When I say Africans are deeply disappointed with Cop27 so far, I don’t want to be misunderstood. There have been real signs of progress, including meaningful shifts towards climate justice by European leaders. But the hope that the global south would have its voice heard by the most powerful nations at this year’s Cop summit has – predictably enough – failed to materialise.
For years now, global climate negotiations have been dominated by world leaders, policymakers and intergovernmental organisations, leaving little space for anyone else. There is not really any impetus to do otherwise.
How can we talk about loss and damage, or fathom the scale of environmental destruction and climate reparations – which should be $2tn a year according to the UN – without including the voices of those who know the most? After all, civil society, faith leaders and moral voices play a pivotal role in society and politics across the global south. Yet this is not well understood by the powers that dominate Cop meetings.
For the global south, this type of exclusion will prove detrimental. After all, a lack of infrastructure and social preparedness will result in waves of millions – possibly a billion – climate refugees. Western politics has never served the global south’s interests or followed through on promises of climate aid and finance.
The gravity of the threat faced by these nations, coupled with ignorance about the global south’s reliance on civil society actors and moral authority figures to implement meaningful cultural change, will be the final nail in the coffin.
It did not have to be this way. In the week before Cop27, the G20’s first religion forum took place in Bali, where the Muslim World League (MWL) and Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama organisation brought together moral leadership and civic representation to offer a blueprint to combat the climate crisis across the global south. At the forum, the MWL secretary-general, Dr Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-Issa, explained to global interfaith and secular leaders how cross-sector collaboration was vital in the face of increasing global challenges.
We would have expected Cop27 – held in Egypt, a Muslim-majority nation like Indonesia – to feature similarly important work bridging local and global priorities. After all, faith is a unifier for billions across the global south, as well as being a credible solution for political global crises; just consider Desmond Tutu’s role in ending apartheid.
But unlike the R20, where voices from the global south were front and centre, this has been far from the case in Egypt. And this imbalanced approach isn’t just harmful to Egypt or the rest of Africa, or the global south. It hurts the global north, too. If the world cannot agree on a new path that allows nations to both develop and reduce emissions, they will take the existing path, which would spell disaster.
Decades ago, China was hardly seen as the heir apparent to American might. When Richard Nixon opened relations with China, he was mostly animated by the possibility of undermining Moscow; just how it might empower Beijing seemed irrelevant. In just a few decades, though, China has propelled itself into the ranks of historic superpowers, boasting what is now the world’s second largest economy. Its carbon footprint swelled accordingly: it is now the world’s biggest polluter.
Of course, China’s citizens also enjoy living standards their recent ancestors could hardly have imagined. In a very short timespan, in economic terms China rocketed from global south to global north, travelling along the same trajectory as western nations, but in a much shorter period of time.
This does not mean other large countries in the global south – such as Egypt, Nigeria and Ethiopia – will take the same path. But they could. And why wouldn’t they aspire to that?
The harm that would be done to the world, including the developed world, if more global south nations took the fast track to highly polluting, highly advanced economies would be awful. Cop27 was supposed to be Africa’s chance to suggest a different path; one focused on responsibility, sustainability, prosperity.
Instead, it seems, Cop27 has become a tragic instance of superficial diversity, where Africa is everywhere except in the conversation.
To be clear, just because Egypt has come up short does not mean Cop27 is a failure. We still have four days to go. And moves by European nations towards climate justice will hopefully inspire other powerful nations – most critically the US and China – to do their part.
But that’s not enough. The United Nations must insist that hosting a conference of such global significance should mean equality of access with verifiable metrics in place to ensure it.
This is not about the global north dictating to the global south; after all, openness and accessibility are not exclusive to any one part of the world. Indeed, doing any less is a disservice to the global south; ultimately, we all face the same climate catastrophe.
All of us should have a chance to speak to that bitter reality.
Ndileka Mandela is a writer, social activist and the head of the Thembekile Mandela Foundation, which focuses on education, health, youth and women’s development in rural villages
