By James Curran, Scottish Environment LINK Honorary Fellow
Is the COP process a busted flush? This year we had hopes and expectations raised, yet again, for the COP16 on global biodiversity and for the COP29 on global climate change. It’s fair to say, both were pretty disastrous. “Nobody should be OK with this” said Euronews about COP16. “Travesty of Justice” commented the Guardian on CoP29. In both cases, at least the arguments were more about funding of global action than about any remaining dissent on the science. Groucho Marx said “While money can’t buy you happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery”. That’s just about where we are now.
Biodiversity continues to decline, while greenhouse gas emissions are at their highest ever. In both cases the science is now totally conclusive. There is even widespread recognition that more than half the world’s GDP, amounting to $58 Tn pa, is dependent on nature. Meanwhile the World Economic Forum places extreme weather, Earth systems, biodiversity collapse, and resource shortages as the top four global risks over the next decade. “We are playing Russian roulette with our planet” says the UN Secretary General, “We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell”.
A necessary question is – do the COPs offer that exit ramp?
Reportedly, there were almost 1800 fossil fuel lobbyists attending COP29. Critics suggest the climate CoPs have been undermined, turning them into greenwashing trade shows.
As Henry Ford said “Don’t find fault. Find a remedy”. So what might be the remedy?
Well, climate COPs have to agree by consensus across 196 nations. From the outset the oil producing countries blocked any move to adopt a voting system. Biodiversity COPs can, as a last resort, utilise two-thirds majority voting. So, inevitably, there is a feeling that both COPs only deliver the lowest common denominator. Additionally, there are no sanctions for nations failing to deliver on their stated COP commitments. This is in contrast, say, to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which can, if necessary, vote on resolutions and can also agree to international trade sanctions against defaulters.
Is it time to create a dual approach? Perhaps keep the existing COPs as a back-stop, but create something much more dynamic, focused robustly on delivery? Maybe a Community of Progressives (CoP), with their own annual CoP meetings, most certainly excluding lobbyists and with majority voting powers. This Community could bring together those nations who really seek a healthier and more sustainable planet and who have demonstrated either a track-record of correcting past mistakes, or a history of contributing very little to climate change, or are outstandingly vulnerable to climate impacts. So the Community could well include the likes of the EU, Philippines, India, Morocco, Chile, UK, Egypt, Brazil, Thailand, and Pakistan, as well as Dominica, Solomon Islands, and Samoa, amongst many others. It is probably time also to align the inter-connected global biodiversity and climate efforts into one Community. So, countries delivering determined biodiversity action should also join, including, for example, Congo, Tanzania, Zambia, Namibia, Venezuela, Bhutan, Japan, Brazil, and the EU.
Don’t such groupings already exist? Well, some do, but they’re disparate and fragmented. One was created alongside the Glasgow Climate Pact at COP26, formed of 137 countries committed to halting and reversing forest loss and land degradation while others, for example, the long-standing Environmental Integrity Group of nations even encompasses developed and developing nations and straddles both climate and biodiversity. The Accelerator Partnership was created at the Biodiversity COP15. As many as possible of these groups, if judged to be sufficiently dynamic and committed, should obviously join a new high-profile global Community of Progressives.
This Community of Progressives could, hopefully, agree new ambitious pathways, standards and targets to tackle the urgent problems of climate and biodiversity. The Community should also serve to illuminate the painfully slow pace of the traditional COPs, should demonstrate that much more can be done, and, thereby, drag other more recalcitrant nations along in its wake.
The new Community, like the WTO, should embrace a voting structure for decision-making but it also needs incentives and penalties for performance. How can nation states be sanctioned?
Well, the great majority of countries have been assigned sovereign credit ratings, predominantly by the three big US credit ratings agencies, Standard & Poor’s, Fitch, and Moody’s. Other agencies exist, including DBRS Morningstar and Scope Ratings. These agencies are all regulated, for example, by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK which issues them with technical instructions. Currently, the credit ratings agencies pay little or no heed to government actions on climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, or nature restoration. The regulators should address this gap. Surely a government that makes a commitment at a climate or biodiversity COP, and then fails to deliver, is a government not to be trusted? Such a government should be penalised by a significant reduction in credit rating – resulting in much higher interest rates and therefore repayments on international borrowing. However, successful delivery should improve ratings and lead to lower borrowing costs. This can be a very powerful tool – since resultant borrowing costs can easily double or halve (for comparison, UK Government borrowing costs are near 10% of total expenditure).
What about those countries not invited to the first-division Community of Progressives, like say Russia or the USA? They certainly wouldn’t escape the likely penalties from downgraded sovereign ratings, and might even be encouraged by the prospect of improved credit ratings if they step up.
The growing climate and nature emergencies demand new governance structures and new mechanisms that actually deliver. Perhaps leave the old discredited system in place – but it’s surely time to explore different models. Henry Ford again: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.
Tensions are certainly growing around the COP processes. It seems the USA may walk away again. A group of world leaders wrote an open letter condemning COP as not fit for purpose. Towards the close of COP29, the 44 nations represented by the Alliance of Small Island States and the 46 nations of the Least Developing Countries, stormed out, exasperated by slow and unambitious decision-making. “We are a force to be reckoned with” they said. Yes – together they could build a new highway to hope.