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Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, Director of the World Ocean Observatory.
COP 27, the recent international meeting on climate change, has closed and issued its final press release and implementation. Reaction, from the participants and international observers, has been mixed. Focus has been primarily on a “loss and damage” concept and the creation of a fund to compensate and stimulate vulnerable nations that have been hardest hit by climate consequence and have no internal capacity or resources to react, rectify, and progress.
45,000 individuals participated in this two-week endeavor, and from it came a “Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan” – at last, what I presumed to be the outline for concrete action. The document lists a set of premises, foundation principles for what follows, and thereafter 56 paragraphs relating to specific areas of interest. But every one of these, in typical UN language, begins with verbs such as “welcomes, notes, affirms, acknowledges, recognizes, underlines, reiterates, expresses, highlights,” –all words that softly align interest with existing complementary circumstances, words that suggest, not direct, and thus integrate any aspiration into structures that are designed for discussion, compromise, and careful prolongation of the conversation. The document seems to call for a magical exercise, a plan to plan to plan a plan. It was very disappointing.
Let me give you two examples from the text:
On the topic of Finance, the language can be paraphrased as follows:
“Highlights that about $4 trillion per year needs to be in invested in renewable energy up until 2030 to be able to reach net zero emissions by 2050…notes with concern the growing gap between the needs of developing countries, due to increasing impacts of climate change and their increased indebtedness…expresses serious concern that the goal…to mobilize $100 billion by 2020 has not yet been met….emphasizes that accelerated financial support…is critical… urges developed countries to provide enhanced support…calls on shareholders of multinational development banks to contribute to increasing climate ambition…encourages further action…”
On the topic of the Ocean:
“Welcomes the outcomes and key messages from the ocean and climate change dialogue in 2022 and decides that future dialogues will, from 2023, be co-facilitated by two co-facilitators, selected by the Parties biennially, who will be responsible for deciding the topics for conducting the dialogue, in consultation…and preparing an informal summary report to be presented in conjunction with the subsequent session of the conference… encourages Parties to consider, as appropriate, ocean-based action in their national climate goals and in the implementation of these goals, including, but not limited to, nationally determined contributions, long-term strategies and adaptation communications…”
What we have here is a description of aspiration, yet again; it does not even offer process, beyond the appointment of additional bureaucrats to facilitate work not specified, to be determined. There are UN agencies farther down the road on this than the document expresses, and there are non-governmental organizations with fully formed programs and ideas clamoring for the validation and funding that are described here.
The Plan barely rises beyond the power of suggestion, and as a call to action for sustainability over suicide, it is insipid, conventional, risk adverse, and nearly useless, other than as political cover, a public relations justification for all the fuss.
Why should I expect more?
And yet this meeting was populated with those leaders and thinkers, movers and shakers, who collectively could mobilize into demonstrable, measurable achievement if only by coalescing their existing successes as a recognized de facto demonstration of actions already taken to these ends, their further success limited only by financial requirements and the subtle resistance of capital pledged elsewhere. Were they despondent by the outcome? Furious? Re-motivated to act to spite all this well-meaning inertia? I was, all three.
We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
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