Over ten pages there is lots of urging, noting, inviting, acknowledging, stressing and so on, but few decisions, beyond agreeing to meet again next year (more international travel, more per diems) and have dialogue on loss and damage. Nevertheless, the important momentum around the Paris Agreement remains, and the role of civil society’s protests and lobbying in assuring this is widely acknowledged.
There were a few unexpected additions to an otherwise bland statement, notably the focus on coal, which now the international community agrees to ‘phase down’ (rather than ‘phase out’ thanks to a last minute intervention by India). But there were also gaps. Coal is rightly in the spotlight, but what about oil and shale gas? Loss and damage (compensation for climate change to those most affected, but least polluting) is acknowledged, but where is the funding (beyond some from Scotland and a limited offer from some philanthropists, there is nothing on the table)? And, with all the good talk about tackling deforestation, a lot of the action is wrapped up in dodgy deals around offsetting and net-zero accounting. I could go on.
Attending a few days of the COP in the first week was certainly very weird, so contrasting were the divergent positions. I didn’t see the Zimbabwean delegation (they didn’t have delegation offices nor a ‘pavilion’), nor did I get invited to the drunken beach party (in November… really?). Like most African delegations they were marginalised and peripheral to the main action. President Mnangagwa was not the only head of state to speak to a near empty hall or be shunned by attempts at diplomatic rapprochement.
Instead, the COP negotiation action was centred on horse-trading between the US, China and the EU, with a few interventions from the likes of India and the oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia, while the small island states and ‘least developed country’ coalitions made effective noise from the margins. That any agreement was made at all is amazing, and the result of enormous hard work, including by the UK’s Alok Sharma as chair of the conference (although backing from the wider UK government was half-hearted at best).
Will this make a difference? I remain sceptical, as the fundamental challenge of addressing climate change – through the fundamental transformation of capitalist economies – remains untouched. Indeed, with corporate greenwash on show to such a sickening extent, much of the agenda has been captured through the slick jargon of carbon markets, offsets and net-zero targets. All these are approaches that fail to address the root causes of the problem and attempt to retain the status quo. They protect capitalist interests through a greenwashed ‘transition’, while very often exporting the problem elsewhere with devastating consequences.
Given that climate change is perhaps the biggest challenge humanity faces, Glasgow was disappointing. But it was the energy, radicalism and commitment in the spaces outside the main conference that give me hope. On my way home from Glasgow – in a state of exhaustion and with feelings of anger and frustration – I penned another piece for The Conversation with my reflections. This is reproduced below.
COP26: Two worlds talked past each other – or never even met
Ian Scoones, Institute of Development Studies
At the 2021 UN climate change conference in Glasgow, moving between the corporate slickness of the official “Blue Zone” (a UN-managed space which hosts the negotiations) and the wider fringe was quite a disconcerting experience for me. These were two different worlds. Everyone was committed to saving the planet, but there were highly diverging views about how to do it.
A welter of announcements on everything from coal to methane to forests dominated the opening days. Large numbers were discussed and ambitious targets were set. The bottom line was keeping alive the Paris agreement to pursue efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C, while assuring a ‘transition’ to a low-carbon future.
The contradictions were all too apparent at this year’s conference, known as COP26. The hired exhibition spaces in the conference centre were hosted by fossil fuel polluting countries and sponsored by large corporations. Corporate spin, also known as greenwash, abounded. There were a few African delegations with their own space and a vanishingly few civil society voices in the main venue.
Meanwhile, the discourse was very different in parallel fora. Here the talk was of inequality, climate justice and reparations. The focus was on radical transformations of systems of production and consumption. Many were critical of business-led and market-based solutions to climate change.
There was passion, commitment and a real sense of anger and frustration about the main conference. Huge suspicion around the corporate takeover of the climate agenda swirled, with much commentary on the double standards of the UK hosts, still proposing a new coalmine and oilfield as part of a so-called ‘transition’.
Unlike a decade ago, there was no climate scepticism on show. But how to address the underlying causes of climate change in capitalism remains the big, unaddressed challenge.
Pastoralists’ perspectives
As a researcher working on pastoralism as part of a European Research Council funded project, I was at the COP together with a delegation of pastoralists from different parts of the world, all linked to the World Alliance for Mobile Indigenous Pastoralist Peoples. We were definitely on the fringe of the fringe.
We hosted a photo exhibition exploring pastoralists’ own perceptions of climate change and uncertainty from across the world. We engaged in a dialogue with Scottish farmers and food groups, focusing on the future of livestock production under climate change. And our ‘sheep for the climate’ action brought a group together to discuss why livestock are not always bad for the planet, together with some fine rare breed sheep.
When I managed to find a few events in the Blue Zone (not an easy task) relating to our research, they were mostly extremely disappointing. There were parallel conversations going on. If climate change is genuinely a shared challenge for all of humanity, dialogue between different viewpoints is vital.
Within the main conference, there was much talk about trees and ‘nature-based solutions’ across multiple sessions, for instance. The mainstream media hailed the agreement on deforestation, but a significant part of this simply replicates the failed programmes of the past. Under such programmes, forest protection in the global south is used as carbon offsets for large polluting companies and rich, consuming publics in the north.
The huge ecosystem restoration efforts being proposed potentially cause real problems for pastoralists. This is because large areas of open rangelands are earmarked for tree planting and biodiversity protection through exclusion. These so-called nature-based solutions are frequently new forms of colonialism, opening the gates to ‘green grabbing’, where land and resources are appropriated in the name of environmental conservation.
Methane was also a hot topic. The huge reductions in emissions proposed under the Global Methane Pledge have major implications for livestock production. Yet a session I attended was obsessed only with technical solutions -– feed additives, methane-reducing inhibitors and vaccines, seaweed supplements, even face masks for cows.
Once again, livestock systems were lumped together, without differentiating between highly polluting industrial systems and more climate-friendly extensive systems, such as African pastoralism. Indeed, many of the solutions proposed are already being practised in extensive grazing systems. The problem I guess is that these practices could not be patented and sold by agribusinesses.
Climate and capitalism
So how do these two worlds intersect? Everyone is keen on nature, no-one wants catastrophic climate change, but why are the solutions so divergent? At root, the two camps (and many in between) have different views on the role of capitalism in climate change.
For those in the Blue Zone, a long-term shift from reliance on fossil fuels is (largely) accepted. But capitalism in its new green guise, many argue, can save the day through technology investment and market mechanisms – and notably through the plethora of offsetting schemes that make up the net-zero plans.
By contrast, critical civil society and youth voices argue that capitalism is the root cause of the problem, together with its handmaiden colonialism. The only solution therefore is to overhaul capitalism and dismantle unequal global power relations. But how, through what alliances?
In a recent paper –- climate change and agrarian struggles – we explored the challenges of ‘eroding capitalism’ to create structural transformation and climate justice. However, in Glasgow I missed these crucial, political debates about ways forward. Are new styles of multilateral negotiation possible? Can genuine inclusion occur, going beyond the performance of participation where an ‘indigenous’ person or ‘community’ leader is co-opted? Can a true dialogue emerge about our common future?
I of course had very limited exposure to the thousands of simultaneous events. But my sense was that there was little meaningful interchange between different positions. Two worlds talked past each other or – because of restricted access, problems with visas and the high costs of attending –- never even met.
Ian Scoones, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development Studies
Post published in: Featured