How a small island nation pushed for a deal on loss and damage

Full Transcript

Welcome back to the Negotiators. A production of Foreign Policy and Doha Debates. Hello, I’m Femi Oke.

I have had the pleasure of being on site for many COPs – that’s the short name for the United Nations Climate Conference of the Parties. The event is held in a different country every year, and it brings together delegates from around the world to negotiate global goals for tackling climate change.

COP 27 was held in November of 2022 in Sharm El-Sheik, an Egyptian resort town on the southern end of the Sinai Peninsula. And the big debate at COP 27 turned out to be something called the Loss and Damage Fund.

The idea behind the Loss and Damage fund is that developing countries are the least responsible for causing climate change, but they are most affected by it. And so, it was only logical that a fund would be created to help them mitigate the damage.

The Alliance for Small Island States, or AOSIS (ay-OH-sis) first proposed an “insurance mechanism” for the countries most affected by climate change back in 1991. And AOSIS had led the charge ever since.

But the idea is a non-starter for developed countries, like the United States, which rejects any language that implies liability or compensation. 

In 2021, Aminath Shauna was appointed as minister of the environment for the Maldives, a small island state in South Asia. And less than two years later, Shauna found herself at COP 27, scuba diving in the Red Sea with U-S climate envoy John Kerry.

That’s when she really began to understand that developed and developing countries weren’t quite as far apart on the issue as she had once feared. 

Shauna: [00:00:07] I had a meeting with a top scientist who was creating awareness about tipping points. And we had a really engaging, great discussion about what it could mean for the Maldives coral reef ecosystems collapse. So after that discussion I got an invitation saying we would like to invite you to go scuba diving and obviously I said yes.  We went for a scuba dive at the Rasmussen National Reserve. Which is a protected area in the Red Sea. The colors were just so beautiful. The reformations were spectacular. And we were on a cruise, just about five of us, who were very high level policy makers. We had plenty of time to talk about climate politics, climate negotiations, loss and damage, what it meant for me as minister, but also what it meant for a Maldivian. You’re not in a negotiating room, you’re not in front of cameras. So you’re a lot more at ease of being able to speak the truth and to have a conversation not restricted by your national positions. [00:01:50][102.9]

Femi: [00:01:52] What do you remember of the conversations that you had with John Kerry that day? [00:01:57][4.8]

Shauna: [00:01:59] John was very interested in the science, and he was constantly asking questions about the real tragedy of losing what we just saw diving in one of the most beautiful places. And I think when you see it, when you believe in it, when you start to really fall in love with it, the whole conversation… The dynamic of that conversation is very different. I was not the minister of environment. He was not a climate envoy and we had other diplomats and senior level officials, but we were speaking at a very human level and he was bringing up what it meant for him, for his grandchildren to be able to not witness it. And I, my daughter, must have been about two and a half by then. And for me, it was a very real thing to be able to explain what it would mean for the Maldives fisheries sector, what it will mean for the maldives tourism industry, what it mean for my daughter to not have a home when she is my age. I mean, I think that made a difference. [00:03:26][86.3]

Femi: [00:03:26] Shona, in my imagination, I’m recreating this as a scuba diving summit on loss and damage. But was that the whole reason for going scuba-diving together? Or did you like sneak that in because that was what you really cared about?[00:03:43][16.1]

Shauna: [00:03:44] Well, it wasn’t very planned. And I think the best things in life and the best thing in negotiations are not planned. And nothing goes as planned in cops. We know that. [00:03:54][10.0]

Femi: [00:03:57] That is what makes COP so exciting. I always love the conversation before each COP. This is what we hope for. And I can’t wait for two weeks later to see what actually comes out of a COP. I am, I’m gonna take our listeners back a few decades to when you were a child. When did you have an awareness that you were an activist? [00:04:25][27.9]

Shauna: [00:04:26] I grew up in a dictatorship, under a very authoritarian regime. We did not have freedom of speech. We did have press freedom. I saw, I knew people who were put in jail, who were tortured, who lost lives in their fight to have a democratic motive. So that, it came at a very early age, that understanding of… What it means to fight for our rights, fight for survival. [00:04:58][31.9]

Femi: [00:05:00] What would you say your friends, or how would you your friends would describe how you speak and how you organize from when you were young? [00:05:07][6.9]

Shauna: [00:05:08] I think they would say that I’m a troublemaker. I have been in politics because I am a believer of democracy and human rights. And our first democratically elected government was overthrown in a coup in 2012. At the time I was the youth wing leader of our party and we were out on the streets for six years to get back. Our democracy. I was arrested twice during that time. They had pressed terrorism charges against me as well for protesting and demanding democratic elections. So I think fighting is something I like to do. And yeah, I feel unafraid to speak when it’s the right thing to do. [00:06:14][66.3]

Femi: [00:06:16] I am going to skip ahead to the UN General Assembly of 2021, so September 2021. [00:06:22][6.4]

Guterres: We see the warning signs in every continent and region. Scorching temperatures. Shocking biodiversity loss. Polluted air, water and natural spaces. And climated related disasters at every turn.

