What COP 27 did, perhaps more than anything else, was to recreate the scenario that manifested itself during the earlier era of the global debate on a New International Economic Order (NIEO) when, like now, the theatre and the grandstanding that characterized the debate was ensuing against the backdrop of fixed positions couched in rhetoric that hogged the headlines whilst doing little more than underscoring divisions that never came even close to being reconciled.
Quite a few decades later the issue of the rich/poor divide which was the essence of the NIEO ‘encounters’ has resurfaced. By and large there has been no change in the protagonists and perhaps, unsurprisingly, the two sides are as far apart as they were before.
There is, however, a difference this time around, in the words of our now departed poet laureate, Martin Carter, All are involved, all are consumed. The recent weather patterns in North America and Europe and what, in some instances, were their devastating consequences, would have, one expects, sent a chilling message to ‘the North’ that climate change is by no means discriminatory in the administering of its consequences.
If there was an unmistakable overtone of urgency, even emergency in UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres’ pronouncements, those contrasted sharply with the sense of jousting that characterized the to-ing and fro-ing that has become commonplace in pursuit of the making of deals at international fora.
One doesn’t have to make too great an effort to determine that some of the fundamentals of the wrangle over climate change have not shifted one inch.
The North/South divide underpinned mostly by an ongoing ‘row’ over who’s to blame and therefore who should bear the cost of ‘fixing things’ remains unmoving at the centre of the debate, the fear in such an environment being that the forum itself might become mistaken for some kind of theatre in which the ‘actors’ come to think that nothing there is real.
COP 27 came across, at times, as a kind of theatre affair, a feeling which some of the reporting and razzmatazz did much to underscore and which, at times, seemed to separate the forum itself from its real purpose.
One of the things that these climate conferences has done is to cause us to recognize that there is considerable distance between the making of deals and their actualization, a circumstance that is altogether inconsistent with the reality that, in this instance, time is running out.
This, in all likelihood, is moreso the case for some than others, particularly when account is taken of the deeply discomfiting circumstances that climate tantrums continue to make for small island developing states (SIDS) as exemplified in the disclosure by CARICOM member country, Barbados that it is already thinking sufficiently far ahead to have begun to conceptualize a ‘building back’ contingency in preparation for a juncture at which climate change might throw a more robust than usual tantrum.
There has to be a global change of mood. In Egypt, there was, perhaps far too much emphasis on COP 27 being seen as a ‘moment’ for Egypt. One felt, at times, that one might have been looking at ‘episodes’ of the kind of ‘theatre’ that we are witnessing at the football World Cup event in Dubai. Given the crisis gathering which, in effect, was what Sharm el-Sheikh represented, onlookers from elsewhere could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that the ‘spectacle’ was more than a trifle overdone, particular since the definitive outcomes remain, in some instances, decidedly fuzzy.
What COP 27 did, perhaps more than anything else, was to recreate the scenario that manifested itself during the earlier era of the global debate on a New International Economic Order (NIEO) when, like now, the theatre and the grandstanding that characterized the debate was ensuing against the backdrop of fixed positions couched in rhetoric that hogged the headlines whilst doing little more than underscoring divisions that never came even close to being reconciled.
Quite a few decades later the issue of the rich/poor divide which was the essence of the NIEO ‘encounters’ has resurfaced. By and large there has been no change in the protagonists and perhaps, unsurprisingly, the two sides are as far apart as they were before.
There is, however, a difference this time around, in the words of our now departed poet laureate, Martin Carter, All are involved, all are consumed. The recent weather patterns in North America and Europe and what, in some instances, were their devastating consequences, would have, one expects, sent a chilling message to ‘the North’ that climate change is by no means discriminatory in the administering of its consequences.
If there was an unmistakable overtone of urgency, even emergency in UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres’ pronouncements, those contrasted sharply with the sense of jousting that characterized the to-ing and fro-ing that has become commonplace in pursuit of the making of deals at international fora.
One doesn’t have to make too great an effort to determine that some of the fundamentals of the wrangle over climate change have not shifted one inch.
The North/South divide underpinned mostly by an ongoing ‘row’ over who’s to blame and therefore who should bear the cost of ‘fixing things’ remains unmoving at the centre of the debate, the fear in such an environment being that the forum itself might become mistaken for some kind of theatre in which the ‘actors’ come to think that nothing there is real.
COP 27 came across, at times, as a kind of theatre affair, a feeling which some of the reporting and razzmatazz did much to underscore and which, at times, seemed to separate the forum itself from its real purpose.
One of the things that these climate conferences has done is to cause us to recognize that there is considerable distance between the making of deals and their actualization, a circumstance that is altogether inconsistent with the reality that, in this instance, time is running out.
This, in all likelihood, is moreso the case for some than others, particularly when account is taken of the deeply discomfiting circumstances that climate tantrums continue to make for small island developing states (SIDS) as exemplified in the disclosure by CARICOM member country, Barbados that it is already thinking sufficiently far ahead to have begun to conceptualize a ‘building back’ contingency in preparation for a juncture at which climate change might throw a more robust than usual tantrum.
There has to be a global change of mood. In Egypt, there was, perhaps far too much emphasis on COP 27 being seen as a ‘moment’ for Egypt. One felt, at times, that one might have been looking at ‘episodes’ of the kind of ‘theatre’ that we are witnessing at the football World Cup event in Dubai. Given the crisis gathering which, in effect, was what Sharm el-Sheikh represented, onlookers from elsewhere could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that the ‘spectacle’ was more than a trifle overdone, particular since the definitive outcomes remain, in some instances, decidedly fuzzy.
