Rethinking Humanitarianism | What’s behind the COP climate circus

Namukabo Werungah  00:00

But then again, you ask yourself, If I feel still disconnected to these actors and I'm here with them in the same localities, same rooms and all that, how about the people that are being affected by global warming and climate change?

Tammam Aloudat  00:19

Welcome to Rethinking Humanitarianism, a show that explores the future of aid in a world of rising crises. I am your host, Tammam Aloudat, CEO of The New Humanitarian,

Tammam Aloudat  00:39

The UN Climate Summit COP30 is getting underway in Brazil, with global temperatures rising and global cooperation under deep strain. COP is the annual summit on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, attended by nearly every government on Earth. It is the most important multilateral stage in the fight against climate change. But the world has changed since 2015 in Paris, when countries agreed to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Ten years from the Paris Agreement, and the UN Secretary General just broke taboo to warn that the world has missed this target and that countries must change course. 

António Guterres

The truth is that we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5 degrees in the next few years. Countries are presenting their national determined contributions. From those received until now, there is an expectation of a reduction of emissions of 10%. We would need 60%. So overshooting is now inevitable.

Tammam Aloudat 

Clearly, the stakes are high, but do the discussions match the urgency of the situation for frontline communities? What actually happens at COP and what can the rest of us do: Humanitarians, decision-makers, people affected by climate change, everyday citizens, while negotiators wrestle over targets and funding? To help us unpack this, we're joined by two veterans of the COP circus. Namukabo Werungah joins us from Nairobi and Will Worley joins us from Oslo. They are both reporters at The New Humanitarian. If you have any questions or comments, stick around for the credits to find out how to reach us here at Rethinking Humanitarianism.

Tammam Aloudat  02:42

Namukabo, Will, thank you for joining me today. (Thanks. Thank you, Tammam). Will, you wrote a piece for The New Humanitarian titled: A Reporter's Diary. How Baku, (that is the last COP) turned me from a COP-optimist into a COP-sceptic. You said, quote, “if you can’t see it for the circus it is, you're part of the problem.” Can you elaborate on that here? And has this feeling carried out through to this one that you're going to attend?

Will Worley  03:14

I think what this sort of boiled down to, to me, was kind of around hypocrisy and double standards. And it's very possible that Brazil, as the host of COP30 in Belém, can do some things to change that. Azerbaijan was a particularly flagrantly ill-suited host to be hosting a climate conference. The president of the country said before the event that fossil fuels were a gift from God. To cap it off, it was a very authoritarian environment to be in as well. But it wasn't just about the position of the host country and their approach to fossil fuels during the COP, but also the sort of corporatisation that has accompanied the COP. The corporatisation reflects the sort of wider climate space now. There's a lot of big financial interest as the political interests has broadened, the amount of money at stake has broadened as these events have become bigger and bigger. So that's kind of the big picture of the event and the host. But there's also a very jarring kind of communications style from some of the policy conversations that were going on separately to the negotiations as well. You will well know Tammam how infuriating some humanitarian broader (and) aids discussions can be in how they talk and discuss and repeat lots of very sort of strange, technocratic type terms, but there was a very kind of strange sort of optimistic outlook on these policymakers who were sort of talking to each other, and I felt it didn't really adequately reflect what was sort of going on in the wider world at the time.

Tammam Aloudat  04:54

You mentioned that Brazil might change it. Is there any reason you think that that would be the case?

Will Worley  05:01

Azerbaijan was not a particularly experienced climate diplomacy operator. President Lula of Brazil has had a long-term interest in this. Brazil is home to the Amazon, which is, of course, a massive carbon sink. The sense that I get from talking to people is that they've been moving and preparing for this for a long, long time – that said not everyone is going to benefit from their leadership, possibly even a lot of people in the humanitarian sector.

