This week, world leaders, diplomats, climate activists, journalists, and fossil fuel executives will meet in Dubai for the United Nations’ annual Climate Change Conference. While many discussions will build on last year’s COP, where nations agreed to fund loss and damage from climate change, another focus will be on who is sidelined from the discussions.
The United Arab Emirates has reportedly hired an army of public relations experts to help manage its reputation during the two-week event and to keep international attention away from its crackdown on civic space. Meanwhile, some of the world’s largest democracies, including governments that have traditionally championed human rights, lack a clear vision for protecting civic space in the climate talks, even though Indigenous communities, social justice movements, and human rights defenders are at the forefront of fighting climate change.
Joining the show to discuss the role of civil society at COP 28 is Kirk Herbertson. Kirk is a Senior Policy Advisor at EarthRights International, a nonprofit organization that “combines the power of law with the power of people in defense of human rights and the environment.”
Show Notes:
This week, world leaders, diplomats, climate activists, journalists, and fossil fuel executives will meet in Dubai for the United Nations’ annual Climate Change Conference. While many discussions will build on last year’s COP, where nations agreed to fund loss and damage from climate change, another focus will be on who is sidelined from the discussions.
The United Arab Emirates has reportedly hired an army of public relations experts to help manage its reputation during the two-week event and to keep international attention away from its crackdown on civic space. Meanwhile, some of the world’s largest democracies, including governments that have traditionally championed human rights, lack a clear vision for protecting civic space in the climate talks, even though Indigenous communities, social justice movements, and human rights defenders are at the forefront of fighting climate change.
Joining the show to discuss the role of civil society at COP 28 is Kirk Herbertson. Kirk is a Senior Policy Advisor at EarthRights International, a nonprofit organization that “combines the power of law with the power of people in defense of human rights and the environment.”
Show Notes:
Paras Shah: This week, world leaders, diplomats, climate activists, journalists, and fossil fuel executives will meet in Dubai for the United Nations’ annual Climate Change Conference. While many discussions will build on last year’s COP, where nations agreed to fund the loss and damage from climate change, another focus will be on who is sidelined from the discussions.
The United Arab Emirates has reportedly hired an army of public relations experts to help manage its reputation during the two-week event and to keep international attention away from its crackdown on civic space. Meanwhile, some of the world’s largest democracies, including governments that have traditionally championed human rights, lack a clear vision for protecting civic space in the climate talks, even though Indigenous communities, social justice movements, and human rights defenders are at the forefront of fighting climate change.
This is the Just Security Podcast. I’m your host, Paras Shah.
Joining the show to discuss the role of civil society at COP28 is Kirk Herbertson. Kirk is a Senior Policy Advisor at EarthRights International, a nonprofit organization that “combines the power of law with the power of people in defense of human rights and the environment.”
Hi, Kirk, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Kirk Herbertson: Thanks so much for having me.
Paras: As listeners might recall, last year, as climate change discussions took place at COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, and some of the main outcomes there were additional funding for loss and damage that's caused by climate change. And in the year since those discussions, what should we be looking for? What are the main themes that we should be focusing on?
Kirk: So each year, the governments gather in some place around the world for the COP, the Conference of the Parties, to try to make additional commitments to work towards goals that they've set back in 2015 at the Paris Climate Agreement.
Since the last COP in Egypt, this year has been the hottest year on record. There have been really terrible wildfires that have happened around the world. In Maui and Hawaii, it was one of the most devastating and destructive fires in the last 100 years of U.S. history. There were major fires in the E.U. and elsewhere. Last year, there was a major flood in Pakistan and people there continued to deal with the tragic consequences, both losing their homes, the waterborne diseases, and other impacts that happen as a result of this rising climate crisis. Meanwhile, rainforest in Amazon and elsewhere continued to experience significant deforestation. The lungs of the planet are disappearing rapidly.
So there's a strong and rapidly growing sense of crisis, and we're going to see that reflected in this year's COP. World leaders are going to be coming, the U.N. Secretary General, the Pope, and others are going to be speaking and urging governments to come together and make strong commitments that are commensurate with the level of the crisis that are happening. So at the global level, a lot of the discussions focus around what you'll hear is the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold. So, at the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, this was the target that was set by governments, you know, if we collectively need to prevent average temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels in order to prevent the worst effects of climate change from happening. After average temperatures rise above 1.5 degrees Celsius, things become more extreme — more wildfires, worse wildfires, more heat waves. We're on track now to reach this 1.5 degrees threshold within the next decade or 15 years, you know, it's coming up quickly. And then after that, just a few decades away, we're approaching the two degrees Celsius threshold, which is going to be cataclysmic. That's where Arctic ice sheets are melting, where coral reefs are dying, where the planet really starts to change.
So with this sense of urgency, there's going to be some very heated discussions at COP28 about what governments are willing to commit to doing. So, with that context, we're going to see a few discussions come forward. So, one of the key issues is going to be what's called the Global Stocktake. So, this is essentially a report card for the world on how well we're doing to meet these goals that were set several years ago in Paris and what is the roadmap for going forward — why are we here, why didn't we reach this point, and what are the priorities for going forward? So Global Stocktake is one.
A second key issue is loss and damage. At last year's COP in Egypt, one of the big outcomes was that governments agreed to set up a loss and damage fund, which would help to compensate communities and countries around the world that are facing some of the worst impacts of climate change to make sure that they're able to receive the funding that they need to rebuild their lives. There's going to be more discussion about what that looks like in practice at this year's COP — who's going to pay for this, who's going to be eligible, big questions like that.
The third big issue, which is probably going to get the most media attention, is that there have been growing calls for a phase out of fossil fuels, especially because of all of these growing climate impacts and the urgency of the situation. Scientists have said this cannot be done unless we phase out fossil fuels. That's controversial, especially given that the United Arab Emirates, the host for this year's COP, is a petrostate who's very involved in fossil fuel development, and the chair of this year's COP is himself the CEO of the United Arab Emirates’ fossil fuel company.
And then finally, there's one other issue that we're going to see, and that's going to be the disconnect between what civil society and the media are saying, where they will be focusing attention on the host, human rights record, and the record of cracking down on civic space, and then the lack of attention to civic space issues that are happening in COP discussions, and the hesitation of negotiators to raise these issues during the actual climate negotiations.
Paras: Thanks so much for that really helpful overview. Let's dive a little bit deeper into the UAE’s human rights record. What exactly does that look like?
Kirk: So this is the second year in a row the COP is being hosted by an autocratic regime. Last year, it took place in Egypt. In Egypt, there is a lot of attention to the government's record of arresting civil society members. And during the COP itself, there were reports of surveillance, intimidation of civil society, and arrests of Egyptian activists prior to the COP to prevent them from speaking up during the event.
In the UAE this year, it's an even more heightened risk in a lot of ways. The UAE has an extensive surveillance system in place. They have strong capabilities both to surveil everything that's going on, as well as infiltrate phones. There's no civic space in the UAE. Many political prisoners have been arrested. There's discrimination of women, LGBTQ people and other different groups. So, there's this complicated human rights record of the host.
Paras: How have civil society organizations responded to the UAE as the host country? What can they do to address these challenges?
Kirk: What you'll see at the COP, there's going to be, I guess, at least two approaches that civil society is taking. So one is that similar to last year's COP in Egypt, human rights organizations will be using this event and the spotlight that it puts on the UAE to raise attention to the country's internal human rights record, and its closing of civic space, its political prisoners, and so forth. And then there will also be a very active effort by civil society to monitor for any targeting of civil society activists who are participating at the COP to make sure they don't face retaliation or harassment or surveillance while they're in Dubai, or after they return to their home countries.
Paras: Just taking a step back, because sometimes it can seem like at these large climate change conferences that the focus can be on what countries are doing and what they're negotiating. But thinking at a high level, what role have civil society organizations and social justice movements played in the climate talks and in the response to climate change?
Kirk: There are a lot of demonstrated benefits to have an open civic space and in order to achieve climate impacts. So, as you said, there's there tends to be focus at the COPs on what commitments that governments make, and sometimes what role the private sector is playing. And both of those are essential parts of the climate response, but there's much less discussion about the important and the central role brought about by opening civic space.
So just to give you a couple of examples, there's extensive research about the critical role that Indigenous people play in a successful climate change response. There's Indigenous people in Brazil, for example, who are active in helping to stop illegal deforestation in areas where the Brazilian government doesn't have the capacity to enforce laws itself. There's groups of Indigenous communities that are actively patrolling the forests and trying to raise awareness and report when deforestation is happening. You know, that is critical to preserving the Amazon, which is one of the crucial hotspot zones that we need to protect as part of the climate solutions. And Indigenous people also have developed a lot of sustainable land management practices that can help to reduce and protect against wildfires and other climate impacts.
Then we see communities that are active in setting up small scale renewable projects. We see them mobilizing and raising awareness of climate change in their communities and encouraging local government action. We see movements of people that are in their communities that are trying to stop fossil fuel development projects from going forward, the ones that would contribute more greenhouse gas emissions and lock us into an unsustainable pathway for the future.
And then we also see as with climate change, you know, a big part of the COP negotiations are getting political commitments to mobilize what should be trillions of dollars going to the future towards climate issues. And as that money mobilizes, there's already a risk emerging of corruption and misuse of some of those funds. And so civil society plays an important part in watching how those funds are used and helping, serving a watchdog role as well. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways that civic space really contributes to better climate impacts, which is why we need to protect the ability of people to participate in those ways.
Paras: Kirk, when we talk about some of these issues, parts of what's happening are occurring in authoritarian regimes. But there are also challenges to climate activists that are happening in countries like the United States and the European Union and its member states. What's happening there?
Kirk: Democracies are also using authoritarian tactics in response to climate change related activism. There have been examples of targeting of climate activists in particular in those countries. So, in the U.S., for example, more than 20 states have passed what are called critical infrastructure laws, essentially laws that punish protests related to civil disobedience, something that would normally be punished with a misdemeanor, like trespassing and turning it into a felony that can stay with the protester’s record for life or put them in jail for extensive amounts of time.
Same in the E.U. and UK. In the U.K., there are terrorism charges being brought against climate activists, and other measures to respond to these acts of civil disobedience. So, it's become, a complicated civic space is closing in authoritarian democracies alike.
Paras: That’s also important to think about. And in certain instances, we've seen countries step up as human rights defenders, but it seems like in the climate negotiations, they have been less active and more silent. Why is that the case?
Kirk: Within the negotiations that are happening at the COP, as you said, a lot of the governments that have traditionally been champions in the international community of human rights and democracy issues are staying silent about civic space issues, or at least they are trying to keep these issues on separate tracks from the climate change discussions.
There's at least two reasons for this. One is, there's a sense that it's important to make sure that China and other autocratic regimes stay at the table. And I think there's a fear, at least among some policymakers, that by bringing up civic space issues and human rights issues, that it might lead those countries to step away from the table, although there's also evidence that would not necessarily be the result. In either case, that is a very real factor that negotiators are trying to tackle — how do you keep talking to China and others, while also raising these essential civic space issues?
And then the second challenge that negotiators face is the fossil fuel industry. You know, many of the authoritarian regimes, such as the UAE, are petrostates that are planning future fossil fuel development. And many of the key democratic countries, like the U.S., have significant fossil fuel industry interests that they are also feeling pressure from not to take steps forward. The fossil fuel industry has a long record of taking actions to try to close civic space. In the U.S., for example, research that the organization where I work at, EarthRights, has done has found more than 150 examples of judicial harassment, such as retaliatory lawsuits, brought by the fossil fuel industry against its critics. So, because these governments are still in a lot of ways beholden to the fossil fuel industry, I think there's also pressure not to elevate the civic space issue.
Paras: And given the challenges with policymakers addressing these issues on two separate tracks, one for the climate discussions and another one for the role of civil society, what is the best way to strike that balance? What can policymakers do here to respond to this crackdown on civic space?
Kirk: Well, there's several steps can be taken. So right now, one of my major concerns is that democratic governments do not have a clear vision for how the move forward on this. So, you'll see some references, some rhetorical acknowledgments of human rights and civic spaces, important elements. But that's not enough. There needs to be a plan going forward that’s specifically focused on the civic space challenge.
So, one of the issues with the COP that happens, you know, it operates by consensus for the most part. So, there's limitations to what can actually be agreed in this setting itself. But, governments can go beyond this consensus in a lot of ways. They can make their own commitments and move forward. They can work together in negotiating blocks and alliances to advance key civic space and human rights issues.
Here's a couple of steps that they could take both at this COP and then going forward. So, number one, at this COP, I had mentioned earlier, there's this Global Stocktake discussion, where there's going to be this political narrative that emerges that talks about, you know, why are we at this point? And where do we go from here? Governments can use this as an opportunity, both in the final narrative itself, but also in the surrounding political statements around this discussion, to really highlight this essential role of civic space, the role that civic space plays in the climate change response. So, we need high level interventions to start acknowledging this issue first of all.
Secondly, we talked about some of the challenges that are going to happen at this COP, just because it's being hosted by the UAE, a petrostate that is going to have its own agenda in how it shapes what happens this year. But there's an opportunity for governments to start coming together to create a negotiating bloc. So, you have like-minded governments come together to start focusing specifically on human rights and civic space issues, so that they're working together and developing high level commands for future COPs. So, two years from now, COP30, is going to be held in the Brazilian Amazon, which is very much the frontlines of the climate crisis. The destruction of the Amazon is an area where it's one of the most visible effects of what's happening. It's also one of the areas where indigenous communities and environmental defenders are being targeted for their work on the ground to try to stop illegal deforestation. So, this is an important opportunity, where, you know, if there was some sort of negotiating bloc of like-minded governments, they could come together and make high level political commitments on, you know, how they will work collectively as a group to respond to this violence against environmental defenders, and protect civic space.
And then third, you know, one of the big outcomes, hopefully, of this COP and other COPs is going to be the rapid mobilization of climate financing. So, to implement all of these plans that governments are talking about is going to take trillions of dollars. In fact, it's going to take trillions of dollars per year. And that's, that's a lot of money. And when that much money is moving, it has an effect on governance and other societal issues. So, it will be really important for donor countries to develop some sort of civic space protection mechanisms that are really looking at the climate financing that they mobilize, and making sure that it's being done in a way that helps to promote and protect civic space.
Paras: Thanks for those helpful recommendations. We'll be watching all of this at Just Security. Please tune in to our climate coverage and our coverage of COP28. Kirk, thanks again for joining the show.
Kirk: Thanks so much.
Paras: This episode was hosted by me, Paras Shah. It was edited and produced by Tiffany Chang, Michelle Eigenheer, and Clara Apt. Our theme song is “The Parade” by Hey Pluto.
Special thanks to Kirk Herbertson. You can read Just Security’s coverage of COP 28, including Kirk’s analysis, on our website. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.