coup. However, an agreement is one thing, and action is another. There will be many more discussions on how this fund will work, who will contribute to it financially, who will receive the money, any rules of accessing it, etc. You get the picture – it’s a grand headline, but there are a lot of details that need to be hashed out before the fund is actually worth anything more than a good press day. This is particularly true given the way that previous climate promises and funding commitments have been quietly dropped. In Copenhagen 2009, developed states said that they would provide $100 billion per year of climate finance for developing states by 2020, and this has not occurred. Backtracking and compromises were really the theme of the conference elsewhere – below the marquee promises of the loss and damage fund, the other headlines were less promising.

In Paris, nations agreed to limit global warming to below 2°C […], but current trajectories make this limit look unlikely.

The promises made at last year’s COP26 summit, as well as the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, hung over the conference. The success in fulfilling these pledges was limited. In Paris, nations agreed to limit global warming to below 2°C (and preferably 1.5°C this century), but current trajectories make this limit look unlikely. Indeed, even keeping the target was a hard-fought battle – a number of nations (notably China) questioned whether the 1.5°C target was worth it, and a lot of time was taken up with this issue. At COP26, the need to phase out fossil fuels was flagged by the delegates, but there was no sign of a renewed commitment this year – the final text noted only the need for a “phase down of unabated coal power”, about as tough as it could be given the position of oil-producing countries. The COP26 President Alok Sharma voiced the disappointment of many countries at this development: “We joined with many parties to propose a number of measures that would have contributed to [serious environmental action]. Emissions peaking before 2025 as the science tells us is necessary. Not in this text. Clear follow through on the phase down of coal. Not in this text. Clear commitments to phase out all fossil fuels. Not in this text. And the energy text weakened in the final minutes.”

However, if you’re leaving a climate summit asking whether it was worth turning up to, that does speak to a fundamental crisis of purpose at these meetings.

This is before mentioning the myriad of other issues that barely had a look-in. There were no rules to stop greenwashing, and no new restrictions on carbon markets. The energy crisis and the resulting tensions impacted the strength of discussions and agreements. The COP27 deal talked about “safeguarding food security and ending hunger”, but the text itself does not really back up this commitment with actions. Given that COP28 will take place in Dubai, which is heavily linked with fossil fuel industries, the question of whether these meetings are the best way to respond to the climate crisis, or even a useful way at all, now hangs in the air. Of course, these are not the only tools the world has. Individual governments on all levels pass their own climate policies, the markets respond to the green push, and people and activists drive change. However, if you’re leaving a climate summit asking whether it was worth turning up to, that does speak to a fundamental crisis of purpose at these meetings. A loss and damage fund may be a useful agreement, but if responding to the crisis is as serious as the experts and COP speakers say, then it’s hard to see COP27 as anything other than a flop.