UN Climate Envoy: People, not process, should drive change

Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­[email protected]

Cli­mate En­voy of the Pres­i­dent of the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly, Pro­fes­sor Ka­mal Amakrane, says adap­ta­tion must take place at a lo­cal lev­el if the world is to make se­ri­ous progress in tack­ling the chal­lenges of cli­mate change. His state­ment, though not con­nect­ed, came the same week the En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency in the Unit­ed States planned to re­peal its own find­ings that green­house gas­es like car­bon diox­ide and methane are heat­ing the earth and that warm­ing threat­ens pub­lic health and wel­fare. The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s de­ci­sion strikes at the heart of the cli­mate fight.

Amakrane was speak­ing to a group of in­ter­na­tion­al jour­nal­ists in Berlin, Ger­many, at the Cli­mate Peace Se­cu­ri­ty Nexus. The Mo­roc­can said, “It is quite re­gret­table that we are not where the pop­u­la­tion wants us to be. Glob­al cit­i­zens at large ex­pect a set of am­bi­tions, and re­gret­tably, we’re not there.”

Amakrane, who has worked with the UN for 25 years, warned that bu­reau­cra­cy is ham­per­ing the cli­mate process. “We should not be the vic­tim of bu­reau­cra­cy, and I have been a bu­reau­crat. They are good at the process. They think the process is the end, but in fact, the process is not the end. The peo­ple are the end, but if we don’t bring the dig­ni­ty and re­al­i­ty to the process, the so­lu­tion will not en­dure,” he stat­ed.

When pressed on whether the an­nu­al UN Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties (COP) is work­ing, Amakrane, who al­so leads the Glob­al Cen­tre for Cli­mate Mo­bil­i­ty, ad­mit­ted it needs re­form­ing. He said, “My take is we need to have a set of cham­pi­ons com­ing to­geth­er and push­ing a set of is­sues rather than hav­ing this pack­et that is go­ing to solve every­thing at once. They must look at the dif­fer­ent is­sues and cre­ate cham­pi­ons who are go­ing to push the agen­da. Bring them to­geth­er. But, try­ing to solve all of the is­sues and try­ing to use one against the oth­er—be­cause this is what ne­go­tia­tors do—there are a lot of trade­offs.”

On is­sues such as sea lev­el rise, de­for­esta­tion and fi­nanc­ing, he called for more so­lu­tions-ori­ent­ed di­a­logue. He added that through such a process, “You could ad­vance and not be the hostage of con­sen­sus, be­cause con­sen­sus is some­times the min­i­mum com­mon de­nom­i­na­tor, which brings the am­bi­tion down, and that’s be­cause you’re forced to get an an­swer. Will it work? I don’t know, but I can tell you what we have to­day does not work.”

Amakrane has echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments from those with­in the cli­mate sphere. At the mid­way point of COP29 in Baku, Azer­bai­jan, in 2024, for­mer Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary of the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC) Chris­tiana Figueres, for­mer UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Ban Ki-moon, and Swedish sci­en­tist Jo­han Rock­ström, penned a joint let­ter call­ing for a ref­or­ma­tion of the COP process, say­ing it was no longer fit for pur­pose. It’s a point Cari­com Cli­mate En­voy, Dr James Fletch­er, agreed with in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at COP30 in Belem, Brazil, last year. Then, Fletch­er said too much ne­go­ti­at­ing time was be­ing wast­ed on ar­gu­ing over a com­ma in the text while peo­ple around the world were fac­ing re­al cli­mate chal­lenges.

Amakrane fur­thered his case for a com­mu­ni­ty ap­proach to adap­ta­tion by say­ing that far too many peo­ple are be­ing af­fect­ed by the ef­fects of cli­mate change with­out the abil­i­ty to know the link. He stat­ed, “As glob­al cit­i­zens, we are not all at the same lev­el of ed­u­ca­tion. A lot of peo­ple are wit­ness­ing cli­mate im­pacts, but they have not put the word­ing on it, so they have so­lu­tions to have start­ed the jour­ney of ad­just­ing, but they have not put the tech­ni­cal word­ing on it, and as such, there is a dis­con­nect.”

He point­ed to Niger as an ex­am­ple, ref­er­enc­ing a poll that sug­gest­ed on­ly six per cent of the pop­u­la­tion un­der­stand that it is cli­mate change af­fect­ing their coun­try.

He went fur­ther in adding, “This is where the com­mu­ni­ties can em­pow­er their lead­ers and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives to take a stand, be­cause in the ab­sence of that sense of lit­er­a­cy and ed­u­ca­tion, some­times you don’t want to go and sign on fail­ure, you just sign for progress or the sta­tus quo.”

“In the ab­sence of so­cial co­he­sion, no one will car­ry for­ward any adap­ta­tion agen­da, be­cause in the end it’s not the politi­cians who im­ple­ment, it’s the peo­ple who im­ple­ment, and if you don’t have that so­cial co­he­sion at that lev­el, who is go­ing to car­ry that for­ward?”

He ar­gued that while the UN­FC­CC may ne­go­ti­ate the terms of the cli­mate fight, it is ul­ti­mate­ly the peo­ple who have to move it for­ward. “We have achieved that sense of ma­tu­ri­ty when it comes to con­flict res­o­lu­tion. We have not achieved that sense of ma­tu­ri­ty yet in ne­go­ti­at­ing and dis­cussing the cli­mate cri­sis,” the for­mer UN peace­mak­er said.

Amakrane al­so ad­dressed the on­go­ing strug­gle for some na­tions to ac­cess cli­mate fi­nance to work on adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion projects.

He high­light­ed small com­mu­ni­ties on is­lands in the Pa­cif­ic and the Caribbean which are ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by cli­mate dis­as­ters, but don’t have the av­enues to ac­cess fund­ing to get their lives back on track. He stat­ed, “In­stead of go­ing through mi­cro-in­sur­ance, which is some­thing you have heard and I have seen be­fore, no, we must put the cred­it, and we sup­port the com­mu­ni­ty. The idea here is not to tell you that this is the so­lu­tion; it is to tell you we have to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo, and we need to pro­vide dif­fer­ent ways to em­pow­er peo­ple.”

Amakrane said for those liv­ing on the front­lines of the cli­mate cri­sis, such as fish­er­men on the coast­lines whose liveli­hoods are be­ing af­fect­ed, it is im­por­tant that com­mu­ni­ties work to­geth­er with gov­ern­ments. He stat­ed, “That is a long-term ex­er­cise that re­quires a be­hav­iour­al change of gov­ern­ment and of cit­i­zens. This is not just mov­ing hous­es from one point to an­oth­er or build­ing shel­tered homes, which is a fixed ex­er­cise.”

He cit­ed da­ta that states that 95 per cent of the peo­ple will have to leave the places they call home as a re­sult of cli­mate shocks in their own coun­tries.

As gov­ern­ments de­bate text and time­lines, Amakrane’s mes­sage is that the cli­mate fight will not be won in ne­go­ti­at­ing rooms alone. It will be de­ter­mined in fish­ing vil­lages, farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties and in­for­mal set­tle­ments where peo­ple are al­ready ad­just­ing, of­ten with­out nam­ing what they are con­fronting. For small is­land states in the Caribbean and Pa­cif­ic, that re­al­i­ty is not the­o­ret­i­cal. It is mea­sured in lost coast­lines, dam­aged crops and dis­rupt­ed lives. Re­form­ing COP, un­lock­ing fi­nance and cut­ting bu­reau­cra­cy may shape the frame­work, but he in­sist­ed the foun­da­tion must be so­cial co­he­sion and lo­cal own­er­ship.