Tammam Aloudat  05:28

You also wrote in the piece that you were left feeling, and I quote, “unclean for having participated in the affair”. I mean, I understand what you're saying about the environment in Baku, but you know, it's not like all of them are more hygienic. The year before that was the UAE, and before that was Sharm al-Sheikh in Egypt. Is there something particularly worse? Or how would you relate those to the environments they're in? Because in the UAE, one of the issues was that the leader of COP, the person who is responsible for the energy company, one of the biggest extractors of fossil fuel in the world, and definitely not an anti-fossil fuel person. The same with Egypt, who have their own record of use of fossil fuels. Is it any different in Baku, or is it just getting worse in terms of hosting? Why would COP be held in places that are antithetical to its at least announced idea? 

William Worley  06:29

I mean diplomatic horse-trading in a nutshell, a different government from a different part of the world hosts it each year. And Brazil is a massive fossil fuel producer as well, despite also being home to the Amazon. I think a lot of climate hypocrisy is kind of priced in to these events. A lot of the hypocrisy I'm sort of referring to is about some of the other messaging that's going on. For instance, I've focused a lot on climate, peace and security over the last couple of years with The New Humanitarian. And a lot of people in that space like to talk about a political declaration which highlighted the importance of that issue. The government which pulled that together was the United Arab Emirates. But of course, as we know, the United Arab Emirates are one of the main patrons of the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan. And we only need to take a look at The New Humanitarian’s reporting on what's been going on El Fasher this very week to know why there might be something problematic there.

Tammam Aloudat  07:27

I mean, it's worth stopping for a second here on the UAE and Sudan, because you mentioned the participation of the large humanitarian organisations in COP and that has become a hallmark as well. At the same time, countries, including a country like the UAE, which is a particularly abhorrent example, who are arming and supporting and logistically backing up the Rapid Support Forces. And you know, our readers and listeners will know that the Rapid Support Forces are militias that are accused of all sorts of atrocities, including almost two years of siege of a city north Darfur called El Fasher, which they have finally entered. And we are getting horrendous reports of massacres that are happening of civilians. So I mean, the horse-trading carries a lot of sinister stuff. We as a humanitarian sector, in sitting in those events and accepting the legitimacy of them, are sitting with actors that are potentially, again, some of the people who are causing, and that's not particular to the UAE, it is also many other countries who continue arming Saudi Arabia and the Emirates in Yemen who continue arming Israel in Gaza. So, it doesn't feel like the natural environment. And I want to ask, I mean, Namukabo, you were with Will in COP27, that's the Sharma el-Sheikh in Egypt. And I haven't been to Sharm el-Sheikh, but I was told it is a really fancy resort town fit for a COP? How would you say that that COP was different or familiar, or what's your main takeaways from it?

Namukabo Werungah  09:08

Something interesting is that both me and Will were in Sharm el-Sheikh, but we didn't know each other because we were working for different organisations. I think Will was with Devex, and I was with BBC at that time. But for me, the idea of going there as a journalist, and even for media houses to invest in sending you to, you know, such a city, you know, with all the experts and everything, is that you're going to be close to the actors. You're going to be close to the decision-makers and the people who are sitting there discussing things that are affecting the people that you're representing as a journalist. So you'd imagine that when you're there, you will have easy access. You will probably, you know, get interviews with them, talk to them about the issues on ground, you know, hold them accountable, ask the relevant questions and the hard questions. But it does not necessarily happen that way. It's usually you have to navigate the logistics nightmare and all that, and everybody just seems to be busy. It's almost impossible for you to get, like a one-on-one, you know, with the people that you want to talk to as a journalist. So you end up just, you know, painting the picture for your audience. This is what is happening. And attending pressers that you can't, you know, cover all the presses by yourself. Probably need to send five to 10 people to be able to cover all that. And so sometimes you leave there feeling like, if I had just sat on my desk and covered this from my desk, maybe I would have gotten more value than even coming here. But then again, you ask yourself, If I feel still disconnected to these actors and I'm here with them in the same localities, same rooms and all that, how about the people that are being affected by global warming and climate change? Do they feel any impact from what is being discussed there? So that was some of the feeling that I had. Of course there was a win, because that is also the summit where the Loss and Damage fund was agreed on. So that was, like the big headline, but we're still talking about that particular headline, Loss and Damage Fund, and I don't think there's been any progress beyond the paperwork. I don't know if there's been any, you know, like real, tangible impacts that people are being affected by, you know, climate change. So you know, the real victims?