Shauna: [00:06:24] It was just right after my appointment as minister in 2021, my first UNGA. And in fact, my first ministerial meeting, to be honest, I didn’t know the formalities of how these meetings are conducted, but I spoke from the heart without really looking at my talking points or formal speeches or anything like that. And after that meeting… Cop president approached me and said if I would be willing to be a champion for adaptation and loss and damage. [00:07:02][37.8]

Femi: [00:07:03] Alok Sharma, who led COP26 in Glasgow, he saw your passion and he recruited you to talk about loss and damage. Why was the Maldives the right country to offer leadership on the loss and damage fund? [00:07:18][14.4]

Shauna: [00:07:19] The Maldives has always been a very vocal voice on climate change. So even though we had an authoritarian past, I would give the due credit to the former president, Gayoom, who spoke at very high level meetings, at the Rio summit, actually, in 1992. And he spoke about what sea level rise meant to the Maldiv’s. Maldive’s has been working throughout these years about not just loss and damage, but also on adaptation, on financing. And we understood how important it was to collaborate and to form relationships and partnerships. And for me, I think I truly believe… Climate change should not be divided into Global South and Global North because it affects us all. [00:08:22][63.5]

Femi: [00:08:23] I wanna just go a little bit deeper into what happened at COP26 in Glasgow and why the decision was put off until the next COP, which was gonna be in Egypt. [00:08:35][11.8]

Shauna: [00:08:36] We were still asking for a decision on loss and damage, but what we got was the Glasgow Dialog on loss in damage. I mean, to put it simply, that meant like keep talking until 2023. But at home, things are really bad. And if you remember, this was after COVID, especially small islands were deeply affected. By COVID because it contracted our economies due to the travel restrictions. All our islands were eroding, were impacted by extreme weather events. Our house reefs are getting bleached. Our fish stocks are being affected. We come back from these fancy meetings and say, we don’t have anything to report back to you, I’m sorry, because the larger countries are not agreeing to provide any compensation or provide support to mitigate the impacts of climate change. It came to a point like enough is enough, this is it. We’re not gonna go home empty handed. So I think it just came to point like this can no longer be put in the back burner. [00:10:04][87.7]

Femi: [00:10:05] I attended COP26 and to say people were disappointed, vulnerable nations were disappointed. Oh my goodness, that’s an understatement. I saw tears, desperation, frustration. Young people were crying. It was a horrible scene. What was going on in your mind? [00:10:33][27.3]

Shauna: [00:10:35] Very emotional. I remember sitting in that final plenary room and just watching powerful leaders of powerful countries squabbling about full stops and commas. We were not asking for the stars and the moon. We were asking for something that was impossible. To me, sitting in that room and really taking a look at also a lot of men and people not my generation who are making decisions for my generation. And that was really frustrating at a very personal level. And that is really emotional as well because we were not asking for something that was possible. And I know how these decisions are made. And I know that we did not reach a decision in COP26 because of politics, because of the lack of political will. [00:11:44][68.9]

Femi: [00:11:45] So this is the point where you start to build relationships with other parties, retreats, networking events. What did that look like? What were you doing? [00:11:58][12.4]

Shauna: [00:12:00] So I think after Glasgow, we left, I mean, really disappointed, really angry, very upset about a watered down decision on something that was absolutely crucial for us, right? We can’t give up, we have to keep moving. And I think that’s when we started to build, like you said, partnerships. The Maldives was in a partnership with the IPI, the International Peace Institute. We started to bring together countries and interesting partners who will, in the end, contribute progressively and who want to advance this agenda. So it started with very senior negotiators who understood what negotiations were like. We also brought in key scientists and finance experts. We also had representatives from the UNFCCC Secretariat who were advising us on shaping the narrative of loss and damage and adaptation because It’s not just national positions that we get from our technical negotiators that in the end make a final decision. Being able to shape narrative, being able to influence key decision makers and have that personal connection is very, very important for us. [00:13:41][101.0]

You’re listening to The Negotiators. On each episode we look at one dramatic negotiation — through the lens of one of the participants. More after the break.

BREAK!

Aminath Shauna had been working on all of this for a year and a half. She had talked to representatives from all sides of the issues, and she knew how challenging this negotiation would be.

