On November 20, the closing ceremony of the 27th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) was held at the International Convention Center in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. ⓒdpa A man is dozing in his chair with his arms crossed. This is a picture of a participant who fell asleep while waiting for the final agreement to be released at the 27th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP27) held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Marathon negotiations continued over whether to create a ‘loss and damage’ fund for countries that suffered great damage from the climate crisis. The closing ceremony was delayed two days from the scheduled November 18th. The photo of a man who fell asleep while waiting for the final agreement symbolically shows the boredom felt by those who do not have high hopes for the Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention (hereinafter referred to as the Conference of the Parties). Climate activist Greta Thunberg, who has been attending and speaking at the site from the 24th COP24 (2018) to the 26th COP26 held last year, did not visit the event this year. “It’s no secret that COP26 failed” last year, he said, “COP is just a global greenwashing festival.” He made it clear that he no longer expected anything from the COP. The Conference of the Parties is the only general assembly in the world where heads of state and government delegations from 198 countries under the United Nations (as of 2022) gather each year to discuss climate response and declare common goals. However, it is also a meeting with limitations that depends on the goodwill and determination of the state because it is not legally binding. This dual nature of the Conference of the Contracting Parties has led to conflicting evaluations of the outcome of the Conference each time. The scenery unfolding at the site also shows another duality of the Conference of the Parties. For example, at this COP27, more lobbyists from fossil fuel companies attended than government delegations from 10 island nations whose survival was threatened by the climate crisis. About 600 lobbyists visited Egypt. This is a 25% increase over last year. While K-pop fans urging climate action held a flash mob to the music of BTS and shouted that it is time for action, not declaration, a local PR center in Korea said the POSCO Group, the ‘No. Affiliates announced best practices in carbon neutral practice. In an article titled “What is COP27 and why is it important?,” the British daily newspaper The Guardian pointed out the past history of the Conference of the Parties and evaluated it as “intermittent victories and multiple disasters.” The COP has been held every year from 1995 to this year, except for skipping the COP once in 2020 due to COVID-19. For 27 years, the homework given at the previous general meeting has been reviewed at the next general meeting, and better goals have been discussed. Several keywords were selected to understand the achievements and limitations of the COP. 1. The United States breaks its promise twice There are two climate response consultative bodies under the United Nations. One is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is an organization where climate scientists from all over the world gather and present scientific facts about climate change in the form of a report. It regularly publishes reports every 5 to 7 years, and also publishes special reports at the request of the United Nations. The other is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC is a United Nations convention with political significance. Parties to the Convention hold an annual meeting of the Parties and set common goals for climate change response. This Conference of the Parties is called the ‘Conference of the Parties’ (COP). The number after the COP indicates the number of sessions of the General Assembly. Over the past 27 years, the Conference of the Parties has achieved two major ‘achievements’. One is the ‘Kyoto Protocol (COP3, 1997)’, which contains the commitment of developed countries to reduce greenhouse gases. It is the ‘Paris Agreement (COP21, 2015)’ that strives to stop it with The United States, a superpower and the world’s second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, is the only country to break its promise at the Conference of the Parties twice. Former President George W. Bush refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and former President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement. The United States has strongly continued the stance of ‘American First’ (America First), which seeks non-binding implementation while participating in the Climate Change Convention. This position of the United States became an obstacle at the multilateral negotiating table at the Conference of the Parties. The United States showed a policy of prioritizing its own country even before the meeting of the Conference of the Parties. The beginning was the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992, also known as the Rio Earth Summit (hereafter referred to as the Earth Summit). The president of the United States at the time was George HW Bush, called ‘Father Bush’. During his presidential campaign, he professed to be a president like Theodore Roosevelt, a republican candidate but with strong environmental policies. However, at the time of the Earth Summit, the United States was in a situation where it could not give up coal power generation due to the oil shock and the aftermath of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident. After 12 days of debate, the Earth Summit adopted the ‘Rio Declaration’, ‘Agenda 21’ and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). President Bush cooperated with the adoption of the UNFCCC, but said in a speech at the time: “The American way of life is not negotiable,” he said. I am not here to apologize. (Omitted) I believe that the road to Rio should lead to both environmental protection and economic growth, environment and development.” Later, US Vice President Al Gore participated in COP3 in 1997, despite opposition in the US, and made a decisive contribution to the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol includes an obligation for 38 developed countries, which account for 55% of greenhouse gas emissions, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% from 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. However, the Kyoto Protocol agreement brought by Al Gore was not even presented to the U.S. Senate. It was because of the ‘Bird Heagle Resolution’, which stipulated that the United States could not be obliged to reduce carbon emissions under the climate agreement if major developing countries did not reduce carbon emissions. Eventually, the Kyoto Protocol was officially rejected by President George W. Bush, who took office in 2001. When