Author: Taalin RaoShah

As our return flight touched down in New York City, and we turned our phones off of airplane mode, a huge news story flashed across our screen. A few hours ago, during the extended overnight negotiations, delegates at COP27 had agreed on a loss and damage fund, through which developing nations could receive funds to deal with the devastating effects of climate change.

Having been in Sharm el-Sheikh for the past week before the deal was announced, I have to admit I was skeptical. Though loss and damage had become the #1 issue of this COP—with it immediately being added as an agenda item, significant media buzz, and in-person rallies at COP27 itself—it seemed unlikely that hundreds of nations would come to an agreement. Specifically, the perception was that bigger nations, like the US and some European countries, did not want to agree to a loss and damage fund because it could open the door to action related to historic liability for climate change-related disasters. Furthermore, there didn’t seem to be a consensus about how it would work in practice.

Being at COP27 myself, I guessed that there would be some general statement agreed upon that would essentially recognize the need for a loss and damage fund, but push off the details until a future date. The negotiations I attended had progressed slowly and seemed to get bogged down in small disagreements over language. However, I was clearly wrong.

Looking at the 5-page text that was accepted by party delegates, I honestly feel pretty good about the agreement. Though it doesn’t detail any of the specifics of how it would work just yet, it establishes a transitional committee to do so over the next year, before COP28. It gives them relatively specific guidance over what they should figure out. Furthermore, I was particularly interested to see that the agreement also called for the assistance of “international financial institutions” such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund to “consider… the potential for [them] to contribute to such funding arrangements.”

Going forward, I think that the transitional committee’s success will hinge on the following factors. First, the committee must decide how to attribute climate change-related disasters. There are a couple of questions here, including: “What adverse effects of climate change will we cover (extreme one-time weather events, long-term drought, infectious diseases, etc.)?” “How will we determine the extent to which this effect has been caused by climate change?” Second, the committee must decide how they will encourage parties to contribute to the fund, and other specifics related to funding. Will contribution be mandatory or voluntary? Will it be based on historical emissions? Will there be an enforcement mechanism? How will private and non-party stakeholders be encouraged to contribute? Finally, it must decide how the funding will be used by the affected country. Will the government be given discretion over how to spend the money or will there be restrictions? To what extent will this money be used to protect against future similar disasters (more along the lines of adaptation)?

Over the next year, I look forward to following the progress made by the transitional committee on loss and damage funding. And finally, as important as loss and damage funding is for developing countries, I do hope there is a renewed focus on limiting global greenhouse gas emissions as well as ramping up action on adaptation. Given that we have already reached at least 1.1 degrees Celsius of global warming and that the effects of climate change will only get worse and worse with the coming years, we must push for rapid decarbonization of our economies and urgent adaptation to unavoidable effects at the local, regional, national, and international level.

Looking back on the past 5 days, I would say that it was the most concentrated period of learning on climate-related topics I’ve ever experienced. There were three main ways I spent my time at COP27: open-door official negotiations, official side events, and pavilion events.

I spent a bit of time following the negotiations, especially on Monday and then the last two days. While they were interesting to an extent, I found that they moved very slowly and got bogged down in small details. Furthermore, I came to realize how much background knowledge and technical understanding you needed to truly comprehend what was going on in any given negotiation I did appreciate the chance to sit in on negotiations, and to get a first-hand perspective of the procedures behind the big announcements that arrive at the end of COPs. And although I found the dialogue interesting at times—for example, when I got to see negotiators from India, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil attempt to convince negotiators from the US, Norway, small island states, Canada, and Australia to push the finalization of a document titled “COP27 overarching decisions”—I learned that I am more interested in tangible climate policy solutions that can be implemented at the local level. Therefore, I spent the majority of my time at official side events and pavilion events learning from a range of experts, policymakers, advocates, and businesspeople.

On Day 1, I heard from US legislators about how they are bringing their constituents into the climate movement. “Show, don’t tell” was a piece of advice from Rep. Christopher Rabb. Later, I learned about the potential of green hydrogen in the context of the maritime shipping industry—they have set an ambitious goal of having 50% of shipping activity run on green hydrogen by 2050, and they stressed the importance of policy to align supply-side and demand-side stakeholders. After that, I made my way to a different pavilion to for two events on the potential of carbon-dioxide removal (CDR) strategies and on US climate policy post-midterms. Finally, I went to an event hosted by the US Conference of Mayors on the intersection of social justice and climate policy in cities. My highlight was hearing Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf talk about how she uses both data and personal stories of her constituents to design innovative policies. For example, after looking at data on how EJ communities are more dependent on cars than other communities and hearing from community members about why, she implemented a policy she termed “Universal Basic Mobility” which granted them free access to many different modes of transportation: bikes, scooters, trains, and busses.

