Civil Society and COP23 — a struggle between public and corporate interest
COP23 — the 23rd conference of the parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 25 years of international negotiations involving more than 190 countries on earth — that adds up to 23 COPs or 46 official meetings when counting in the intersessional meetings that take place each year in Bonn. 25 years of the belief that the international community will solve the problem of human-made climate change. Kyoto Protocol — the first attempt to regulate CO2 emissions with an international legally binding treaty failed: The U.S.A has never ratified it and the second round of the protocol for 2013–2020 has never entered into force, while emissions are at an all-time high. Despite all efforts, climate change is happening at an ever faster and more severe pace.
Hope lies in the Paris Agreement of 2015. Celebrated all over the world as a major achievement and framed as the solution to the climate crisis, what has come out of it so far is a weak, not legally binding agreement that lets countries set their “Nationally Determined Contributions” to reduce emissions on a voluntary basis and without consideration of the carbon budget, which is the scientifically calculated amount of CO2 that we can still emit to stay under 1.5°C respectively 2°C warming. Being here at the negotiations, getting a sense for what is really happening, I believe that we are far from reaching this goal with the Paris Agreement, even if all countries commit to their national targets.
The message by politicians is a different one — that we can solve the problem without radical change — also thanks to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the scientific organ of the UNFCCC that includes Negative Emission Technologies (NETs) into their calculations — even though those technologies do not exist to work on a large scale. Civil society is aware of that fact, so is the scientific community. Probably politicians and negotiators themselves as well. Social movements all over the world are on the rise, fighting against fossil fuel infrastructure, deforestation and many other climate related issues (large scale agriculture, ocean acidification, the need for a faster renewable energy transformation and the wealthier states’ contribution). On Saturday before the conference, the biggest climate demonstration in German history took place in Bonn with more than 25,000 people demonstrating for rapid climate action and the phase-out of fossil fuels, especially coal owed to the German context. Sunday, the German Ende Gelaende alliance marched with 4,500 activists to the Hambach coal mine, one of the biggest point source CO2 emitters in Europe. Most of the activists made it into the mine and blocked diggers and a conveyor belt, demanding an exit of Germany from lignite coal mining.
On last Monday COP began. While during the weekend civil society got quite some attention in the news the attention shifted to governments and the feeling of disempowerment sneaked upon me. At the conference, the distribution of power is more obvious. There are two zones, the Bula zone (negotiations) and the Bonn zone (civil society). A majority of people only has access to the civil society area and even then, you need to be accredited by an admitted observer organization of the UNFCCC. Having observer access, NGOs can try to influence diplomats in hallways and intervene meetings of the different bodies giving speeches. These are, however, only very structured, diplomatically conducted interventions and do not have to be considered by negotiators. Additionally, in bigger meetings these interventions usually take place at the end, when attendance is low, and most negotiators already have left. Many negotiations are only accessible with extra tickets (even though one is admitted for the negotiation zone), of which every constituency of NGOs only gets a limited number.
At COP itself, the possibility to demonstrate is quite limited, demonstrations have to be registered by the Secretariat and are only allowed in certain “action zones”. As a rule, it cannot be too noisy, mentioning of countries or public figures is not allowed and the number of participants is limited as well. That means that possibilities for civil society, fighting for people’s interest is usually not heard. That was different in the past, when protests even took place inside the actual negotiations. Nowadays, if you go against UNFCCC’s rules, you risk to get banned from the current and future negotiations, and this extends to the entire organization through which you were granted a badge, probably a risk that no one could take, as it is the only chance to get heard at all.
On Wednesday, an open dialogue hosted by the Fidjian President took place, to give observer stakeholders and parties the opportunity to deliver inputs on how observer participation could be improved. As I had to realize, even that is a very formal process. Although called dialogue and despite possibilities to provide input on what it should be about, the final agenda-setting power lied by the secretariat. At a meeting of the youth constituency the day before I sensed this kind of power. The secretariat notified YOUNGO that the topic of “conflict of interest” would not be on the agenda anymore. Instead the dialogue would focus more on procedural improvements and best-practice examples from other UN negotiations. So, the urgent issue of conflict of interest was not on the table that day. It is known that the fossil fuel industry and other businesses heavily influence negotiations in their favor. Not only via business-related organizations that get accreditation but also through positions in country delegations. Of course, the problem is even larger, As lobbying influence takes place not only during COP but also, and specially, throughout the year, directly targeting national governments and the EU, trying to influence the position they take when going into the negotiations.
During the open dialogue, several non-party constituencies, among them the ENGOs (Environmental NGOs) and the CJN (Climate Justice Network) delivered interventions addressing the conflict of interest issue. Both CJN and ENGO speeches were commented by the chair of the session claiming to be off-topic and thus irrelevant for this dialogue. He might have been right with that, but it reveals the fundamental problem that we face. Even in a dialogue that is non-binding and does not bring any implications, there is no space to discuss the conflicts of interest, need for more transparency and different rules for those representing people and nature vs. those with private interests. The CJN speaker mentioned the World Health Organization as a successful example of enforcing conflict of interest regulations on tobacco industry’s influence on international negotiations. I have to say, that such an open dialogue is without precedence in UNFCCC history and a first step into the right direction, as inputs from that format can be taken up by the actual negotiations. However, as long as the important issues are not addressed, there is little to be expected.
Clearly, the dominant neoliberal paradigm of market solutions and deep belief in technology cloaks this conference. Negative emissions technologies are praised and carbon markets and other tools are suggested to solve the climate crisis. Al Gore drew a quite dramatic picture of where the world is today when he visited COP. But he, as so many others, fell into the same argumentation choir of status quo — we have everything to solve the problem and technology and the private market will lead the way. While I do not reject technological solutions and the private economy in general, we should not rely on something that has never worked on a large scale (Negative Emissions Technologies), but rather aim for a fast and just transition to a post fossil fuel world. So far, COP has been quite disappointing regarding urgently demanded talks on conflicts of interest. Tonight the only event hosted by the U.S. delegation will take place. Its topic: The Role of Cleaner and More Efficient Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Power in Climate Mitigation.
