Purpose on Payday: SEC Newgate’s View

There has been a barrage of news this month relating to the climate crisis and decarbonisation. COP27 was the eye of the media storm, but the G20 Summit in Bali and Autumn Statement, also saw major announcements.

Now that COP27 has concluded, analysis of its impact has followed. From the beginning, it was clear that a core objective of the summit was agreeing how developing countries, which are most vulnerable to the impact of climate change, could be compensated for the loss and damage caused by global heating. And on this point, there was some success, with the announcement of an historic loss and damage fund. “This COP has taken an important step towards justice,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

However, COP didn’t do much to secure meeting the 1.5C global warming target. The need for ambitious, binding agreements was made clear in The Emissions Gap Report 2022, released by UNEP just before the conference. It painted a bleak picture, finding that without rapid societal transformation, there is no credible pathway to a 1.5°C future. And yet, the final agreement at COP27 repeated last year’s “phase-down-of-coal,” opposed to the much needed “phase-out”, and there was no real progress on deeper emissions cuts on the whole.

Elsewhere, there was some progress on coal. In Bali, at the G20 Summit, G20 governments pledged $20 billion to help Indonesia phase out coal, its main energy source. “This is the first time that the G20 has taken such a clear position on the exit from coal,” said French President Emmanuel Macron.

In Bali, there was also a side-bar meeting between US President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping, where they agreed that the two countries would ‘resume climate co-operation’; encouraging words from the world’s largest carbon emitters.

And in this month’s other major UK news event, the Autumn statement, Rishi Sunak reiterated the Government’s commitment to its climate reduction pledges made at COP26, including delivering a 68% reduction in emissions by 2030.

Now, as we come to the end of the month the World Cup is talk of the day, and it’s not just about the game. FIFA is under the spotlight for not allowing team captains to wear the anti-discrimination OneLove armband, in support of the LGBTQ+ community. Tensions are high, and on Wednesday they heightened when the German team covered their mouths in their team photo, in protest against FIFA silencing them. The demonstration insulted many in the Arab world, with negative social media comments trending in Arabic.*  The continued push of European teams to highlight the human rights issues of the host nation, particularly poor women’s rights and the outlaw of homosexuality, is a thorn in the side of FIFA. The extent of the reputational damage to FIFA and to those associated with this World Cup, remains to be seen.

SEC Newgate ran a LinkedIn Live this week giving our take on what COP27 means and the road ahead to COP28.