The 28th annual UN Climate Change Conference of Parties, or COP, held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates ended on Dec. 13. It was the first COP chaired by the head of an oil company—in this case, the state oil company of the UAE.
Among the 97,000 delegates were the largest number of fossil fuel lobbyists in the climate summit’s history—more than 2,400—who saw the meeting as an opportunity to make oil and gas deals with representatives of almost 200 nations who attended. Other big news coming out of the Dubai conference was that for the first time, fossil fuels were referenced in the text of the final document, which was agreed to by all parties. The final text called not for a “phasing out” or even a “phasing down” of production, but a “transition away from” fossil fuels, the biggest generator of greenhouse gases.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Fletcher Harper, executive director of the multi-faith international climate organization GreenFaith. Here, he talks about his organization’s summary of the summit, where attendees included a GreenFaith delegation from many countries in the global South, and explains why he believes it’s important to attend, even though there’s a growing view around the world that the UN COP process is deeply flawed.
FLETCHER HARPER: The importance of being there is to elevate voices from the frontlines, so that at an event that, like it or not, receives global media attention, there are dissenting voices or voices that are strongly critical of the inadequate leadership that countries, financial institutions, certainly the fossil fuel industry, are providing.
It’s a frustrating venue at this point. It’s turned into a trade show plus showcase for false solutions. Plus, too often, a place for governments that are really, in truth, opposed to progress on the issue, to get to greenwash and launder their reputations around the issue.
So, we’re no defender of the deficiencies of COP at this point. It is the show in town. I think there is a strategic decision that has to be made about whether an outright boycott serves the climate movement’s interests or not, and at this point we don’t believe it does because it essentially abandons a playing field that every government on the planet has legitimized and hands it over to even more fully to those who are not interested in making real progress.
MELINDA TUHUS: In your email, you wrote about a lot of the shortcomings of this particular COP, but can you summarize those beyond what we’ve talked about here?
FLETCHER HARPER: So, the first problem is that the topline outcome that received media coverage around the world was a vague commitment about endorsing a transition away from fossil fuels. The language had no timetable, had no binding or required commitment quality to it.
It was essentially an unenforceable verbal gesture toward something that requires measurable, enforceable, urgent timelines. And so, for the media to portray that as a victory is both naïve and misguided, and for governments to crow about its success is simply legitimizing more delay.
Now, there are some who say, well, it’s important that this is the first time officially that the COP has said this about fossil fuels. That’s true, but it’s nowhere close to enough at this point. It’s not the 1990s.
I think a second issue is that there were no substantial commitments to the Loss and Damage Fund that was created at last year’s COP out of a recognition that countries around the world—largely in the global South or the global majority—are suffering enormous and growing climate impacts that they’ve done nothing to create, and that any understanding of fairness and justice requires that the polluters pay for the damage they’ve caused.
This is a fund that again in concept is extremely important, but what matters is in practice that really very large scale sums from the historic polluters—the U.S., western European countries, Canada, Australia—need to be put into this fund and there needs to be an accessible process so that it’s not subject either to large-scale or long-time delays or processes that are inaccessible to communities that are getting hit the hardest. And we didn’t see that kind of progress.
I think that sustained, public mobilization is absolutely vital. History shows that that plays an important part in changing the political landscape and that’s what we’re committed to doing.
For more information, visit GreenFaith at Greenfaith.org.
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