Tammam Aloudat  11:31

Would either of you care to explain what is the Loss and Damage Fund meant to do? And did it do any of it? Because, you mentioned Namukabo, that it's still in the paperwork stage. What is it supposed to do?

Namukabo Werungah  11:45

The Loss and Damage Fund is supposed to be money for the people who have been affected by, you know, extreme weathers because of climate change. For instance, we've seen recently, even as we’re speaking, we have victims who we know of the hurricane. And even here in Kenya, we do have victims of floods and mudslide and all that. That is where that money is supposed to come in to, you know, help them recover from the loss that they have incurred because of that: build them houses, restore the properties that they have lost. Sometimes there are even lives lost. So that money is supposed to do exactly that. But from the reports that are out there and all that, the fund itself, the kitty is not yet full. I think we're still in that, you know, stage of, so this is what we have, and countries are supposed to come up with proposals. I think the same with, you know, Green Climate Fund and all that. So there's a lot of bureaucracy and a lot of processes before this money can actually reach the people that need the money. And they really, really, really need that money.

Will Worley  12:52

It's interesting, and it really highlights the kind of incrementalism of climate action and the kind of the frustration at the slow pace of climate action, because what Namukabo says is technically right, but the board members, the people who've been putting together this fund, would probably strongly disagree with you. They've been having some pretty intense negotiations for the last couple of years while they set up the fund, which is due to open its first call for proposals on December 1. Now they are well short of money. There's been all sorts of controversies about how the fund is hosted by the World Bank, where the money should go. There's a lot of things that still need to be fleshed out. And I'll be doing a story on this, which is going to be published shortly, if you're listening to this. It is interesting, because there's a lot of humanitarian interest in the fund. It's not supposed to be overlapping with what other humanitarian agencies or funds do. For instance, the Central Emergency Response Fund by OCHA, it's supposed to come after humanitarian relief but before development. But obviously, especially given the funding constraints at the moment, there's a lot of humanitarian agencies which are very much interested in accessing some of the 768 million which has been pledged, and I say pledged, not in the funds accounts, which has been pledged into the fund; though a lot of countries in the Global South suffering from these climate impacts say much, much more is needed. Estimates of climate-related loss and damages come in at around 100 billion a year, up to the sky.

Tammam Aloudat  14:35

So a lot of developing countries are saying that loss and damage is estimated at hundreds of billions, if not more. And now, a couple of years later, only pledge not in the account, as you mentioned, 768 million. This is pennies. I mean, they're going to have people have like hunger games-style, fight for very little money. I. mean, I don't want to sound unreasonable, but I mean the US spends 1,000 billion dollars a year on defence; China, $300 billion on defence every year. And this is like the whole fund for less than damage globally, of the whole of ignoring climate change is less than one in a 40 of what the US spends on defence only.

Will Worley  15:27

Tammam, would you like to know how much the US contributed to the Loss and Damage Fund, before Trump? 17 and a half million.

Tammam Aloudat  15:33

I mean, let alone that. Now Trump administration has pulled out from Paris Agreement, and to my understanding, they're not even attending CP30. So not that the US has been like an exemplar of good climatic behaviour under Democrats, but now they are not bothering anymore. And you mentioned a very good point, Will, on the overlap that is seen by some humanitarian actors, on some of this money should come to humanitarian causes. And Namukabo, you mentioned the floods in Kenya, but I mean, we have a life example going on just now, Hurricane Melissa that has hit Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba is not an accident. We have seen hurricane activity increasing quite visibly over the past years, and it is linked to climate crisis. This is not the only humanitarian consequence of a climate crisis, the floods and droughts in many places in the world, crop failures, what is called the uninhabitable regions that are going to increase. All those are not long term, we will see them in 50 years, effects of the climate crisis. They are happening right now, and they relate to other political discourses, and some of them, for example, on migration. A lot of the migration from the most affected belt in Africa of the climate crisis is being dealt by in Europe as economic migration. It is not. It is the despair of loss of ways of living, largely because of the climate crisis. So we're seeing that happening. And I want to ask you two questions. One is, what kind of people are there? Namukabo, you mentioned, you know, you go and people are busy and whizzing around going to meetings and pressers and so on. Who is there? Who's talking on behalf of all of us about our collective survival, and should we take them seriously? And the other thing is, there's plenty of talk about a disconnect between what happens in the conversation in COP and the urgency of what is happening on the ground. Did you get that impression?

