The climate is a ‘mess’. Poor countries want money for loss and damage. But will the rich pay up?

Since the last global climate talks ended in what was described as a “fragile win” for our warming Earth, the global order has spun further out of control. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted an energy crisis that has seen some nations dive back into coal. Grain exports from Ukraine were suspended, driving up the price of staples, while crops were being battered by climate-exacerbated heatwaves across China, Africa, Europe and the US and floods in China, Pakistan and Bangladesh, to name a few.

Although the stakes are high and the sense of impending chaos palpable, not all the news this year has been bad. The US has passed the greatest climate package in its history; a world desperate for new energy has turned more to green solutions than brown; and the pace of renewable energy deployment in China has been eye-watering. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, whose presidency saw mass clearing of the Amazon rainforest, recently conceded defeat in a national election, much to the relief of climate observers.

Still, as world leaders gather in Egypt for another round of climate talks, they have a lot to talk about. Not far off in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa, millions of people face hunger and the prospect of famine. And developing nations are pushing back.

So, what’s on the agenda in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh? And what do loss and damages actually mean?

First, who’ll be at COP27?

The cast of COP27 includes US President Joe Biden and (after a late reverse ferret) British PM Rishi Sunak as well as France’s President Emmanuel Macron. Neither Chinese President Xi Jinping nor India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi – both leaders of greenhouse gas giants – will be there.

Nor will Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who is travelling to meetings of ASEAN, APEC and the G20 in Cambodia, Thailand and Bali, which conflict with the second week of the COP. Instead, the Australian delegation is led by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen and includes Pacific Minister Pat Conroy and Senator Jenny McAllister.

Does it matter? Well, maybe. Albanese’s decision has raised some eyebrows because his government has been determined to raise the nation’s climate ambitions and because it hopes to secure support to co-host a COP with the Pacific in the coming years.

The negotiators, activists and leaders who go to these annual “COPs” – short for Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – are from among the 196 nations that signed the 2015 Paris Agreement on limiting carbon emissions. But the talks normally attract the full flight of world leaders only every five years, when countries are expected to announce new targets, as was the case in Glasgow last year.

Having passed the US’s most ambitious climate laws ever, Biden has good cause to attend. (The laws funnelled $US370 billion into measures to ramp up renewables, which modelling suggests will reduce its emissions by up to 40 per cent on 2005 levels.) And Sunak’s absence would have been conspicuous because, as hosts in Glasgow, Britain still holds the COP presidency until it is formally handed over to Egypt at the meeting.

Another key climate figure who is not in town is activist Greta Thunberg. “The COPs are mainly used as an opportunity for leaders and people in power to get attention, using many different kinds of greenwashing,” she said, referring to the growing trend of corporate performative action on climate.

What’s top of the agenda in Egypt?

Looming over the talks will be the fact that since last year’s COP26, the world has failed to put itself on track to meet Paris Agreement targets to hold warming to well below 2 degrees. In fact, the world is headed for 2.8 degrees of global heating by the end of the century, according to a recent report from the UN’s Environment Program. “The recommendations in today’s report are clear,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. “End our reliance on fossil fuels. Avoid a lock-in of new fossil fuel infrastructure. Invest massively in renewables.”

He added: “Commitments to net zero are worth zero without the plans, policies and actions to back it up.”

In Sharm el-Sheikh, negotiations over payments for loss and damage will ramp up.

This last point is crucial. The Egyptian hosts have declared that if the Glasgow talks were about driving nations to set more ambitious targets, these will focus on creating the policies to meet them. Not only that, but participants will be urged to restore what the COP’s incoming president, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, has called the “grand bargain” of the Paris Agreement. That bargain is the agreement at the heart of the UN climate treaty, in which developing nations agreed to cut emissions and rich nations agreed to help pay for the effort.

So in Sharm el-Sheikh, there will be negotiations about pumping billions, if not trillions, into a range of public and private sector funds, all of which have so far not been hitting their targets. And negotiations over payments for loss and damage will ramp up.

What was that about loss and damage?

Ever since COPs began in 1995, the developing world has felt let down on climate change by the developed world – which has enjoyed the economic benefits of pumping out greenhouse gases as it pursued wealth, but which has failed to keep promises both to cut those gases and to provide the funds to help emerging economies adapt to a warming world.

