3. Climate Justice, Finance and Politics at COP27

As this year's COP draws to a close in Egypt, let us take a closer look at its outcomes and consequent implications for water and politics in Africa. This video provides a neat summary of the conference's outcomes, which I expand upon below: 

1. After long-drawn negotiations, parties finally agreed to establish a "loss and damage" fund to compensate developing countries affected by climate disasters (UN 2022). This marks the first time the issue of loss and damage has been acknowledged at such a high political level and thus symbolises a win for developing countries, who are disproportionately burdened by the consequences of climate change despite being the least responsible (Williams et al. 2022). Nevertheless, the success of this fund remains unclear as funding arrangements will only be discussed at COP28 next year. 

2. Along with the establishment of this fund, the momentum of rethinking the global financial system grew at COP27. Leaders such as Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley pushed for reforms like increasing the use of International Monetary Fund reserves (Jessop and Volcovici 2022). However, multilateral banks such as the African Development Bank have responded that fresh funds from donors would be required in order for them to increase financing. This goes back to the politics of responsibility and the unfulfilled pledge dating back to COP15, where wealthy nations agreed to provide US$100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020 (Timperley 2021). As Figure 1 shows, the lack of a formal deal on what each country should contribute has allowed certain nations like the US to fall far short of their fair share, indicating that merely calling for change is insufficient and binding agreements might be required for accountability. 

Figure 1: Graph of developed nations' contributions towards US$100 billion climate finance target (Timperley 2021) 

3. Finally, the COP27 agreement demonstrated no greater ambition for global decarbonisation, neglecting the crucial need for new targets and commitments. This undermines the goal of limiting global temperature rise, which has numerous consequences if unmet (IPCC 2018). 

Implications for Water Security in Africa

While the failure of COP27 can be attributed to various reasons such as its geopolitical backdrop of Russia's war against Ukraine, which gave oil and gas-producing nations more influence in the negotiations (Maslin et al. 2022), the fact remains that there are severe implications for water security in Africa. 

For one, rising temperatures lead to the intensification of rainfall, resulting in the heightened frequency and intensity of floods and droughts (Williams et al. 2022). This amplification means that existing gaps in access to water-supply infrastructure will be further exacerbated for already vulnerable communities. Touted as "Africa's COP", COP27 sought to promote climate justice, but much more needs to be done - an additional US$50 billion will be required annually to meet the SDG6 target of water security for all in Africa (Climate Policy Initiative 2022). The problem of water security extends far beyond mere access to water and holds significant repercussions on other issues like crop production, hydroelectric power generation and economic growth, rendering it all the more a crucial piece of the climate crisis. 

To make matters worse, IIED research has concluded that less than 10% of international climate finance reaches local communities, despite the suggested effectiveness of local-level action (IIED 2019). In the next post, we will thus zoom into analysing the management of water at the local level.