the 9/11 terrorist attacks broke out in his first year in office, the Bush administration declared a war on terrorism and withdrew even the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, which had been pledged to overcome the economic recession. Climate crisis activists are protesting around the Le Bourget conference hall in France, where COP21 was held in 2015. ⓒEPA Voices were raised that follow-up measures should be prepared following the Kyoto Protocol, which is due to expire in 2020. The Conference of the Parties had to prepare for the post-Kyoto system, that is, the ‘new climate system’. In 2009, with the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama, who put climate change response as a key agenda item, his expectations peaked. However, the goal of ‘making Copenhagen into Hopenhagen (Hope+Copenhagen)’ was eventually undone. This is because China and the United States stubbornly confronted each other over the key demands of ‘reducing the obligations of developing countries’ and ‘verification and granting the binding force of the agreement’. At the time, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao stormed out of the meeting in anger at President Obama. The follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol was prepared at the 21st Conference of the Parties held in Paris, France in 2015. The Paris Agreement was adopted here. Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the global temperature increase limit of ‘1.5~2℃’ was clearly set, and all countries, including developed and developing countries, voluntarily set a national greenhouse gas reduction target (NDC), but checked the actual implementation every 5 years. . However, with the election of US President Donald Trump, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change faces its worst moment. On June 1, 2017, nine months after the previous President Obama ratified the Paris Agreement in September 2016, President Trump held a press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House and announced his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. It was a predictable action to some extent, as he had insisted that ‘the climate crisis is a hoax and that climate change agreements are only beneficial to China’ since his presidential candidacy. Tensions between the US and Europe are higher than ever. 2. Victory or Compromise, the Paris Agreement So, can the Paris Agreement be concluded as a ‘victory’? Experts’ opinions are divided. Kim Hyun-woo, research planning member of the Energy and Climate Policy Institute, who attended the Conference of the Parties held in Copenhagen (2009), Cancun (2010), and Paris (2015), said, “You must not mistake victory with small cheers.” “There was an underlying thought that no more developed countries, like the United States, would jump out of the negotiating table. So the discussion continued in a cautious and conservative direction. The result was an agreement to set national greenhouse gas reduction targets (NDC) according to their own circumstances without legal binding force.” This meant that there was no way to sanction countries that did not meet the reduction targets announced by themselves or did not comply with the implementation guidelines. Would there have been any change with just a voluntary promise? According to the 2022 Carbon Budget Report released by the International Scientists Group ‘Global Carbon Project’, the world’s carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use this year hit a record high of 36.6 billion tons. It is even more than 5% higher than in 2015 when the Paris Agreement was signed. If this continues, there will be only 7 years left to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5℃. This is an indicator that shows the vulnerability of the voluntary reduction system. Commissioner Kim pointed out that the Paris Agreement at the time mentioned two goals to limit global temperature rise, which also shows the ‘ambiguous’ level of the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement stipulates that “the increase in global average temperature compared to pre-industrial levels is to be maintained at a level significantly below 2°C (default target), and efforts are pursued to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C (maximum target) or less.” Considering the difference between 2°C and 1.5°C, Kim said, such a goal is a “strange agreement with no precedent”. On the other hand, Yoon Soon-jin, a professor at the Graduate School of Environmental Studies at Seoul National University, who served as the private co-chairman of the 2050 Carbon Neutrality Committee, evaluated the Paris Agreement as “the first agreement in human history to agree on the goal of limiting global temperature rise.” She said, “The consensus of the international community is a matter of coordinating the interests of each person, so it may not be possible to reach the level everyone wants. However, we cannot ignore the symbolic and indirect coercive power of the agreement itself. This is because the declaration to the international community is official. Such processes are accumulated and become the basis for a more advanced agreement.” In fact, after the Paris Agreement, the UNFCCC requested a scientific report from the IPCC to compare the difference between when the global average temperature increase was limited to 2°C and when it was limited to 1.5°C. What came out like that was the ‘1.5℃ Special Report’ approved and adopted in Songdo, Incheon in 2018. The report explains scientifically why global temperature rise should be limited to 1.5°C rather than 2°C. To this end, specific guidelines have emerged that say carbon neutrality should be achieved by 2050. Professor Yoon Soon-jin believes, “It is too cruel an evaluation to say that a better discussion is impossible because there is no coercion.” “RE100 (use of 100% renewable energy power by companies), Europe’s carbon border tax, and the ‘Sustainability Due Diligence Act’ that monitors ESG management were all possible because of the Paris Agreement-like foundation. The government’s response to the climate crisis can also be justified because there is such an international agreement.” At the COP27 meeting on November 9, Na Kyung-won, Ambassador for Climate and Environment, is giving a special speech. ⓒMinistry of Foreign Affairs 3. Stop ‘Cosplay in Developing Countries’ At this year’s Conference of the Parties, Climate Environment Ambassador Na Kyung-won visited Egypt as a presidential envoy and gave a special speech by the chief representative. It was the first activity since being appointed on October 18th. On November 11, when Ambassador Na Gyeong-won posted his impressions of returning home and a video of the scene on social media,
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17th out of 200 countries in emissions 57th out of 60 countries in response