As climate impacts grow worse, this inequity is becoming more stark. During floods this year, Pakistan – which has contributed around .09 per cent of global greenhouse gases – saw 12 per cent of its land inundated, more than 1700 people killed and over 2.1 million displaced.

Developing nations say it’s time for the West to stump up for “loss and damage” – which, put bluntly, means compensation payouts.

In UN-speak, the West has failed to keep its promises on both climate mitigation (paying for the costs of reducing emissions) and climate adaptation (paying for green technologies). So, developing nations say, it’s time for the West to stump up for “loss and damage” they’ve incurred – which, put bluntly, means compensation payouts.

Wealthy nations, particularly the US, have trenchantly opposed focus on loss-and-damage payment negotiations, fearful of admitting culpability for climate change – of “opening a chequebook that would be difficult to close”, as the ANU’s Professor Mark Howden puts it. According to the London School of Economics, depending on the extent of global efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, loss and damage could cost developing countries between $US290 billion ($460 billion) and $US580 billion in 2030, and between $US1 trillion and $US1.8 trillion in 2050.

But in Sharm el-Sheikh, the Egyptian hosts have ensured that loss and damage is on the agenda for formal negotiations.

How is this affecting geopolitics?

The frustration at these failures among developing nations is spilling into other areas of global negotiations, says Mohamed Adow, director of the climate and energy think tank Power Shift Africa. “The rich world will have to look back to their past commitments, and what they agreed to pay to help clean up the mess they’ve caused in the world – and which they haven’t actually honoured – and think through the implications beyond the impact of climate change.

“They will have to think about the implications for global co-operation and global and international solidarity.”

Unless the world can come together to fairly tackle climate, he says, it cannot presume to solve the competing crises caused by Russian aggression, the energy crunch, increasing tension between the US and China or the global pandemic. Indeed, he says the West’s failure to either provide Africa with vaccinations or waive intellectual property payments for making its vaccines drove some African nations closer to China, which proved more willing to help.

“That doesn’t mean that they’re supportive of Russia, far from it. It’s just that they don’t see, always, partners on the part of the West.”

Mohamed Adow

Facing its own crisis with the invasion of Ukraine, some in the West were surprised when some African nations abstained from crucial UN votes condemning Russian aggression. “That doesn’t mean that they’re supportive of Russia, far from it,” says Adow. “It’s just that they don’t see, always, partners on the part of the West.” The developed North cannot expect the “South” to respond to its call for support when the North does not reciprocate, he says.

With stakes that high, what can Australia do?

The Albanese government’s decision to ramp up greenhouse gas cuts to 43 per cent by 2030 was a key first step. The cuts have been criticised by some scientists as not being in line with efforts to stabilise warming at 1.5 degrees, but they are in line with diplomatic demands.

Australia has also joined the so-called Global Methane Pledge, a non-binding goal signed by more than 100 nations in Glasgow to drastically reduce methane emissions. The previous government baulked at this US initiative.

But there is more that Australia can do. Australia was a driving force behind the creation of the Green Climate Fund, designed to help developing countries raise and realise their emission-reduction targets. Having pledged $200 million to the fund, former prime minister Scott Morrison announced during an interview with radio host Alan Jones that Australia was abandoning the effort.

“This is an absolute must [for Australia],” says Adow. “Australian rightly negotiated this, it committed to it. Rejoining the fund and scaling up funding is necessary for Australia to show its commitment.”

What about Australia’s own COP bid?

Since its election, the Albanese government has been determined to weave climate diplomacy through its broader foreign policy objectives, which include strengthening Pacific ties as China asserts its influence in the region.

At recent Pacific Island talks, Albanese again declared he would like to see Australia co-host its own COP in the coming years with its Pacific neighbours. To that end, its performance in Egypt will be closely watched.

Asked if the PM’s decision not to attend this COP in Egypt might be poorly viewed, Dr Wesley Morgan, a Pacific specialist with the Climate Council, says he believes island nations are more concerned about the government’s support for new gas and coal projects in Australia than they are about Albanese’s travel plans.

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