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The fox is guarding the chickens at COP29

Nov 19, 2024

“Governments have retreated from even their legally binding promises to decarbonize, trusting markets to deliver comparatively meager emissions reductions instead, and activists have been unable to generate meaningful public outrage at the walkback.” —David Wallace-Wells, New York Times Oil and gas are a “gift of god,” declares UN COP29 climate summit host Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev, as thousands attend the conference in Baku, the capital, which was built on oil revenues. It appears that Canada believes the same. It has just been revealed by Canada’s environmental law charity Ecojustice and environmental advocacy organization Environmental Defence that the emissions from the oil, gas and coal Canada exports are increasing at such a rate that they now vastly exceed its own domestic energy emissions. This makes a mockery of Canada’s proclamation at COP28 that it is a climate leader. More than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists, including those pushing for controversial carbon capture and storage technology, swarmed COP29 as the Azerbaijan government welcomed the most powerful oil and gas CEOs. Joseph Sikulu, a member of the Pacific Climate Warriors and Pacific Director for climate campaign group 350.org, exclaimed, “How can we achieve the ambition that is needed to save our homes when these negotiations are continually flooded with fossil fuel lobbyists? There is a ban on tobacco lobbyists from attending the World Health Organization’s summit. Why is that not the case for the fossil fuel industry at COP? We demand that the upcoming COP presidencies set clear rules against the presence of fossil fuel interests at the negotiating table. Our lives depend on it.” https://tinyurl.com/cop-reform An open letter on COP climate reforms, written by climate policy experts and climate scientists to the UN Secretary General and COP Executive Secretary, asks for a move away from endless negotiations to delivery of agreed-upon negotiations. Money allocated to compensate countries of the global south and aid them so that they can adapt and create a resilient response to ongoing climate catastrophes (loss and damage) must be honoured. Key reforms urged also include locking out fossil fuel lobbyists and countries that push for more fossil fuel expansion. https://www.clubofrome.org/cop-reform/ This is music to many people’s ears, as the present COP structure, which has never produced any transition away from fossil energies, has lost the confidence of so many people. No wonder the last three climate conferences have taken place in autocratic petrostates. The letter went on to say, “It is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose… We need a shift from negotiation to implementation. We need strict eligibility criteria to exclude countries who do not support the phase-out/transition away from fossil energy. Host countries must demonstrate their high level of ambition to uphold the goals of the Paris agreement.”  Since the level of atmospheric CO2 has increased 26% in the last 10 years, it would be reasonable to question whether the 29th UN climate talks—with more than 65,000 people registered— will make any difference. The presence of 1,700 fossil-fuel lobbyists doesn’t help! The World Meteorological Organization declared

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Biodiversity Summit Languishes With Unresolved Issues

Nov 7, 2024

“This was the People’s COP! And nobody can take that from us.”—Susana Muhamad, president of 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) in Colombia COP16, held in Colombia in October 2024, had 23,000 attendees, the largest number ever in the history of these UN biodiversity conventions. If you wish to have a solid understanding of the key outcomes during the two-week conference, see https://tinyurl.com/cop-outcomes A global agreement on stopping biodiversity loss cannot come soon enough, as the average size of monitored wildlife populations has plummeted by 73% in just 50 years, according to the Living Planet Report 2024, produced by WWF in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London. Yet just 44 out of 196 countries—22%—had come up with new biodiversity plans by the time COP16 came to a rather abrupt conclusion as attendees were anxious not to miss their flights home. “Two years on, the vast majority of Nature targets agreed in Montreal regrettably currently still feel like unfunded words on paper,” said Catherine Weller, director of global policy at Fauna & Flora. There is much to do before the next conference, which is scheduled to take place in 2026. It is now clear that the United States, which has not signed up to the treaty, will continue to be on the sidelines for the biodiversity conferences. The concept of “mainstreaming biodiversity” was lauded at COP16. This means that the impact on biodiversity of any development or action, whether it be local, regional or national, would have to be taken into account and the protection of Nature assured before the project would be permitted to go ahead. But it is not just governments who need to commit to mainstreaming biodiversity, but all of society, as I will discuss in this article. The link between biodiversity and health was also championed at the conference in terms of national policies, and it was stressed that biodiversity loss is inextricably connected with and detrimental to the health of billions of people.  After an extra day of negotiations and hard-earned efforts to make breakthroughs for world Indigenous peoples to have a seat at the table with very clear decision-making rights on how negotiations must proceed, it seemed that the city of Cali, where the conference took place, erupted in a celebration for Nature. But amidst these heartfelt demonstrations of joy it cannot go unmentioned that 79 environmental defenders were murdered in Colombia in 2023, more than anywhere else in the world by a wide margin – and this in juxtaposition to having COP16 welcomed in one of the most biodiverse countries on the planet. Clearly a complex struggle is taking place between avarice and national ecological wellbeing, and is as startling as it is horrendous! Tragically, Colombia’s love/hate relationship with Nature reflects what is happening in the rest of the world. One outcome of the conference is that the delegations from 180-plus countries voted to request that pharmaceutical corporations and other users of digital genetic information give 1% of their

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