Please no more mixed signals. The annual UN climate summit, or Conference of the Parties (COP), sets out international agreements to guide countries in their response to the climate crisis. At least, it should.
This article was first published in Renaissance and Ecologists Magazine, come out now.
Instead, climate accords to date have largely shaped the already inaccessible climate discourse. Noble rhetoric excludes those most affected by the climate crisis because its language is confusing and difficult to communicate.
The ambiguity of language means the countries most responsible for the climate crisis can easily exploit the situation to their own advantage.
influences
We saw this when the 2015 Paris Agreement used seemingly similar words like “should” instead of “should”, which suddenly indicated a less strong commitment from the global North to lead the way in reducing emissions.
At COP26 in Glasgow last November, there was a lot of focus on the transition from coal phase-out to coal phasing out. Developed countries most responsible for the climate crisis are “disappointed” by India’s intervention.
Indeed, the language is diluted. However, something equally important is not only canceled, but erased—the specific mechanisms for shifting climate finance from developed to developing losses and damages are reduced to dialogue.
With this important message in mind, India’s intervention makes all the more sense when the global North, most responsible for the crisis, refuses to pay climate reparations.
Language is used as a tool for compromise and delaying action. Why do COP parties still act as if they are going to compromise with the worst polluters and emitters? The climate crisis presents itself in a clear way: billions of people around the world are already experiencing the worst impacts.
action
At a time when we are more certain than ever of what we have to lose as ecological and climate collapse looms, it does us no good to weaken the key phrases of the landmark agreement.
There is no room for uncertainty, no ‘should’ to replace ‘should’ and ‘must’; there is no need for trivial ‘phasing out’ when all we need is complete phase-out and compensation for loss and damage suffered by the countries of the Global South and adaptation “.
For the global North, the overwhelming urgency to avoid and reduce widespread systemic climate action means millions of the most vulnerable people and groups will lose their lives.
Six Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports have been released, each calling for immediate global climate action more urgently than the last.