Namukabo Werungah  17:49

Definitely. So the people who are there are, they're supposed to be important people, and they're supposed to be, you know, experts in things, you know, climate, global warming and all that. But I think each nation usually sends the top-most person who manages climate issues in the country. I think mostly ministers. And when I know for sure, like most African countries, they do send their ministers or cabinet secretaries, the people who manage climate issues in the country. Whether we should trust them. I don't know what they can say, yes or no. I know for sure that we entrust them to go there and represent and I'm speaking as someone who comes from, you know, a developing country, going there to represent the people who are being affected by the effects of climate change in these meetings. And it's supposed to be everybody on the table, sitting there is equal and everything. But I do recognise that as much as most of these leaders from African countries argue for getting financed Loss and Damage Fund, Green Climate Fund, and all other kind of funding because of the disproportionality of carbon emission. But I also recognise that this is true, but there is also space for another truth. And to answer your second question, should we trust them? I don't know. Recently, I went to Mao forest, which is, I think, the largest carbon sink in Kenya, to cover a story about how the Indigenous community was being evicted there, and one of the argument for evicting them, it has been a long standing issue in Kenya, but this recently, one of the reasons that was being given for evicting them is because that is a carbon sink and they are destroying it. These are Indigenous people who rely on the forest. They actually protect the forest, because it's their livelihood. They do small scale hunting and gathering and all that, but they were being evicted and not giving without consent, and not being given proper options to where they're supposed to go, and this was coming just after our president had announced at the Africa Climate Summit that Kenya will be participating, or will be doing, you know, carbon trading and all that, which, according to the information that we are given, is that it's supposed to give money, it's supposed to bring money that will help the people that are being affected. But there are people who have been evicted, and they're in court, fighting the government and international organisations that they are taking away their lands in the name of, you know, carbon trading and all that. So should we trust them fully? I don't think so, but we do trust that they will go there and get what they're supposed to get, and when they come back to these countries, they're supposed to form policies that will properly represent their people who have sent them.

Will Worley 20:44

I think Namukabo's point about these sort of corporate responses to climate change which become communities the world over, it's not just in Kenya, is incredibly important, and it's part of the hypocrisy and lack of trust which is contributed, I think, to kind of degrading this international climate process, and probably the eyes of a lot of wider publics. I think, to add to that, a slightly separate point is that on the disconnect piece, we have seen, at least in history, how climate disasters can also propel political action within the events. The Pakistan floods, which were said to have submerged a third of the country, actually preceded the agreement to the Loss and Damage Fund, which Namukabo mentioned earlier. And Pakistan were one of the lead negotiators on that, and it was the cause of a lot of momentum within the talks. But again, of course, under very different political conditions to what we have now. It's early days, but if we look at the case of Jamaica, the government is putting out a narrative that the disaster had caused less suffering than expected because of preparedness, and some of the preparations would be relevant to discussions about resilience and preparedness that would have been had at COP but can often take very boring technical detail form, which don't always get headlines because they're about preventing suffering rather than responding to it. But as I say, very early days and needs further interrogation. 

Tammam Aloudat  22:12

Namukabo, you mentioned Indigenous community in Kenya who are the guardians of their environment, effectively. And Brazil, Will you mentioned President Lula being an experienced diplomat when it comes to climate, I mean, it's lucky. It could have been very different had the Brazilian elections gone differently, and we would have had a climate negative president, possibly. But in Brazil, there's still, even under President Lula, a lot of exploitation of the Amazon and a lot of burning and exploiting the forest for agricultural purposes, whether they are unable to prevent it or just letting it be. And I understand that there are promises of representing Indigenous communities in COP30 that aren't certain yet on what form will they take. From your knowledge, do you know anything about whether there is a commitment to representing Indigenous communities and their concerns and voice. And here, I mean in the negotiations, not just as a tokenistic you know, come and say a few words in front of camera. And what do we think they would want, other than those that, as you mentioned Namukabo, are representing their government national interests? What would the Indigenous populations be able to ask for? 

Namukabo Werungah  23:54

There are some Indigenous communities that are being ferried to Belém for the COP conference, and apparently that's one of the big things that Brazil is going to talk about during the summit. What exactly this particular conversation will be about, at this point I am not aware. But as someone who has covered Indigenous community for some time and talked about their human rights, their needs, and how they're supposed to be represented. I think the most important thing here is that if there are decisions that are being made about global warming, climate change, that is affecting the Indigenous communities, and that means maybe the place where they stay, the habitat and all that, there has to be consent. They have to be informed, and they have to give consent. They have to be given all the information. They need to have information of what is happening and how it's going to affect them, and have them agree to some of these things. I don't necessarily know about the particular group that is going to Brazil, but I know that in other areas, even in Asia, in countries like Nauru and Nepal, countries like that, Indigenous communities have been fighting about preserving their habitat, which, unfortunately for Asian countries, it's being wiped away by the extreme weathers, floods, and there's actually a place that is being submerged, literally, it's going to get lost. And in countries like Kenya, it's them being short-changed, not being given enough information, the government basically taking advantage of the money that they are fighting for to get to help them, but not necessarily helping them. So inclusivity is important. Include them. Let them have a say. Let them consent to some of the things that you are agreeing on the table.

Will Worley  25:45

I think there's kind of a wider problem with the UNFCCC process being very much state-led and state-engaged. A lot of these communities are marginalised or worse, and the government doesn't necessarily have their best interest at hand, advocating for their rights and the rights of other communities more generally, be they Indigenous or not, is something climate campaigners have been very concerned about for a long time, insisting that money reaches communities directly, as opposed just going to the state coffers in a more unaccountable fashion. But because the COP is a government-led process, I think this is going to continue to be a fundamental tension of the process, both for Indigenous communities, but other marginalised communities as well, potentially communities in conflict, people in places governed by or controlled by non-state armed groups. These are things that are going to be keeping humanitarians and their allies occupied for a long time.

Tammam Aloudat  26:46

And what are you anticipating or watching for this year, both optimistically or pessimistically, from COP30? What could be a solid or practical outcome of this conference?

Namukabo Werungah  27:02

I'm not really optimistic that there's going to be anything different from what has been discussed or what has been agreed on from previous summits, but what I would want to see, or I'd hope to see, is that at least there will be agreement or decisions on how, first of all, promises will be met, that people who have promised money. I do hope that more of that will happen. And any other financing promises that has been made towards, you know, climate financing. I do hope that things will start moving. That's really what I want to see, that things will start moving that once they're out of, you know, those meetings and press conference and all that, we'll actually start seeing adaptation developments, mitigation measures and all that happening on the ground, and that the people that are victims of effects of climate change actually get compensated. But even beyond that, I hope to see that when things start moving that countries that are mostly beneficiaries of this climate financing and all that will come up with policies that benefit their people, that they will not be greedy about the funds that are coming into the climate financing kitty, and that's quite important.

Will Worley  28:25

So I think experts on the broader climate space think a really ambitious package is needed. Remember, climate basically encompasses society-wide sort of needs. The E3G think tank has said a coherent, credible package encompasses commitments of finance, decarbonisation, resilience, nature, and governments. So that's across the board, and that certainly doesn't just concern humanitarians. I think humanitarians specifically will be wanting to look out for the deal on adaptation. There is something called the global goal on adaptation, which has been a struggle for years, figuring out these metrics by what adaptation actually means, so people can donate money towards it. That is certainly not just a concern of humanitarians, but humanitarians, I think, probably will be looking to access this adaptation pot of money. So anything that makes it easier for them to do that will be big news. The Loss and Damage Fund, as I mentioned, is preparing to open the call for proposals, which is being launched at COP, though it's a little bit separate from the COP process itself. I think there's going to be a big humanitarian agency interested in that. And of course, climate finance, which has been a constant source of tension and mistrust throughout this multi-decade process – they're going to be looking for a delivery plan for that 300 billion promise, which was made last year in Baku. But of course, as we've said, the overall geopolitical climate is really difficult. Compared to last year, the foreign aid budgets, not just of America, but across the board, have been cut, and it's going to be much more difficult to find that money now.

