51. Post Script: Can we boycott the next COP please?

COP has been a misnomer since its very beginning. With 28 of these high-profile events held across a crisp checklist of dotted across an unfortunate planet, we must not waste time questioning its accountability and perhaps culpability in furthering this current era of divergence, from normalcy, from norms, from rules, from traditions and above all, even further away from nature.

Conference of Parties with its telling abbreviation is this centuries favourite conference, a gripping tale told ever so frequently, with twists that implicate high priests like Barack Obama and exposes hypocrisies on a real time basis. Nice by storytelling standards, the promises of COP certainly have not been met. Every citizen is now aware, yet not everyone is truly prepared. And COP should ideally focus its remaining social capital on reducing the impact of what might be coming.

However, COP is not required now. For it has not only failed to meet its objectives, but it is also complicit of a larger crime. That of the gradual erosion of its potential and the abuse of the long rope given to it by us, the citizens of this world. COP has been nothing but a disappointment. Agreements deliberated for days, walkouts over disagreements, often over the placing of a single word, the repeated whitewashing of the true impact of Climate Change, an often-criminal negligence of allowing this to happen through the years when COP was supposed to be most active. Infact, if you count from 1992 when COP began till date, there is almost a symmetry of the carbon spike witnessed that matches these dates.

Above all, broken promises. COP promises and never disposes. The Kyoto protocol in 2007 came up with a promise of reducing the world’s carbon emissions. It did not materialize. The Paris agreement agreed to keep emissions within 1.5 degree Celsius. We will probably and permanently cross 1.5 degrees by Christmas or sometime next year. COP agreed to repatriate funds and reallocate them humanely and effectively. The promised sum has not often materialized, especially for nations who needed the support most.

COP also promised to reduce the global north-south divide and ensure fair carbon trading as developing countries sought to develop in the same neo-liberal path as the esteemed members of the global north such as the United States. However problematic the idea of allowing developing countries to use the carbon needed to reach the quality of life as measured by current standards and often subscribing to the western notion of life, many would argue that so called laggard countries have an equal right to aspire to the same degree of income levels. COP possibly opened many new wounds between the north and south as agendas become clearer during global negotiations.

COP has also been a happy ground for corporates, governments, non-governmental organisations, each peddling their agenda, their country, their company. The messaging and nonchalance is reminiscent of the haughtiness that has prevailed with the advent of the hyper-economy post second world war – an economy where only paper money talks.

COP has failed as imagination, and it is a drain on the country hosting it and the delegates visiting it from far and wide. For an event that is meant to espouse a solution to the growing climate crisis, it has not responded sufficiently or authoritatively to force the solutions through. We missed several opportunities along the way and the list is exhaustive, if not dismal.

There is another elephant in the room with global level forums such as COP. That of the inherent divide that global north and south exude and increasingly the divide that organisations within developing nations. COP has become another go-to event in environmental circles and for all its criticisms, the convergence of so many human beings is merely seen as a badge of pride amongst visitors. That is the worst possible use of fossil fuels, if we really want to think about the individual ecological footprints of all delegates who visit to bask in the shine of COP.

We must now rethink the strategies for the next COP so that the global community comes together to discuss meaningful options rather than push technocratic solutions to these vast webs of interlinked changes on our bio-physical world.

Calls to boycott COPs are not a recent occurrence as virtually all COPs are met with resistance. Yet, the event marches ahead triumphantly. And with every COP, the world population returns empty handed. When enquired, officials point to the cumbersome process of achieving unanimity for each step of the process, a requirement that ensures watering down of the statement to meet a particular ideology’s assent. At the end, we citizens receive a rather tamed version of the current upheaval we are experiencing. However, optimism still prevails that COP 28 may lead on responding globally to this highly localised crisis that countries, states, districts, villages and even households are likely to suffer in the coming years, if not decades.

Questions of unanimity and the more vexatious question of binding versus non-binding agreements, and they arise during each COP and then largely forgotten or at best, written by dreamer-writers who wish to change the world with their keypads, point to the latent links between the global north south divide, racism and the overarching influence of political process over what is essentially a dialogue of our planet’s wise, be they scientists or traditional knowledge holders.

The influence of the ruling class, omnipresent yet discreet, forceful yet savvy, is this dark presence that stands in the way of a planet wide mobilization against our own predicted vulnerabilities. When politicians ensure that these agreements remain non-binding and safeguarded against penalties, it is apparent that the urge to hunt for the cheapest source of power will only be over when the resource itself is over. But the ruling class has already indicated that it is looking beyond a climate change devasted world by continuing their search for fresh sources of fossil fuels, new sea routes in the Artic over what is the demise of decades of efforts to save the North Pole and the continuing disregard of scientists attempting to warn the world.

There is no hope for future COPs. A joke floating in the web is that the large corporates and governments have really decided to turn off the tap for meaningful discussions and the easiest way to do it is by promising small amounts of money for piecemeal activism or just not doing anything, which seems to be the new normal presently.

COP 28 and its failures will be best summed up in the most ironical satire of all times, that of a man in suit, chairing over the world’s largest climate event, an event whose philosophy is to eradicate fossil fuels. Oh, what a glorious dilemma we have all put ourselves into.