Back in Durham, I’m still in the process of organizing my thoughts and reflecting on the countless impressions I gained during the last week at COP 27 in Egypt. The time passed by incredibly fast, and I tried to absorb as much knowledge as possible. It seems like only yesterday that I was entering the venue for the first time and being completely overwhelmed by the sheer size of the conference. I was surprised to see that the actual negotiations cover only a small proportion of the venue while the pavilions offer so many interesting and diverse events. I do not know how often I got lost during the five days to find the right event location in the different buildings. The huge number of negotiations, official side events, and pavilion events taking place at the same time made it very hard to decide where I would like to spend my time. Mostly, I attended events focusing either on carbon markets and Article 6 or climate finance. They helped me a lot to improve my understanding of the current difficulties in these fields.

It was a unique experience to attend the negotiations, witness the slow processes and to see how difficult it is that all Parties agree on one text. I did not anticipate how crucial the rule of the presidency and the co-facilitators are and how often country representatives complain about the late release of important documents. Together with my client, I mostly followed the Article 6 negotiations. At this year’s COP, they were highly technical and focused on the detailed implementation rules. Despite all my preparation, it was still sometimes hard to understand why countries have such strong opinions in technical details and are not able to compromise.

The event I learnt the most was a panel discussion at the pavilion of the Global Environment Facility. I enjoyed the critical and constructive discussion which I sometimes missed at other pavilion events which were just highlighting the positive outcomes of their own efforts. Representatives of Small Island Developing States vividly highlighted the current problems of climate finance in their countries. Processes to apply for funding require high upfront investments to write the application and take years until the money flows. But the biggest problem is that the funding is just not sufficient. In Vanuatu, the average damages by only one storm amount to $500 million. Currently, this sum must be covered by the countries’ public budget. Their reconstruction budget is as high as the one for education which shows the big burden climate damages are already now for these vulnerable countries. Besides that, they underscored the limitations of the current narrative that the private sector needs to step up and invest in climate finance. There might be interesting investment opportunities for mitigation projects but for adaption and loss and damages, there is in most cases no return which makes it unattractive for the private sector. Hence, the polluting states are urged to support these vulnerable states. Fortunately, a first step was taken at COP 27 by the decision to establish a loss and damage fund.

To sum up, attending COP 27 was an unforgettable experience for me and I am more than grateful for this unique opportunity offered by Duke.