This week l’express speaks to Sunil Dowarkasing, former strategist at Greenpeace and former environmental advisor to the Mauritian government on his view of what came out of the COP28 summit in December. Why the COP summits don’t seem to be working and what kind of strategy small island states like Mauritius should be pursuing at future COP summits.

**What are the key takeaways from what happened at the COP28 summit in the UAE in December? **

This COP28 was a special one in the sense that it was the first time that there was a global stocktake, which after the Paris agreement in 2015, was the first time there was an assessment of countries’ efforts to limit climate change to a 1.5 degree Celsius increase. Mauritius’ target was to cut emissions by 30 per cent compared to the 1990s. The Mauritian government said that they would need support to achieve that. And then every five years countries are supposed to increase their targets. For Mauritius what they did was say now they would decrease carbon emissions by 40 per cent by 2030. To do that Mauritius got funding of five million euros from the AFD.

What was the picture that emerged out of the global stocktaking exercise?

What came out was very disappointing but not surprising, that we are not making much progress towards carbon reduction. At the rate we are going we will not meet the 1.5 degree Celsius target and that if we want to meet that target we have to decrease actual global emissions by 43 per cent.

The second big thing was the statement that spoke about “transitioning away” rather than “ending” fossil fuels. If you are saying that emissions need to be cut by 43 per cent now, what does this distinction mean in practice?

This is a good question. Just to be precise the statement said transitioning away from fossil fuels only when it comes to energy production. So this does not include transport and other sectors that contribute to global emissions too. I would say that fossil fuel lobbyists who came in great numbers at COP28 succeeded in watering down the statement. They should not be part of the process.

The third decision that was taken was setting up a loss and damage fund. This fund was discussed at the COP27 meeting in Egypt. At the UAE the pledges for this fund totalled $700 million. Given that some estimates put the damage from the effects of climate change globally as high as $400 billion each year, and that some countries are contesting the World Bank running this fund, isn’t this just a drop in the bucket?

It was a strategic move to put the loss and damage fund on the agenda right from the very first day of COP28. This is something that African states have been pushing for since 2013. But then when you see the amount pledged – we should not forget that previous funds that have been pledged have been slow in materialising – how much of this pledge will turned into real funding is the real question. The other problem is that this a one-time pledge, the issue is that dealing with loss and damage would need real long-term financing.

Coming to the World Bank managing the fund, many countries that pushed for the loss and damage fund are not happy with that for two reasons. Firstly, the World Bank is dominated by its major shareholders which are the rich states, most of whom such as China are some of the biggest emitters at the moment. Secondly, the World Bank has itself funded the global fossil fuel industry to the tune of $15 billion since the Paris Agreement in 2015.

The first COP summit took place in 1995 to limit carbon emissions and the effects of climate change. In 1995, global emissions were 23.52 billion metric tonnes globally. Last year in 2023 it was 37.55 billion metric tonnes. Given that since the COP summits were founded global emissions have only increased, has the COP system failed?

The first COP was in 1995 and the third one was held in Kyoto and came up with the Kyoto protocol. Under the Kyoto Protocol, emissions cuts were only applicable to rich, developed states who were historically responsible for global warming. But already by 1997, the industrialized states did not like the Kyoto Protocol because there were already indications that big developing economies such as China and India were becoming big polluters in their own right. So countries such as the US and Canada questioned why big emerging countries were excluded from the Kyoto Protocol since they would also become big polluters in the long run. China and India replied that the industrialised countries had built up their economies on coal, now they too needed to develop their own economies. So the COP divided the world into the developed and the developing world, where China and India were initially seen as the outlaws.

The Kyoto Protocol was extended until 2015 when it was then replaced by the Paris Agreement. What the Paris Agreement did was extend targets to cut emissions to all countries, both developed and developing. But the problem with the Paris Agreement was that it was not a legally binding agreement. It was a voluntary exercise not a mandatory one so it was not followed. It had no mechanism to punish countries that did not follow it.

The other big issue is that to come up with a final statement there has to be unanimity. Like at COP26 when at the last moment India hijacked the statement and it had to be watered down and modified otherwise there would no statement and consensus and would be seen as a failed summit. COP has not been providing the means or tools to cut emissions. Look at emissions of China and India; in 2022 Chinese emissions were 28.5 per cent of global emissions, now it has grown to 30.5 per cent. If you look at Indian emissions they are on the way to becoming the second biggest polluter in the world, overtaking the US, by 2030. The only countries that have seen emissions decrease are the US and the countries of the European Union. For everybody else, emissions are rising.

Even when it comes to the US it depends on the government there doesn’t it? When Donald Trump was President the US pulled out of the Paris Agreement in 2020 and then it rejoined under President Joe Biden. So even in states that are reducing emissions, that depends on the government of the day, doesn’t it?

