Faith groups represented at the Cop27 climate change conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, have reflected that unless solutions are balanced through justice, the whole process to find international agreement will fall apart. Justice lies at the heart of solutions to climate change
Omar Shaikh, managing director of the Global Finance initiative, told a Religion Media Centre briefing that the agreement to set up a fund to compensate poorer countries for climate change damage, was prioritised by the Egyptian government which hosted the summit. “That priority was not seen or felt [at Cop26] in Glasgow,” he said.
There had been a sense of injustice over solutions to climate change on the table. He explained: “If you have $40bn of damage in Pakistan, due to the floods, with 30 million people displaced, and you tell banks and financial institutions in Pakistan, ‘you need to divest or stop financing coal power plants’, they’re going to be saying: ‘hold on a minute … how do we deal with this damage that we’ve just incurred from these phenomenal floods?’”
The compensation scheme, or “loss and damage” agreement, will be operated by the United Nations and a transitional committee has been set up to decide how it will work and how the money will come in. There will be a report back for consideration by Cop28, to be held in the United Arab Emirates in November 2023.
Omar Shaikh said the loss and damage agreement was fundamental to the future success of international action and was a matter of justice for the developing world. His own work involved promoting ethical investment in green and sustainable bonds with the aim of achieving de-carbonisation. But the past mattered as much as the future for developing countries, where the scars of history were very much alive.
He did detect an air of urgency in Sharm el-Sheikh, but there has been criticism that Cop27 failed to take action to ensure global warming is limited to 1.5C.
James Buchanan from Operation Noah, said the burning of fossil fuels as a primary contributor to the climate crisis was the elephant in the room at the summit.
His own work has this issue front and centre, working with churches to invest in renewable energy to reach the 1.5C limit, something the International Energy Agency has said can be reached only by trebling current levels of investment.
Veteran environment journalist Alex Kirby said Cop27 had damaged attempts to do something serious about the situation the world faced. He quoted an Oxford academic saying Cop27 gave an illusion of progress but it had nothing to do with the causes of emissions, even though the urgency was clear.
He quoted Alok Sharma, the Conservative MP and president of Cop26 in Glasgow, who voiced his frustration at the progress made. Addressing the summit as Cop27 came to a close, he said: “Emissions peaking before 2025 as the science tells us is necessary? Not in this text. Clear follow-through on the phasing out of coal? Not in this text. A commitment to phase out all fossil fuels? Not in this text.”
Alex Kirby said the loss and damage agreement was worthwhile in its own right and he was glad it had been achieved after 30 years of discussion. But it wouldn’t help much in the immediate emergency of global warming, which was progressing ever faster.
He was hearing the same arguments over and over again and said of climate change: “We can’t solve it or surrender to it, all we can do is adjust to it.” But it was still important to work towards the goals, because everything that was done meant that the hopes for the next generation were better than if nothing was done at all.
The next generation was present at fringe events in Sharm el-Sheikh, and was even more visible in Glasgow, with a youth pilgrimage from Cornwall to the summit venue and with many eye-catching campaigns and fringe events in the city.
Chris Manktelow, from the Young Christian Climate Network, said campaigners shared a passion for justice and still had a lot of energy for change, despite the frustration that not enough progress had been made at Cop27.
He believed that the focus on climate change, so marked in Glasgow last year, had shifted in the UK, as the challenge of energy security after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had given rise to new arguments around exploiting more oil and gas in the North Sea.
This is a development James Buchanan said should be challenged. It was vital to keep working towards and speaking out against fossil fuel development and it was an opportunity for the church to be prophetic and put its money where its mouth is.
View the recording of the briefing on our YouTube channel:
