The much-anticipated climate summit under the auspices of the UNFCCC was held from 30 October to 12 November, 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland. As demonstrated by WTO and WHO agreements that discriminate and indeed oppresses the majority of UN members (in Africa, Latin America and Asia), the United Nations system is undemocratic and does not benefit the overwhelming majority of the world’s population. As has become common currency at these global summits, the agenda was one dictated by the leading neo-liberal states like the US and the UK who also happen to be amongst the worst contributors to earth destroying atmospheric pollutants. China, India, and other members of the BRICS countries are also part of this group of the world’s super pollutants. Countries at the receiving end of ecological and social destruction caused by a destructive capitalist system, are tied up in this system and feel obliged to attend since they have been promised climate financing – in accordance with the 2009 Copenhagen COP 21 agreement – by rich polluting countries. This financing is meant to compensate for the life destroying impacts pollution and environmental degradation have had on these countries. The promised US$ 100 billion annual climate fund payments to poor countries (to end in 2025) have been implemented in a paternalistic, piecemeal fashion with debt obligations built into funding arrangements. As its guiding theme, the COP26 meeting pretentiously used the slogan of “Keep 1.5 Alive”.

Leading corporations in the fossil industry like Shell and BP were well represented by 503 fossil fuel lobbyists; roundabout 30 000 delegates from approximately 200 countries attended the conference. Also invited to the two-week conference were indigenous groups from across the globe as well as NGOs involved in a multitude of social advocacy issues. Island states facing imminent inundation from seal level rise had a special case to make. In a conspiracy put on global public display, these countries and corporations conferred with the aim of concluding deals involving carbon trading and other specific measures that mostly side step the fundamentals of the climate crisis. The conference was a failure.

From the long and life and death struggles fought by millions of workers and peasant communities over many decades, the following conclusions regarding the essential characteristics of COP meetings can be drawn. These are: 1. The provisions of each major agreement e.g. the Kyoto Protocol and the more recent Paris Climate Accord – once signed – are consistently undermined by powerful or influential countries like the USA. This is because the actual provisions are mostly weak, ambiguous, and easily circumvented – without any sanction whatsoever. 2. The set targets in these agreements e.g., the 2 degree centigrade target are very ambitious; they are clearly aimed at pacifying critics/opponents as well as, when they are not reached, to show up to critics the futility of having them in the first place. 3. The use of fossil fuels, due to its cheapness is bound to continue and it can realistically be foreseen that its enforced use will be accompanied using increased coercion on the part of individual states and private corporations. 4. The promises of climate funds being made available to developing countries by the rich countries will be kept to a bare minimum. The negotiation of new agreements on the ruins of previous ones has become the norm. Banks, pension and insurance funds are also more than willing to provide funding, provided they receive a rate of return on these ‘investments’. 5. Ad hoc crisis management actions to individual disasters stemming from extreme weather events, has and will increasingly become part of a standard response on the part of governments and international agencies. 6. One COP26 outcome was the adoption of a more overt case by case approach to the climate crisis by the major world economies: agreements on coal, methane, deforestation, and adoption of renewables, amongst others. This is bound to fragment and thus weaken opposition to the plans and programmes of the global elite.

The Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) embodied in the 2015 Paris Climate Accords allows for countries to set their own targets and only report back in 2023 on what they have achieved in terms of curbing emissions. Globally, emissions of GHGs rose in the 6-year period from 2015 to 2021. Hence, it should not have come as any surprise that the NDCs of many countries is nothing but hot air. A major flaw in this arrangement is that, apart from each country having the task of monitoring and policing its own NDCs, no enforcement mechanism exists that can guarantee at least a small measure of compliance. This is a guaranteed recipe for inaction that can only lead to greater possibilities for ecological and social disaster.

Southern Africa: a climate change ‘hot spot’
According to the sixth Assessment Report (AR6) produced by Working Group 1 of the IPCC, the planet is on course for increased warming if the required reduction or mitigation in GHG emissions are not reached by 2030. The target of keeping global temperature “well below 2◦ C” (as agreed to in Paris in 2015) by 2030, even 2050 is tacitly acknowledged, by scientists and policy makers of 194 countries, to be impossible to achieve. What is referred to as ‘overshooting’ of set targets, which are premised on global averages, therefore becomes a new crisis for which new drastic responses will have to be found. If the case of sub-Sahara Africa and more specifically southern Africa is considered, then a rather gloomy and disastrous scenario faces humanity. Southern Africa is, in IPCC terminology considered to be a climate change ‘hot spot’. This is because large sections of it have a subtropical climate which generally is hot and dry. Francois Engelbrecht, linked to the Global Change Institute (GCI) at Wits University, and a lead author of the SR 1.5 report (a special IPCC report on 1.5 ⁰ C temperature rise), has reason to believe that the region is heading for catastrophic extreme weather events. The analysis of the experts suggests that even if global average temperature increase is 1 degree, then the rate of increase in southern Africa will be much higher than that rate. If 1.5◦ C is achieved by 2030, then southern Africa’s increase could be double that figure. These hot and dry regions will therefore become even hotter and drier. This will spell disaster for the maize and livestock industry. Significantly, it is added that the “options for adaptations are limited”. Long term droughts during the last two decades in countries like Zambia, Malawi Zimbabwe, and parts of South Africa bear testimony to this.

Another noteworthy conclusion of the report for southern Africa is that there is a discernible poleward shift of the Southern Ocean frontal systems. These systems originate in what is called the westerly wind belt (between 60 and 30 degrees latitude). When taken together, these two projections of our future climate, imply persistent water crises, soil quality crises, food production and security crises; in short, a societal crisis brought about by a capitalist system that in the present era can produce nothing short of catastrophe for hundreds of millions of people on earth. These are conclusions arrived at by 234 scientists who took 3 odd years to compile the AR6 report. In February 2022 the section of the AR6 report on the impacts of climate change is due to be made public by Working Group 2. The case of Jakarta, the Indonesian capital is worthwhile investigating when dealing with the disastrous impacts of accelerated climate change. The two reports mentioned above also dispel the myths of using technological measures e.g. sequestration methods to alleviate the extremely dangerous build-up of GHGs in the atmosphere.

South Africa: major contributor to unfolding climate crisis
South Africa, as a major neoliberal state in Africa has predictably bought into this fraudulent global arrangement. Under the aegis of a Presidential Climate Commission (PCC) which in turn relies on climate modelling done by a range of university-based institutions, the country submitted upper and lower targets about its anticipated pollutant volumes: “The ESRG finds that the 420 MtCO2-eq upper bound of the updated NDC target range in 2030 is consistent with a fair share contribution to a ‘well below 2°C’ pathway. The lower bound of 350 MtCO2-eq is found to be consistent with a 1.5°C pathway.” (Briefing Note, Meridian Economics, September 2021, p3) With these set as targets the country intends continuing its own supposed mitigation and adaptation pathway. Facts and figures show pollution outputs of Sasol, Eskom, and other big polluters which paints a completely different picture (Mail & Guardian, 29 October 2021). We are being lied to openly and unashamedly.

Anti-climate change activists can fruitfully start using these numbers against those who use it for mass deception. COP27, to be held in Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt in 2022 will be the next installment in the global criminal act perpetrated on humanity. Intense struggles against the neoliberal order must and are in the meantime continuing.

Forward with the struggle for eco socialism!