The difference is that the US is a federal system where a lot of states within the US operated independently on this. So even when Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement, there were still a lot of states such as California that continued to cut emissions. So that makes a big difference, where even under Trump the declining trend in emissions coming out of the US never stopped.

One thing you mentioned earlier was lobbyists in the COP process. At COP 27 in Egypt people criticised 600 fossil fuel lobbyists going to Sharm el-Sheikh. At COP28 in the UAE there were just over 2,400 lobbyists who went there. That aside from the fact that the host of the meeting is itself a big fossil fuel producer.

Yes, the COP process is already hijacked by the fossil fuel industry. The next COP will also be organized in a fossil fuel state, Azerbaijan.

The COP format was launched in 1995 after the end of the Cold War and when the world was still a unipolar one. It seemed possible to come up with a global consensus on this. But today we see geopolitical competition is back, conflicts and the major powers at one another’s throats. Is the COP system one that cannot deliver any agreement in this changed international landscape?

As COPs progressed the divisions became clear between different types of states and these global divisions are only becoming deeper. Between the developed and the developing world, small island states like Mauritius are becoming squeezed. Small island states have their own forum at COP summits, Latin American states have their own forum and the biggest group is the Group of Like Minded states that is made up of 77 states plus China. So, it’s all getting very divided and difficult to get any consensus. COP28 was the first one where transitioning out of fossil fuels was mentioned in the final statement, before that it had never appeared. Now it’s getting worse also because the global fossil fuel industry is also getting involved and using COP summits as a platform. And even having lobbyists as part of the delegations of countries. The UN has lost control of the COP process.

Within Mauritius some estimates put the number of people highly vulnerable to the direct effects of climate change at over 6,000. Where does that figure come from and which effects specifically are they vulnerable to?

The first time it was mentioned was the World Risk Report that came out a couple of years ago. They mentioned 6,000 people as highly vulnerable. That is likely to be an underestimate, the real figure could be 10,000 or more. For every two cases, there is one that is not being reported. It could be even more if you look at regions in Mauritius that are prone to flooding. Mauritius itself has not yet conducted its own assessment of its highly vulnerable populations to climate change.

You have been an environmental advisor to the government and worked with conservation groups. In your view, which areas and communities would be at high risk?

Most of the vulnerable groups live in the coastal areas, particularly the South-East coast of Mauritius. This is why the first climate change refugee centre was built at Quatre Soeurs. When you go there you see that people live right on the sea, just a metre away from the high water mark. The rest live in the 32 regions that are highly vulnerable to landslides because of shifting rainfall patterns and flash floods. Already in Quatre Soeurs itself 11 families have had to be relocated because of landslides. Other regions that are highly vulnerable are areas such as Vallée Pitot and Vallée des Prêtres. We should not forget Baie du Cap where re-localization had to be pursued because of storm surges. And then you have other spots such as Fond du Sac which is in a U-shaped region surrounded by hills, so there is flooding risk there then the other ones are those vulnerable people still living in rudimentary housing. There is still 15 per cent of the Mauritian population that do not live in decent housing. So the risks come from varied sources such as flash floods, landslides and sea level rise.

Coming back to the COPs, from everything you are telling me; that it’s been hijacked by fossil fuel lobbyists, it’s hopelessly divided and whatever it does manage to secure agreement on it’s too little to make a difference. The question is are the COP summits now becoming waste of everybody’s time?

In my view, yes COP summits are becoming a waste of time. What they were meant for was to address the issue of carbon emissions and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. That is not to talk about the emissions that are taking place to bring everyone to the summit each year. And then not be able to agree on anything.

Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, we still do not have a framework on how to address climate change. We are in 2024! Anything that is agreed to will take at least another 10 to 15 years to get everyone to agree on how to implement it, by then it will be too late.

From the perspective of small island states like Mauritius, what is the kind of changes in the COP system that they should be pushing for?

I believe that the COP should remain as a platform. There are two zones; one where the technicians go and hammer out the details and then the policymakers come and take the final decisions. Then the other zone is where NGOs go and set up their stalls and where the attention is focused. That should be eliminated completely as a platform. But that being said, only official delegates from countries should be involved in discussions which would eliminate the influence of lobbyists.

The second is that instead of looking at COP being divided between developing and developed states, we should be looking to put pressure on the G20 countries that collectively are responsible for 70 per cent of global emissions. They have the means and the technology to deal with the problem. There is a lot of rhetoric and speeches coming out of the G20 countries but no action. These are the people that we should be targeting, they include countries that have been responsible both for historical and actual emissions today. Just three countries; the US, China and India are responsible for 50 per cent of global emissions today. And if we need a 43 per cent cut in emissions to limit global warming by 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, it is the G20 countries that should be pressured to cut emissions.