Post COP27: Minimum levels of wins for everybody

The 27^th United Nations Conference on Climate Change “COP27” concluded on Sunday after two dramatic weeks with a statement that included a minimum level of wins for everybody and a huge concern for future COPs as fossil fuels companies are gaining more power and power.

The COP27 logo inside the conference in Sharm El-Sheikh "Bloomberg"

The biggest achievement we have is the victory of the island nations and developing countries in establishing a loss and damage fund.

Yes, it will take years to have this fund operating for real but we all saw the battle those nations had to fight in Sharm El-Sheikh.

Another interesting achievement was recognizing the food problem aka “safeguarding food security and ending hunger”. 

keeping the limit of global warming to 1.5 C as it was another achievement.

Lowering the CO2 aka decarbonization is a huge battle COP27 failed to deal with yet.

Several countries wanted the COP27 to add a pledge for phasing out fossil fuels but interestingly Petro-nations and fossil fuels lobbyists were more heard than any previous COP27. 

We should not forget that this came at the time of a global energy crisis.

Now Egypt has a year to make sure that the conclusions, recommendations, decisions and pledges of the COP27 are implemented before the conference moves to its new place in none other than UAE.

The UAE official delegation reportedly had the most significant number of fossil fuels companies’ lobbyists to the level that many true environmentalists believe that the COP28 will be the end of COPs as the fossil fuels companies and Petro-nations of the Gulf will have the Upper Hand.

The UAE has been already using the greenwash to wash its very dark human rights record for a very long time. It is the capital of the PR world in my view.

Egypt or rather the Egyptian government got what it wanted from the COP, huge deals.

Egypt signed many deals in a way that you can consider COP27 was an economic conference in the green zone “Egypt’s zone”.

Egypt was successful in securing funds for its clean energy projects, signing multiple agreements at the value of $83 billion.

Also, the US, the European Union and Germany will provide a package of $500 million to finance and facilitate Egypt's transition to clean energy and this is just a quick recap. I did not go into detail because there were so many agreements.

To the elephant in the room: The human rights record of Egypt.

The Egyptian Administration learned the hard way that you can not greenwash its record easily. Alaa Abdel Fattah was indeed the Past Spring’s ghost that hunted the conference to the level that many called Alaa Abdel Fattah’s COP.

Yes, business is business and the West cares less about the true human rights situation in Egypt as long as it gets gas and energy at cheap prices but still, we got this proverb “The gunshot that does not hit you, makes a lot of noise”

Personally, I believe Egypt has won a lot with the human rights issue brought up front and centre in the long run because in the end we are speaking about the rights of Egyptian citizens, and it was a lesson for the wise to learn from.

There is no climate justice without human rights and climate justice is part of human rights. There is no climate justice without freedom of expression that holds countries and companies accountable for their actions in destroying our Planet Earth.

That lesson was another big achievement.

Those activists from tree huggers fighting for the majority of the people truly in developing and island nations have not been defeated yet and inshallah they won’t be defeated yet.