THIS time last year, Glasgow was swept up in the global sustainability circus known as COP26.

We occupied the frontlines, challenging the greenwashing efforts of the UK and world’s biggest polluters, as well as running toxic tours to highlight Glasgow’s role in driving the climate crisis. COP26 was hyped as the stage where international leaders would agree on the mechanisms for implementing the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C. In reality, it was just another COP. Lots of flashy buzzwords and techno fixes – net zero and science-based targets, "clean" hydrogen and carbon capture and storage - but key decisions were punted to the next COP.

Enter COP27, held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, running until November 18. According to the host nation’s welcoming statement, after 30 years of United Nations-led climate negotiations, "we are now able to better understand the science behind climate change, better assess its impacts, and better develop tools to address its causes and consequences". However, with a recent UN report concluding that there is "no credible pathway to 1.5C in place", it is unsurprising that the most significant fact goes unwritten – 30 years of meaningful inaction.

So what is at stake at COP27? From conversations with Egyptian activists, it's clear they have major concerns about climate-related issues, such as water scarcity. Nevertheless, these conversations also revealed a strong sense that climate change policy-making was disconnected from the needs of the Egyptian people. Indeed, they were more likely to highlight the host administration’s woeful human rights record.

Egypt’s President, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who seized power in 2013, proclaims that we must collectively embark "on a path towards sustainability, a just transition and eventually a greener future for coming generations". However, Egyptian activists have repeatedly highlighted how Sisi’s regime has presided over the incarceration of thousands of political prisoners, placed severe restrictions on freedom of speech, and employed torture and violence against citizens and refugees. Concurrently, Egypt receives significant EU funding for "managing migrants" – essentially to prevent them reaching Europe. Under these circumstances, it has become impossible for activists to meaningfully challenge the Sisi regime’s environmental record, which includes the paving over of precious green spaces along the Nile and working with BP on the proposed expansion of oil extraction and processing. BP, a company that has been described as "propping up" Sisi’s regime, is a British multinational which enjoys the support of our Westminster and Edinburgh politicians.

Meanwhile, a look at those sponsoring COP27 hints at why COPs have spectacularly failed to hold big polluters to account. This COP’s sponsors include Coca-Cola, the world’s largest producer of plastic pollution; Microsoft, currently "the biggest tech partner to the oil and gas industry"; and Boston Consulting Group, a multinational management consultancy whose work involves "unlocking new opportunities for oil and gas companies around the world". It is no coincidence that the PR firm running COP27 comms, Hill+Knowlton Strategies, also counts Shell and ExxonMobil among its clients.

Unfortunately, none of this comes as a surprise. We highlighted the climate-wrecking credentials of COP sponsors in our report on greenwashing net zero initiatives at COP26. Few of the issues we have discussed are unique to COP27, but rather magnify what was experienced in Scotland. COP26 was significantly over-policed – costing UK taxpayers at least £250 million – and highly exclusive. Those granted access to the conference’s Blue Zone, witnessed the extent to which COPs provide a platform for repressive regimes to greenwash their images. In the national pavilions, for example, Qatar showcased its ‘net zero stadiums’, built for this year’s FIFA World Cup upon the corpses of thousands of migrant workers. In Glasgow, such failings were challenged by activists, but the same won’t be possible in Egypt.

 

Qatar outline plans for net zero stadia at COP26. Picture: Glasgow Calls Out Polluters

Qatar outline plans for "Net zero" stadia at COP26. Picture: Glasgow Calls Out Polluters

 

So what should we do? First, we must support Egyptian activists and campaigners. The groups who have joined together under copcivicspace.net, have called for environmental organisations to challenge the Egyptian government's human rights abuses and their links with the fossil fuel industry. We must support campaigners like Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who has been unjustly imprisoned for speaking out against Sisi’s regime. Second, we must demand that our elected politicians, such as Nicola Sturgeon and Rishi Sunak, who are both attending COP27, pressure Sisi to release imprisoned activists and refugees, as well as allow legitimate dissent. Finally, we must hold our governments and corporations to account. In Scotland, we can support groups such as Migrants Organising for Rights and Empowerment (MORE), who are challenging the hostile environment created for refugees, as well as campaigns like Stop Cambo, who are organising against oil giant Equinor's proposed Rosebank oil field.

Climate justice, social justice and ecological justice are interlinked – all must work together to create a world better for the diverse many, not the homogenous few. We stand with the Egyptian people against Sisi. As Egyptian queer writer and ceramicist Mohamed Tonsy implores: "You must believe in Spring".

By Lewis Coenen-Rowe and Cathel de Lima Hutchison of Glasgow Calls Out Polluters, http://gcop.scot/