Tammam Aloudat  30:09

So it really doesn't seem that, you know, 30 COPs on, that things are getting better. Actually, if anything, they seem to be getting worse. And here, I mean in terms of political action, political commitment. At least they used to make noises about wanting to do stuff and then not do them. But now the US is out, and it doesn't seem like there's a real appetite for commitments. And as you said, the money is not forthcoming. What jumps to me is, I mean, fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me 30 times. I mean, why are we collectively still buying into this theatrical performance of pretending that those are good people who want good things – the same ones who are in bed with fossil fuel companies and the military industrial complex, which is a major source of emissions. And that's without even talking about the climate cost of conflict. Why are we still playing the game?

Will Worley  31:07

Let's not forget Tammam that the COP process is not just about the United States or the rich countries. It's a global-wide process that requires like consent from every country in the world – so naturally, a very slow process. If it didn't happen, experts say we would have to invent it. And albeit, there is massive frustration among the grouping of least developed countries or small island developing states, who come away every year disappointed – they're still turning up. And people who support the process will tell you that over this 30 years, although progress has not been up to speed, that we were on course for, pre the Paris Agreement, for far higher emissions than we are on course for now. The trajectory is still off course, but the process is said to be the only way of getting those global emissions down, albeit not fast enough. 

Namukabo Werungah  32:02

I wish I was as optimistic about this as Will is. It's true that there has been small wins here and there, but I don't know if there would be a very big difference in terms of how people are still being affected by the extremities of weather due to climate change, if we didn't have these conferences. How I see it? The biggest win for me is, the countries have come together, and they have managed to somehow reduce carbon emission. But even that, you can still even argue against that, because I don't think that the goals have been met, but for me, that's the biggest thing. But as someone who is always constantly representing, you know, people on the ground, sometimes, I don't understand why this summit happens. Because you see a small win and then there's 10 steps back. I don't know why people got there to meet. If it's about reducing carbon emission and all that, then well and good, but in terms of other things like adaptation, mitigation, financing and all that, we still have a long way to go. And I feel like for the three decades that people have been meeting in these fancy areas, we are supposed to be further than where we are right now.

Tammam Aloudat  33:23

And obviously I don't want to make it look like there's something broken about the climate diplomacy that isn't broken about the whole system. It's not like anything else is moving swiftly and efficiently. But I mean, this is our collective survival. I've become much more concerned with the collective survival since I've had kids. I mean, I had a couple of decades in my life expectancy, but now we have another generation to worry about. This is our collective survival that is being sacrificed. And in essence, since we are talking about life and death in Glasgow, in ‘21 I believe, I was invited as a listener to an event which was called the People's Health Hearing. And it was assembled by an independent group of students in the UK called Students for Global Health. And they brought people, mostly Indigenous people from different places in the world, to give testimonies. And it was shocking, because this the first time you hear unfiltered, unmediated, in my case, collective testimony of people whose communities, from Philippines to Indonesia to Uganda to Niger at the time, to Canada and Brazil, how is the climate affecting their communities and their ability to acquire health and so on? And I thought at the time, it was a notable act of defiance to the, you know, people in suits inside the conference. Most humanitarian actors, particularly most large humanitarian actors, actually are people in suits inside the same conference. And my question to you is that the only choice. I mean, is that how humanitarians should approach the climate politics? I'm not saying throw empty bottles at the conference. I'm saying, you know, is there any way of being slightly less polite and accommodating than going and sitting with the exact same people that are causing the same problems that supposedly the humanitarian sector is saving people's lives from.

