Bayes experts reflect on climate change impact and the COP process
Bayes academics have been researching a breadth of issues around climate change so are well-placed to observe debates and agreements around COP28. Here they reflect on lessons from their research around climate change and the COP process.
Dr Lucrezia Nava, Lecturer in Corporate Social Responsibility
“Climate change and deforestation have already left small-scale cocoa producers in Brazil’s Atlantic rainforest struggling to feed their families as they grapple with the loss of over 40 million cocoa trees and an 89% fall in productivity. In response, they choose ‘lose-lose’ solutions which leave both ecological systems and people increasingly vulnerable.
She says the study of more than 3000 farmers over five years suggests they are – perhaps understandably – embracing short-term measures to boost production. They know that reforestation will take years to improve soil quality, water supplies and productivity.
“So instead they choose deforestation for timber and cattle farming. This speeds up desertification – so ultimately even cattle farming will not be viable.”
Farmers told researchers involved in the study that faced with a choice of their families ‘starving today’ or going thirsty tomorrow, they choose to feed their families today.
“The more that producers such as these farmers understand the effects of climate change and the impact of local deforestation, the more fear and hopelessness push them to focus on the present – whatever the future cost,” she says.
“These producers don’t need an education about the impact of deforestation – they need resources to support them and their families so they can survive until long-term solutions such as reforestation restore the forest and the productivity of their crops.”
On the likely impact of carbon removals, including all technologies and practices able to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which is seen as the only way of minimising climate change without requiring significant changes in human activity, Dr. Nava warns against placing too much faith in both natural and tech solutions. She is involved in the EU Horizon-funded NEGEM project, which is studying the likely impact of removals.
She says: “Our research, which will be published in full next year, makes clear that governments must commit at COP28 to rapid and significant cuts in fossil fuel emissions. We need to escape the delusion that the worst impacts of climate change can be kept at bay while maintaining our current production and consumption patterns. Otherwise, we risk removals capturing nothing more than false hopes.”
Professor Bobby Banerjee, Professor of Management
“Each year the COP carbon footprint increases while vested corporate interests tighten their grip on policymakers. As a veteran of four of these dispiriting events, I’m more than ready to say that we need to end this spectacle of private jets flying in dignitaries and delegates to discuss the climate emergency. The events have achieved little since they began nearly a generation ago.
“Wealthier nations have simply not delivered on their commitments at Copenhagen 2009 to mobilise US$100 billion per year for poorer countries. Indeed, since the 2015 event in Paris, the world’s 60 largest banks have invested US$3.8 trillion in fossil fuels.
“In 27 years of COP meetings there has not been a single call to phase out fossil fuels. In 1995, the year of the first COP, we emitted 23.45 billion metric tonnes of carbon. By 2021 that figure stood at 36.4 billion metric tonnes.”
Dr Itziar Castello-Molina, Reader in Corporate Social Responsibility
Dr. Castello says: “Our study (Certa & Castello, 2023) underscores the UN's failure to transform COPs into inclusive spaces for meaningful engagement on climate change.
“The biggest danger preventing reduction of emissions is the lack of public support and political will. That’s why COPs need to be spaces of engagement to create the discourse of urgency and to overcome the backlash. They cannot be secret spaces of parties’ negotiations.
“COPs are failing to be central actors in the public sphere where collective discussions of the need to transform our society are build and spread. The cause: COPs are trapped in the paradox of inclusion.
“Our research highlights that this failure is rooted in what we term the 'paradox of inclusion.' This paradox sets how the UN is trapped between promoting aspirational discourse about the importance of engagement within an inclusive deliberation forum—a goal that COP cannot achieve unless the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) undergoes transformation and genuinely deliberative principles are implemented.”
Dr Angela Gallo Senior Lecturer in Finance
Dr Gallo says: “Delivering the investment finance the World Economic Forum says is needed to implement the Paris climate accords needs partnerships between banks and other financial institutions – drawing on the strengths of each. They can complement each other.
“They do want to finance green investment – partly because of pressure from investors – but they are very sensitive to regulatory and policy uncertainty. The American presidential elections of 2016 and 2020 confirmed this – highlighting the implications of the 2024 race.”
These institutions, Dr Gallo says, tend to direct investment at private firms which are seeking to transition from ‘brown’ technology to green, companies which sometimes struggle to access such funding in finance markets – while banks tend to invest in new green technologies. This, she says, means they have a pivotal role in the transition.