I learned just as much over the next couple of days. The theme of Tuesday’s pavilion events was energy, and I learned so much about green hydrogen, scaling up existing renewable energy and storage technologies, and nuclear power. I also ended the day at what became my favorite pavilion: the climate justice pavilion. There, I attended a panel discussion on approaches to Loss & Damages funding, moderated by Manish Bapna, the CEO of the NRDC. I heard from Dr. Saleemul Huq from Bangladesh as well as Dana Ahmed, a youth activist from Sweden. On Wednesday, I attended a slew of official side events on sustainable urban resilience in cities, where I learned about new urban climate policy ideas for mitigation, adaptation, and climate justice. Later, I attended events on the importance of community knowledge as well as policies to create “zero-waste cities”. Finally, on Thursday, I heard about nature-based solutions, as well as attended an amazing presentation at the Resilience Hub on using evidence-based indicators of resilience—essentially, an area’s ability to survive and thrive amidst the likely effects of climate change—to design local policy.

Overall, I valued my experience at COP27 for a number of reasons. First, it was an amazing opportunity to be in the same space as 44,000 other people who were passionate about the same things I was. I met so many cool people, had interesting conversations, and got to be in the presence of people like Brazilian president-elect Lula da Silva, US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, US Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry, and many other high-level government officials and businesspeople. Second, I learned so much about energy & climate-related technologies, urban policy, and climate justice—I was exposed not only to novel policy ideas, implementation strategies, and experienced advice, but also to useful resources that I will be able to reference in the future. Finally, I learned a lot about my own interests. As I watched the negotiations, had conversations with people, or attended events, I found myself thinking about how I could apply what I was learning to climate policy at the local level. I found myself fascinated with cool, innovative approaches and lost in thought about implementing them in my hometown of Boston.

I had such a great learning experience at COP27, but I would be remiss not to mention the major outcome of the convention related to Loss & Damages—I will reflect on this in my next blog post!

With each additional leg of our journey, we get closer to arriving at an international convention of world leaders, experts, students, and advocates. Currently, I am sitting at a café in the Cairo International Airport with my travel companions, Isabel and Fabian, as we wait out our layover before our flight to Sharm el-Sheikh. While my actual experience at COP27 hasn’t begun yet, I have already had interesting conversations. On the 11-hour flight from JFK to Cairo, I turned to my left and struck up a conversation with an older Egyptian gentleman. He told me that he was leaving America after many decades, because his 30-year marriage with an Italian-American woman had ended. He, as an immigrant father, and I, as a son of an immigrant, reflected on how growing up in America can be a constant struggle between balancing your family’s culture and the dominant culture of your friends, schoolmates, and society at-large. He also told me he was returning to Egypt to reconnect with friends and reignite his passion for adventure and sightseeing. To my left, another older Egyptian gentleman asked me why I was traveling to the country, and I told him I was attending COP. After telling me about how he was a practicing physician in Buffalo, NY, he told me he was going back to Egypt to see family as well as see the progress Egypt had made in the past three years under the new president. He suggested that I pay attention to how Egyptians feel about the president, who, according to him, is quite popular and has made significant progress on infrastructure and rural development. I was glad to have these conversations, and I was also left with travel recommendations such as visiting Mount Sinai, going diving to see the Blue Holes, and visiting Tahrir square in Cairo.

In addition to watching the Joker on the plane, I also used the time to listen to a two-episode podcast series by the Economist on COP27. They went into depth on the current conversation around loss and damage, as well as potential progress on funding for adaptation. Initially, I was skeptical about how loss and damage funding would work in practice. How can you determine whether an extreme weather event is directly caused by climate change? How do you determine who is responsible? What about slow-onset events like sea-level rise or even increases in the prevalence and range of infectious diseases? How do you place a monetary value on damages to nature or on human life? While many of these questions still remain in my mind, I was fascinated to hear about innovative modeling approaches that can estimate the severity of a weather event compared to the counterfactual (a world without climate change). For example, suppose a country experiences a heat wave of 40 degrees Celsius and 300 people die. In that case, the model can estimate how much colder the heat wave would have been in a non-global warming world, and how many fewer people would have died—the additional deaths would be considered “losses.” It can also factor in countries’ historical GHG emissions to determine relative responsibility. As we head into Week 2 of a convention that has been branded the “implementation” COP, I am intrigued to track the progress on compensation for loss and damages at COP, and the extent to which it is operationalized.

Aside from tracking loss and damages, which will be a popular focus, I am also interested in learning about developments in clean technology and decarbonization strategies, especially green hydrogen, which I believe has significant promise. Finally, I am excited to sit in on the negotiations at the plenaries and observe the dynamic amongst the G20 countries and between so-called developed and developing nations.

With all the uncertainty and strife present in today’s world, including the rise of fascism and right-wing extremism, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the flooding in Pakistan, I hope that world leaders will recognize how important it is to come together, address the biggest and most threatening problem of our generation, and agree on meaningful climate action that will move everyone forward, while also putting the most vulnerable populations first.