Will Worley  35:32

You're actually reminding me Tammam of my first conversation with Saleemul Huq, who was the champion of lost damage and was one of the driving forces of getting that fund off the ground. I was speaking to him about roughly the same thing, and I remember him saying to me that, you know, we can go outside the COP, we shouldn't be patronised to every year, and we shouldn't put up with disappointment every year. And he mentioned going to the International Court of Justice, which, at the time was a radical idea for people who wanted to kind of keep it within the diplomatic process. The International Court of Justice has now ruled essentially in his favour, saying that the rich polluting countries do have an obligation to compensate for the damages caused by climate change.

Tammam Aloudat  36:20

But part of what you'd expect a movement to do is to distribute itself from inside to outside, to take and embody multiple positions. And it doesn't seem like there is that kind of strategic or tactical approach. I think this is a brilliant example, and thank you Will for that, because there are other instruments, particularly when Namukabu you said, you know, presence is necessary, I will grudgingly agree presence is necessary. You cannot leave the negotiations entirely empty, so they'd happen in even more secrecy and with even more narrow interests. But there are other instruments, and here, I mean, you mentioned that, ICJ, do you know of any other civil society, humanitarian or others, who have effectively been able to raise their voices and get something out of it, other than participating in the inner mechanics of COP itself? 

Will Worley  37:21

I don't want to disparage the climate civil society movement, because I think they are incredibly dedicated, knowledgeable, and important. You know, they turn up every year, and they kind of have more or less kind of the same demands each year, and they are trying their best to think outside the box. I think, sadly, that the peak era of climate activism has now passed. I think maybe from sort of 2015 onwards, School Strike for Climate, until around the Glasgow COP, and then sort of dipped again with the COPs in more authoritarian countries, the activists can be at the gate, but the disillusionment Tammam that you highlight is absolutely echoed by these activists and campaigners and negotiators who turn up every year. They wonder where the process is as well. I think just they're fighting against such overwhelmingly difficult kind of political and broader social odds that you know, it's just a very, very difficult picture right now, and and even more imaginative kind of stuff is being very cleverly targeted by some of the new media that we're seeing, and climate is being, instead of presented as an environmental issue of relevance to to everybody, as a technocratic, distant, bureaucratic, UN sort of thing which wants to come and tax you, which I think is probably filtering down, as you know, with the influence of the massive sort of populist politics that we're seeing in many different places at the moment, it's just a really, really challenging context.

Tammam Aloudat  39:10

Let me just clarify so I wouldn't be understood on this wrongly. I actually agree with you, and I have no intention or position to disparage the climate activists. I think they are doing an incredible job and across a wide range of actions, from disruptive to cooperative, and I think that's the right thing to do, and their life is getting really hard. In the UK, for example, the government has managed to criminalise stuff that extinction rebellion used to do, for example, and made it extremely hard to be disruptive on climate. Here, what I'm talking about is humanitarian actors. I mean staff, people who have big influence, like the Red Cross, Red Crescent Movement, like MSF, like Oxfam and others, rather than the climate actors per se, you know humanitarian actors. Their normal position now is they go and get represented in COP. They are doing advocacy for what they see, which is the, you know, humanitarian consequences of the climate crisis. But they are also doing it politely and in the political language that is understood there. And my argument is it really is not likely to make any major difference on the policy outcomes. My question is, those humanitarian actors who are day in, day out, seeing the people dying, getting sick of the climate crisis and its humanitarian consequences, should they be doing more than just attending the diplomatic events? Should they diversify from diplomacy into some sort of disruption? 

Will Worley  40:45

From what I know about the humanitarian system is it's pretty conformist, and it's part of the status quo, and I just don't see humanitarian agencies who are in a very fragile political position as it is willing to be perceived as breaking the law in some way for climate aims. And with the humanitarian reset, there's also been very much talk about humanitarians focusing on their core aims, working in crises and conflicts. And given how busy they are, at the moment, doing that core job. I'm not sure that there is any appetite, particularly among the leadership, to start getting involved in direct action. 

