JOIN USDiplomacy isn’t designed to fight climate change
If you are disappointed with the CoP-26 climate change summit in Glasgow, you are not alone. Many climate activists saw it the same way.
The commitment on “phasing out” coal was watered down to “phasing down”. Declarations on methane emissions and deforestation could not garner universal support. An impasse continues over climate finance; the West tried to browbeat the developing world into cutting emissions, and the developing world chided the West for not paying for it.
Diplomacy is designed to progress incrementally while climate change is happening rapidly. Folks who have reeled from repeated civil wars across the Middle East, Africa and Latin America know this only too well. Diplomacy often struggles to find consensus among world powers and wars run on endlessly. Two-thirds of the UN Security Council’s work is dominated by these wars, and most of them recur every few years.
Climate change belongs to a whole different league. It’s an unprecedented transnational challenge and has already gained enormous ground in the race against diplomacy: World powers have been talking about climate change for three decades now. But the world will never go back to pre-industrial temperatures.
Already, the numbers are frightening: According to the World Bank, over 13 million people could become refugees by 2050 due to climate change. In Bangladesh alone, nearly 700,000 were displaced each year over the last decade. India could lose as many as 34 million jobs by 2030, according to the ILO. A whopping 740,000 Indians already die every year due to abnormal temperatures.
But the multilateral system was not designed to tackle such a crisis. Countries are trained to think in terms of narrow national interest, and climate change is not really going to affect all of them equally. Tropical, agrarian countries will be hit much harder, because they are more densely populated and heavily dependent on weather. They are also much poorer and have fewer resources to cope with extreme weather.
For some countries, climate change is in fact an opportunity. Each year, the Northern Sea Route that runs through the Arctic is only open for two months. But as ice sheets melt, the route is beginning to become more accessible to cargo ships. Russia is already cashing in by strengthening territorial claims and beefing up infrastructure to profit from trade. But, as you would have guessed, any human activity will only further weaken the ecological balance.
Also read: COP26 deal: Not the best climate pact
Further south, China is using climate change as leverage against the US. In return for cooperation on climate issues, Beijing is hoping to coerce Washington into taking a softer stance on everything from Taiwan and Xinjiang to trade and human rights.
Climate change now demands an overhaul of how global governance and diplomacy works. Multilateral institutions are monopolised by governments. That approach worked fine when the basic aim of diplomacy was to prevent wars between countries after World War II. But in the 21st century, solutions will come from elsewhere: the private sector, civil society, research institutions, young activists.
In recent years, even as countries have seen climate change through the narrow lens of government-defined “national interest”, researchers have kept them honest through data on how climate change can bring down national economies. Also, take a look at the stark contrast between world leaders and climate activists. The former are often men, already in the twilight years of their lives (and increasingly populists who deny climate change for votes). The latter are often young women, still staring at the dark future ahead.
Diplomacy needs to start bringing the right people into the room before time runs out.
Watch latest videos by DH here: