Global South has a rare chance to influence COP28 outcome

The Summit has the full support of the COP28 host country, the United Arab Emirates, which has lately been playing a proactive role on issues of importance to the Global South.

Third World ideas like non-alignment and developing country institutions like the Group of Seventy-Seven (G77) are alive but have lately not
been well. However, the G77+China – as this developing country group is formally called – will receive a big elevation on the global stage in Dubai this weekend. Most of the 134 member states of G77 are also members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

For the first time since the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference began 28 years ago, G77 will meet at the level of heads of state or government on December 2 as part of an ongoing Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, better known worldwide as COP28. The Summit is a big shot in the arm for Cuba’s presidency of G77 since September. The Summit has the full support of the COP28 host country, the United Arab Emirates, which has lately been playing a proactive role on issues of importance to the Global South. The UAE is a member of the UN Security Council: G77 is headquartered in New York and is the largest country bloc within the UN by population and number of members. India, a founding member of G77, did not send any minister to Havana in September for the first since the group’s ministerial meetings began in Algiers in 1967. This miss is now causing some heartburn among the Indian delegation to COP28 as other countries of the Global South have stepped into the space vacated by India. It may be too late to make up for this error in judgement.

G77 at Dubai Summit

The unprecedented December 2 Summit in Dubai will be opened by the Chair of G77, Cuba’s president Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez. It will be a significant restoration of Cuba’s prestige on the global stage since the legendary Fidel Castro, founding leader of the Communist state died in 2016. António Guterres, Secretary General of the UN will demonstrate support for G77 as the first speaker at the Summit. The president of the ongoing 78^th UN General Assembly, Dennis Francis, will also express similar support. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, foreign minister of the UAE will follow Guterres as the Summit’s second speaker. The UNFCCC announced on the opening day of COP28 on November 30 that Sheikh Abdullah will be taking the stage “on behalf of” the UAE president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. By addressing the heads of state or government present in Dubai, the president of COP28 for the next one year, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, will acknowledge the role of developing countries in the fight to combat global warming. Al Jaber is also the UAE’s special envoy for climate change.

Leaders at the G77 Summit will pay a lot of attention to Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UNFCCC. Not only because of his pivotal job in the fight to save the planet but also because he is from the small Caribbean island nation of Grenada. Its islands are under threat from global warming and rising sea levels. Stiell’s appointment last year was a welcome change from having representatives of rich or big nations heading the UNFCCC. The second and third executive secretaries of this organisation were from the Netherlands. One of them even worked for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Paris-based club of rich nations. As its name suggests, the Netherlands has a serious threat from water influx and submersion. But it is part of the First World. When it comes to taking positions on climate change – which affects the Third World, especially small island nations most of all – the Netherlands always votes with the Group of Seven (G7) industrialised countries. This is an echo of India’s constant complaint that UN bodies like the Security Council do not reflect the realities of today’s world and need urgent reform. Stiell’s immediate predecessor was from Mexico, which favours the status quo whenever UN reforms are debated. Additionally, Stiell is a technocrat, not just another politician. He trained as an engineer and as a business administrator in the United Kingdom and later worked for a decade and a half in the technology sector in the Silicon Valley. When the idea of a G77 Summit on climate change first came up, Stiell wholeheartedly supported the idea. It helped that he is from the Caribbean. So is Cuba, which is leading the G77 Summit at COP28.

Working Together

Brazil, which will host the Group of Twenty (G20) Summit in November 2024, following India, can be counted on to work with G77, not only on climate matters, but on everything to do with the Global South. In a curtain-raiser of what will come next year on these issues, Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stressed the environmental threats to developing countries at the Havana meeting in September. Lula called for investments in renewable energy, sustainable industrialisation, low-carbon agriculture and the bioeconomy. Most important of all, he said the Third World should not “forget that we do not have the same historical debt as rich countries for global warming”. These are the ideas of the UAE too, as president of COP28. These also provide an inkling of what lies ahead if the G20 and COP28 work together.

KP Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.