The 27th session of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) was held in Egypt’s resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh from the 6th of November to the 18th of November 2022. This year’s COP was anticipated by many to be the implementation COP to put into practice the goals and commitments made at previous COPs with fewer drawbacks and more unanimity and also to have a chance of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees, as agreed in Paris at COP21.
COP27 Sponsorship
Against the theme of COP27 being an implementation COP that would provide a blueprint to keeping the agreement at COP21, the announcements of COP27’s major sponsors to be Coca-Cola, Siemens Energy, and ADSERO-Ragy Soliman & Partners, in the minds of many, brought to question the integrity of the UN’s COP, due to reasons that these sponsors are either polluters, financiers or representatives of fossil fuel companies. In response to this move, members from YOUNGO put out an open letter to the COP27 presidency to voice their dissatisfaction about the announcement, and the letter was met with a lot of support from activists and the general public.
Freedom to protest, but not here!
There were a lot of issues and concerns around the subject of protesting at COP27. During the cause of the event a group of UN experts said, climate activists and members of civil society have been targeted for intimidation, harassment, and monitoring, and demanded that protesters be ensured safety and full participation at the event. In a quoted statement by the experts, they said,
Arrests and detention, NGO asset freezes and dissolutions and travel restrictions against human rights defenders have created a climate of fear for Egyptian civil society organisations to engage visibly at the COP27.
Although the Egyptian government had already promised to allow protest, different opinions have surfaced as to why protesting can only be done in a designated zone, giving evidence of Egypt’s human rights facade.
COP27 Accessibility
In the build-up to the event that many saw as an opportunity to champion many African matters, I and several other activists expressed dissatisfaction at the difficulty in getting access to the event, either in funding or accreditation.
With COP27 concluded, I was able to reach out to some youths to discuss their experience at COP27 and their reasons for attending the event.
Shelot Masithi: Don’t sacrifice yourself!
I spoke to Shelot Masithi, who is a climate mental-health activist from South Africa. Shelot runs an organisation in South Africa called She4earth, her organisation educates children and the youth about climate change + migration, environmental inequality, and a need to shift from a carbon-centric climate to include water and ubuntu, which is Zulu and translate into the interconnectedness of all human that honour humanity.
This year’s COP27 was Shelot’s first, funded by Movement for Black lives: Black hive fellowship. She was assisted by Force of Nature in getting her badge by connecting her with Health in Harmony in the US. Although it was her first time at the high-level event, she set out her objectives to observe, emphasizing the importance of observation at these kinds of events is usually not noticed. She explained that during observation you get to see and learn a lot of things that normally one wouldn’t catch because of the busyness of the event. Irrespective of that, she attended COP27 because of her interest in health; mental health.
With a lot of noise around climate adaptation, the mental health influences from climate change is an issue that hasn’t had enough attention and she shared her perspective regarding the issue in an interview she did with The Eco-anxiety Africa Project. Unfortunately, while observing she concluded that enough conversations were not had around the issue, Shelot said the Blue zone – the zone where formal decision-making processes are held – didn’t show any seriousness towards the climate-mental health crisis. Also, regarding the nature of the event, she pointed out that world leaders aren’t doing enough, referring to the saddening reality of young people substituting their diverse youthful passions for protesting and strikes.
Shelot also expressed her thoughts on African countries playing the blame game when it comes to climate finance and response, calling it bad. Many developing countries are used to pointing fingers and forcing demands when that cannot get us anywhere, if anything, always finding who to blame causes more division in a situation that requires an urgent and united front. Shelot advised developing countries to work on their style of communicating their needs without pointing fingers and blaming.
Rounding off in a message to young people, she emphasized that young people should continue to remain persistent in the fight, and it’s important that we must not sacrifice ourselves in the process.
Kelo Uchendu: COP does not solve climate change
I also spoke to Kelo Uchendu from Nigeria, founder of Grey2Green movement and campaign coordinator for the Mock COP, an international youth-led organisation aiming to amplify young people’s voices at the highest levels of decision-making on the climate crisis. Kelo’s work has been heavily focused on Climate Education, Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE), and Technology Transfer and Policy in the past four years, he also has a strong emphasis on boosting youth involvement and intergenerational power dynamics in climate governance.
Kelo attended COP for the first time in Madrid (COP25), in 2019 and he has also attended COP26 in Glasgow and also COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh. His interest at this year’s COP was majorly on tech transfer, climate education and loss and damage with an overarching theme of youth participation.
I asked Kelo about what he felt about this year’s COP tagged “African COP” because was believed to focus on the African climate reality and entail pledges and initiatives for the development of the African continent. To him, the tag isn’t the right fitting, as originally COP is an international conference every country has equal voting rights and participation, as detailed in article 18 of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC). But people’s opinions and perspectives about this come from the challenges many young African activists faced in trying to gain access to the event, and even the fact that the $100 billion promise is yet to be fulfilled amongst many others.
Some African activists have said they left COP27 deflated concerning some issues that were isolated. Some of the reasons for these feelings is that Africa’s climate goals might be jeopardised if significant climate assistance is not provided, as some if not most of the African countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) depend mostly on some sort of assistance, and the likelihood that the Paris Agreement will be abandoned globally would rise.
On the outcome of the event, based on his aforementioned interests, Kelo said he was quite happy with the progress that was made, but there were still areas that needed improvements. Following this, Kelo also explained that COP events do not fix climate change, it is the work that follows suit that makes the changes. Countries need to be held accountable and make sure actions towards climate change are carried out all year. COP is only a meeting place, and nations are fully responsible for the successes and failures. The work is at home not at COP, he concluded.
This year’s COP just like others was filled with a lot of mixed opinions and appraisals, and amidst the failures and successes of the event, here’s what I would like to point out as we build up to COP28. Lack of trust really played a huge role in the outcomes of COP27, largely because the expected $100 billion has not yet materialised completely, and country’s tokenism towards assistance as seen in the event. Qatar was able to host the 2022 World Cup with over $200 billion, but money to support climate adaptation and mitigation has been minimised, and the whole world is seeing this. Also, the timing of the event and maybe location might have been off, as part of the COP27 event was split between US midterm elections and the G20 summit in Indonesia, and with the human rights and protest unconfident stance from the Egyptian government, these would have definitely impaired the outcomes.