A question of Climate Justice

It was not among the planet’s finest hours, but the outcome of COP29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan last week at minimum confirmed the indispensability of multilateralism as a singularly important mechanism for achievement of collective survival objectives.

It could have all ended in absolute shambles but did not. That will certainly be on offer when the “1.5 to stay alive” slogan born in the Caribbean is conclusively proven unviable through lived experience. Already, extreme weather events in Europe and North America have dispelled prior notions of invulnerability on the part of the big and strong.

In Baku, meanwhile, there were walkouts, vocal dissent and disgruntlement, hypocritical posturing, and continued resistance to the modalities that signal moral and fiscal responsibility for the current state of affairs.

In the same way it should not be taken for granted that there is cognitive uniformity among the ranks of the developed countries (whose undisputed role in getting us to where we are is well established), there can also be the mistake of assuming monolithic conditions among the rest of us small island states.

As developing countries, we are not all starting from the same point when it comes to the “energy transition” – or the gradual movement away from reliance on fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy.

Consequently, there is studied muteness on some features of the decarbonising project by some of us, urgent desperation from most others, and the reticence of geopolitical favour on the part of some … with January 2025 in full view.

Follow closely what is happening right here in the Caribbean in T&T, Guyana, and Suriname. Consider phenomenal GDP growth in Guyana – sufficient to launch an unprecedented developmental leap – and the prospects for Suriname in its state of chronic economic instability.

Then look at the Dragon field’s OFAC compliance. Come, thereby, face to face with a tangled web that combines everything that is difficult about the COP agenda for some.

Note that Guyana’s belated temperance about the next moves belies prior vocal activism, and Suriname’s own quiet contemplation of the development game even in the face of absolutist language that shares its fears as a low-lying coastal territory.  

We have mostly been careful in what we say and nuanced the language of crisis to reflect the imperatives of development in measures of “justice.” What, indeed, can be “just” about a delayed rescue from poverty and deprivation and reluctant largesse derived from the proceeds of what is now being prohibited?

I remember the school bully who passed us in the classroom aisle and delivered heavy blows to the back of our heads. “Whap! Sorry.” “Whap! Sorry.” And then up front with the mocking offer of icepacks for our buzzing heads.

This all makes for a menu of possibilities and impossibilities in pursuit of solutions to the fast-rolling tide of the climate crisis. One point five can and will be surpassed and there is every indication that even as we witness the early signs, death and destruction are foreseeable, extreme scenarios.

Like an icepack to the back of the head, a non-binding commitment of US$300 billion a year, in the face of spurned responsibility, is not entirely inconceivable when power confronts victimhood.

With a US$1.3 trillion tab through to 2035 we stayed in the room as the figures dwindled and the fighting continued. There is every indication we will do this again.

It is just that Belem November 2025 follows January 2025 in Washington DC. And, if COP29 fell short on the dough (remember that US$100 billion by 2020?), COP30 seems destined to shortchange the world in the transition column.

On the margins, once again, will remain unsettled questions surrounding the future conduct of carbon markets, equitable distribution of the pains of transition through countries, communities, and demographics, and the general treatment of loss and damage claims.

Not far behind, and in the background, will remain the spectre of gross injustice for which there can be no standard definitions. So, yes, multilateralism has survived the perilous path so far, but as we see on other fronts it is possible to sit around the table and talk while yielding a whip of outrageous neglect and impunity.