For two weeks in November, the world’s eyes turns towards a group of policy makers, negotiators, activists and actors from civil society who come together with the shared goal of solving the climate emergency. This year’s iteration - COP27 - was held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, while just shy of two and a half thousand miles away in Reading, Berkshire, a group of twenty-something PhD students tuned in to watch the action.
I was fortunate to take part in the Climate Action Studio, which is run by the Walker Institute at the University of Reading. The institute holds the exclusive position of observer status, which meant that even from back at home here we were able to watch live-streamed panels and side-events that were not always made available to the public.
Even more exciting, was working with some lucky students who were there on the ground in Egypt itself. They provided a window to the inside, sending us photos and commentary from the conference centre and pavilions, giving us a feeling for what it was like to be there in person, and also finding us potential interviewees for us to connect with over video chat.
The point of the Climate Action Studio (dubbed COPCAS) is to disseminate news and commentary through the Walker Institute and University of Reading’s platforms. As someone who is interested in science communication and outreach, it was a great experience being able to talk with attendees at COP27. In particular, I got to speak with climate negotiator Robert Muthami and IPCC report co-author Mike Morecroft, and heard about what brought them to COP and what their experiences were at the event.
The whole of COPCAS is a team effort, from the dialogue between those on the ground with those back at home in the studio, to the discussions and group reflections in the studio itself. It was great fun to be in what felt like a writer’s room, throwing ideas around with fellow students and coming up with angles and stories. I got to contribute to a number of blogs and other communications, and the two I am most proud of are the articles which incorporates the interviews: My interview with Mike Morcroft turned into a blog post on nature based solutions and that with Robert Muthami found its way into one on the power of civil society.
My research area is based on food systems and circular economy, but there is always so much going on each day at COP that it was hard to focus specifically on these areas. What this meant was that it was a brilliant opportunity to learn more about areas of climate action I might not have looked into otherwise.
There has been a lot of commentary and reflections on the success of this year’s COP and there would be enough to fill up many many blog posts, and I might write another post looking at the specific progress on food and climate change, since I didn’t get the chance to do so during COP itself. For now I will share some quick thoughts now the proverbial dust has settled.
The ostensible goal of each COP event is for world leaders to negotiate towards a consensus for international climate policy and action. However, as we heard from Robert Muthami, and as many others have echoed, COP is also a cognitive space for representatives from across civil society to share experiences and perspectives on climate change, and importantly to give a platform for those already feeling the effects of climate change to have their voices heard.
I recently listened to a conversation between Sam Harris and Yuval Noah Harari - both big thinkers who have made it their business to discuss some of the most pertinent and questions in science, society, and the long-term trends of human development. In Harari’s view, the one change that may unite humanity in the effort to deconstruct the incumbent unsustainable economic systems and reorient them towards solutions that will avoid climate catastrophe, is the development of a global identity.
Climate change is a global challenge after all, and all of us have a vested interest in climate action. So it is reasonable that by recognising our shared experience as one people on this Earth this may help to foster international action. But in a world where populism, nationalism, and divisive political narratives appear to dominate the political discourse, it feels like global cohesion may be going in the wrong direction.
And yet, Harari argues that a single global identity does not need to conflict with our respective national identities. The human self-image is complex and dynamic thing - I can be a student, a friend, a partner, a sibling, all in the course of one day. I can have affiliation to my family, my career, my city, my nation, without these spheres infringing on each other.
On top of this, Harari believes that the very strength of nationalism is cause for hope for the formation of a global identity. After all, the idea that human beings identify with and relate to a group of several million other humans who they have never met, and will likely never meet in the course of their lifetimes, is quite a strange idea in itself. But the idea is strong enough for some individuals to sign up to a national military, to defend these strangers at their own personal cost, or at the very least for the majority of us to pay taxes, so that a stranger’s children may be able to go to school.
The idea of nations is quite a recent one - perhaps only a few thousand years old. (Human beings who look and act like ourselves have been on this planet for maybe 50 thousand years). For most of history, our loyalties have been to our families or our tribes - groups of people with maybe a hundred or so individuals, and each one of them we see and know on a regular basis.
The distance between that level of organisation, and the level of organisation today - of millions of people sharing the same national identity - is a long way. But perhaps it is not so long a distance to another point in history where there is a shared identity and sense of loyalty between all 8 billion of us residing on this planet together. Maybe only then will we overcome our differences and agree to finally act on climate change.
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You can read Danielle’s reflections on her experience on the ground at COP27 here, and check out the other student blogs on the Walker Institute’s website.