Tammam Aloudat  41:28

So on the one side, it is science that seems to be impenetrable to most of us. You know, we have to take it on face value. On the other side, there is this whole onslaught of far-right attack on everything, including the climate science and the consequences of it, and making it seem like a political conspiracy. And has it always been like this? Is it harder? As journalists, do you find it specifically difficult to cover climate these days?

Namukabo Werungah  42:22

I wouldn't say that it's becoming difficult, or finding it more difficult to cover climate change, but sometimes I do get the feeling that we get when you are covering any other crisis like conflict, that you keep saying the same same thing, you keep reporting on the same, same thing, and it doesn't seem like it's having any impact. And, about the science of it, I remember in my previous employers, there was a time when the movement against climate change, people who don't believe in, you know, global warming and all that, and I remember those decision that when we are covering anything to do with climate change, global warming and all that, we will not say it's an allegation or a speculation or something, it's a fact that climate change is happening. So I think some of these decisions that media organisations and journalists make, or the narrative they choose to go with when they're covering climate change, is very important. But for me, it's starting to feel tired that we're repeating the same thing, we’re covering the same crisis year in, year out, year in, year out, and it doesn't seem to be any impact.

William Worley  43:40

It's completely maddening. It's like climate change is like this big sort of runaway train, which everyone is, who believes in it, is describing as an existential risk to not just individual countries, but to the entire planet and that governments and leaders can't work together on it for common interest. It's really depressing, but I do think it's worth us kind of continuing at it, because there is so much corporate interest. If journalists weren't covering at it, banging our heads on our desks, as we all sort of do each year, a lot of people who don't necessarily have altruistic aims would be capturing the narrative, and they're working very hard to do that already. So we're going to do our best to stay at it.

Tammam Aloudat  44:33

And as we usually end our discussions, for those of our listeners, who are usually journalists, aid workers and lay persons, hopefully more and more. What could people do that would make a difference.

Will Worley  44:52

I think, for the general public, in a big picture sense, this is all kind of downstream of the wider political sewage situation. So I think looking at the politics or whatever you can do in your own country is important. For humanitarians, aid workers, officials and others, I think the answer is also to look local, but in a different way. A lot of the big picture stuff has been agreed on, and a lot of the hard yards now are going to be about national policies, things like national adaptation plans, which, particularly in fragile and conflict, reflected places really need to be delivering for people who are at risk of being left behind – those are probably the policy areas to start working on and keep not just working on, but keep scrutiny on and keep them transparent.

Namukabo Werungah  45:54

Yeah, transparency is very important in this whole climate financing, climate change, global warming journey and all that, but for communities, especially those mostly affected by the effects of extreme weather, getting information. Information is one thing that will empower them to even confront their local leaders, their national leaders, in terms of the policies that are being put in place because those policies affect them, for especially community-based organisations, and who, I think they have a lot of power than they don't use it as much, is to ask for a table when it comes to formation of these policies, especially at national levels, because, after all the international conferences and summits and everything has happened, the implementation boils down to the national leaders. And in most African countries right now, especially those who have received, in one way or another, some of the climate financing, most of them are still run by international organisations. There are very few countries where local organisations have been accredited to run those funds, and I don't believe in any way that these international people are more aware of what is affecting the people on the ground than the people who are there. So for community-based organisations, ask for a table. Hold your leaders accountable and make sure you have a say in how some of these policies are being made and implemented.

Tammam Aloudat  47:29

Thank you, Namukabo, Will. It was a pleasure to talk to you, and good luck covering yet another COP this time. We all hope for the better.

Namukabo Werungah  47:40

It has been a pleasure. 

Will Worley  47:41

Thanks for having us.

Tammam Aloudat  47:52

Thank you for listening to Rethinking Humanitarianism. Our show is produced, edited and mixed by Levi Sharp, editorial oversight provided by Irwin Loy, Eric Reidy and Freddie Boswell. If you have any questions or comments, you can email us at podcast at thenewhumanitarian.org. Please rate and subscribe to our show, wherever you get your podcasts. Also, consider becoming a member of The New Humanitarian to help us continue reporting from the heart of crises. Go to www.thenewhumanitarian.org to find out more.