Climate change is a tough topic to write about, let alone confront. The problem itself is complex, and the potential solutions are a frightening combination of expensive, inconvenient, long-term and multilateral. Faces tend to glaze over.
But the desperate need for action and the fact that the world has made precious little progress towards solving it is evidence of a broader trend; the collapse of multilateralism, or mutually beneficial cooperation of numerous nations towards a common goal. This was on display all too clearly at the most recent COP29 conference, this time in Baku, the capital of the murky petrostate of Azerbaijan.
The ending of COP29 was, if nothing else, predictable. An announcement was pulled out of the proverbial hat, but opinions were almost immediately divided as to its merits. And given the track record of implementation on previous such agreements, a healthy degree of skepticism is merited.
The entire issue is worryingly reminiscent of the development aid discussions of the 2000s. Multiyear funding pledges are lumped together to make them look bigger and combined with laughably optimistic “private capital” leveraging estimates. Existing aid spending is given a coat of green paint and rebranded as climate-related. Ethereal aspirations somehow morph into ambitions, then into targets and finally pledges without acquiring any genuine solidity along the way. The whole process is an exercise in self-delusion.
India’s delegation was not deceived. Although Delhi’s own green multilateralist credentials are far from impeccable, it correctly called this deal “woefully inadequate”.
The crux is, unsurprisingly, money. As the conference neared its conclusion, wealthy nations pledged to provide at least $300-billion annually by 2035 to help developing countries tackle climate adaptation and mitigation. While this marks a significant increase from the previous $100-billion target, critics argue it falls far short of the estimated $1.3-trillion developing nations need each year to effectively address climate change and its impacts.
But even the pledge of $300-billion is questionable. There is no undertaking that this will be in the form of grants from rich nations. Instead, it maintains that small amounts of public money will leverage in a lot of private capital. This is not only a dubious claim, but also deliberately misleading.
Surprisingly, this skepticism is shared by none other than the president of one of the organisations at the centre of such pledges on private sector mobilisation. In a remarkably candid interview with the Financial Times, World Bank president Ajay Banga said of private finance that “It is not a panacea for everything. This idea that trillions are waiting in the private sector to rush into the development of a poor emerging market country — that’s not what I’m telling you.” He then added: “Please write that for me, because otherwise everyone goes round saying I just talk about the private sector.” His frustrations are evident.
Trumpism is the final nail in the coffin of multilateralism
The elephant in the room was, of course, the recent re-election of climate change denialist and US President-elect Donald Trump, who is almost certain to take the world’s largest economy out of the whole agreement, as he did the last time he was president. As one attendant commented, the US election result was like a “slow drip of poison into all the proceedings and discussions”.
Leadership was sorely absent. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the conference was that China, the world’s largest emitter of carbon, could have but did not step into this vacuum of leadership. It rather corralled other developing countries (including South Africa) to support its claim that it continues to be a “developing” country, and should therefore be a recipient, not contributor, for climate funding.
Multilateralism has rarely looked this miserably defunct, and never in post-war history has there been this little anguish about the dire state of international cooperation. The response to the grim predicament is simply a universal shrug of resignation.
Multilateralism, in its post-war sense, is dead. Maybe we are moving back to a 1930s-style world, when the hapless League of Nations was incapable of forging cooperation between the Anglo-Saxon Allies and Axis powers of Germany, Japan and Italy. Notably, the 1930s was the last time before Trump that the US openly flirted with protectionism. Into this corollary comes the president-elect, threatening that any BRICS country “trying to move away from the Dollar” will face 100% tariffs and should “say goodbye to selling into the wonderful US economy”. Stuck in the middle of course are countries like South Africa, who risk being the grass getting trampled underneath the fighting elephants of the US, European Union, India, Russia and China. One does not have to be reminded how the 1930s played out.
Inaction on climate change is further proof that we now live in a bipolar world. One can hope, at least, that these two poles will be able to organise themselves enough, somehow, to prevent the mutually assured destruction of the slow-moving climate catastrophe we are now experiencing. DM
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