Watching the ninety-odd world leaders arrange themselves for the official COP 27 Heads of Government portrait one is reminded of the yawning gender imbalance amongst the lineup of world leaders in favour of males and by extension the gender-skewed imbalance in the distribution of power. Herein lies the temptation to wonder whether a good deal more global progress ought not to have been made, up to this time, in moving women into the highest offices in the land across the international community. This, in circumstances where women, as a whole, have been known to arrive at understandings by simply setting aside the bluster and chest-thumping of their male counterparts is more than worth thinking about in an international community where climate change is by no means the only pressing challenge that we face.
What the COP 27 gathering in Egypt does, in the first instance, is to remind us of some of the preceding global discourses triggered by compelling emergencies – like those that had to do, in earlier times, with the quest for a New Inter-national Economic Order (NIEO) a quest that had become watered down to a pipe dream in the face of the obduracy of wealthy countries. Truth be told, it would by no means be an exaggeration to say that some of the ‘realities’ that lay at the very heart of the NIEO debate are repeating themselves in the discourses on climate change.
COP 27 is taking place against the backdrop of what we are told is a global climate emergency, though, ironically, numbered among the countries that will have to be critical to the pushing back of climate disaster are some of the biggest offenders. These are countries, developed ones, for the most part, that put what they regard as national interest first, seemingly failing to recognize that where climate change is concerned the saying that all are involved (and that) all are consumed is frighteningly real.
Numbered among the ninety-odd governments represented at COP 27 are the customary attendees, rich countries, mostly, who are there with well-known entrenched positions that are underpinned by strategies that seek, all too frequently to fudge the real issue of climate change, protecting, a priori, what they regard as their vital interests – which are, frequently and for the most part inimical to seriously tackling climate change – whilst proffering undertakings which, for the most part, they ultimately fail to honour. At the conclusion of high-level climate gatherings (like COP 27) they return home secure in the knowledge that they have successfully fended off the climate-changers even if they remain blissfully unmindful of the fact that another timeline for pulling back from the brink of a climate catastrophe has been missed.
Numbered among the voices that will be heard in Egypt, too, are those countries whose contributions to climate summits have long been reduced to pointless whispers that go by like chaff in the wind.
Whether COP 27 will change anything is doubtful. Certainly, none of the hard decisions that need to be made are likely to be made at that forum. Numbered amongst the attendees are the climate change resistors, rich countries with vested interests including ones that can only grow in an environment where the environment is further degraded. From poor countries we can anticipate the customary generous measure of impassioned rhetoric that will almost certainly take them nowhere.
Global deliberations and decision-making on climate change have never failed to acknowledge the circumstances and the pleadings of small island states, including those in the Caribbean that are under constant threat of being demolished by hurricanes so that the actual outcomes of the various international deliberations on climate change have left those regional island states no better off.
The address at the opening ceremony by UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres brought a measure of icy pragmatism to the forum though Mr. Gutteres will himself doubtless be aware that COP 27 will be, in large measure, about realpolitik and that the national interest-laden positions that rich countries would have brought to Egypt are more likely than not to dilute some of the hoped-for outcomes of COP 27. Beyond that Mr. Gutteres will hardly be unaware of the fact that repeated reminders regarding our inexorable drift towards ground zero notwithstanding, the respective delegations now assembled in Egypt would have arrived there with briefcases stuffed with unyielding positions that are underpinned by considerations of national interest that supersede what, presumably, would be his own grand vision of a world freed of the threat of climate disaster.
Heads of government will leave Egypt and return home to evaluate the extent to which the discourses and decisions taken at COP 27 are consistent with what they perceive to be their national interest. For many of them, the richer nations, particularly, those contemplations are unlikely to yield visions of a fast approaching climate apocalypse. In a world weighed down by a no less weighty agenda of conflict and controversy COP 27 is unlikely to succeed if its mission is to hold the feet of the collective international community, notably, the wealthier countries, to the fire, on the issue of climate change. The discourse still remains, for the most part, one of the deaf.