Femi: [00:13:43] And then you go into COP 27. What are the dividing lines between developed countries and developing countries? [00:13:54][10.7]

Shauna: [00:13:56] Well, many. Because for me, it was more than just the establishment of a fund. You could establish a fund, but what’s the use of it if there’s no money in it? The amount of funding that is required to address issues of loss and damage is not in the millions, it’s not in the billions, we’re talking about trillions of dollars that’s required. Just the Maldives alone, coastal adaptation requirement for finance is eight billion dollars. So there’s absolutely no way we could raise that fund only from public funds. One of the things that was a bit difficult for some in the developing world was that that money has to be given by people who are responsible for polluting the planet, right? Historical emissions, basically. For the developed countries, they’re saying, okay, we are not the worst polluters anymore, but we also have parties who are in the developing countries who are the top polluters. So I think that’s one of the dividing things of who pays for it and who is responsible for it. [00:15:27][91.2]

Each COP begins with opening plenary sessions where high level politicians present key concerns. Then the conference moves into technical negotiations, where the actual text of the proposal is drafted and debated. And finally, the politicians come back to iron out any outstanding details and vote. 

Or, at least, that’s how it’s all supposed to work. 

Femi: [00:16:12] So tell me about the time when you decided to walk into one of the technical negotiations and make an intervention. But as you explained that, can you tell our listeners why that would have been quite an unusual thing to do? [00:16:27][15.3]

Shauna: [00:16:28] Yeah, so the thing is, I’m a politician and there is a very strange division. I can say this now because I’m no longer a minister, but there’s a very weird division between technical negotiators and high-level ministerial delegations. Ministers do not go into technical negotiations and make interventions. It’s very unorthodox, I guess, right? So what happened was there was a meeting where the issue of loss and damage was being discussed, but the focus of it was on establishing a response fund. And countries that are more impacted by things like hurricanes, a response fund would work very well because funds can be released for it. But for the Maldives, we don’t have frequent disasters of large scale as such. How we are impacted by climate change, a lot of the times, is with a slow onset. Impacts of climate change, such as coral bleaching. So coral reefs is what brings most of our income to our nation. So once they are lost, we don’t have any resources to raise revenue. So this is the status for most small islands. So we, for us, it was really important that is mentioned and reflected in. Decision that is made as a group. [00:18:27][119.2]

Femi: [00:18:29] Technical information you were asking to be added what was I’m trying to imagine what the look of the faces of the negotiators in the room were doing because at this point your her Excellency, a minister in a space you shouldn’t be in. [00:18:49][19.5]

Shauna: [00:18:50] I mean, it was very tough because this was actually proposed by my state minister. But I think people would criticize us because we were breaking the norms of how these negotiations are done. The rules of the game is that you can’t go into these rooms and you can propose new text. Once it is agreed upon as a group, right? Yes, it was very dramatic at the point when my state minister made this intervention, but I think I would still argue that we fought for the Maldives, we fought small islands, and in the end, the final text reflected all of it. [00:19:40][49.4]

Femi: [00:19:42] A huge shift happened late on the second to last scheduled day of the conference and it came from the European Union. The EU suggested a proposal that the Fund should only support the quote, most vulnerable country. [00:19:57][15.0]

Shauna: [00:20:01] The way UNFCCC and the UN system works is that countries that are in the developing country list. Are eligible for climate finance. And some of those countries are not necessarily developing countries. So a lot of the donor funds are going to countries that are not particularly vulnerable to climate change. I mean, just let me give you an example of what mattered for the developed countries. Not just one minister from the developed countries, couple of them came up to me and said that they have absolutely no problem in funding and ensuring funds are received to the most vulnerable countries like the Maldives. But they have a problem that these funds will go to large economies in the developing country context. The developed countries made it very clear that they can’t move on without that phrase. And for the entire history of this convention, that was not a term that’s been used in the text of negotiations, right? 

So, this was a problem, because there was not an accepted definition of the term “most vulnerable.” And the Maldives and AOSIS were part of a group called the G77 and China – that’s a coalition of 134 developing countries – just go with me on this – and China. 

If the words “most vulnerable” were added to the text, some countries in this coalition would be eligible for funding. Others would not. And many countries didn’t actually know which category they would fall into.

Shauna Continues: So I think that caused a lot of anxiety within the larger group of G77 because that would define how funds are distributed and who gets the funding. And of course, the Maldives, we are a frontline state. We are one of the most vulnerable nations in the world to climate change. But in this space of politics, we have to understand this is about consensus as well. So that was a very big dilemma because that was a red line for the developed countries. And we have to find a way to ensure that G77 did not fall apart. Because if G77 did not have a consensus on it, we would not get the loss and damage fund. [00:22:33][152.4]

Femi: [00:22:35] The conference was supposed to end on Friday night, by Saturday morning, still no agreement. Some of the countries apparently were saying we’re leaving. What were you thinking at that point? [00:22:52][16.2]

Shauna: [00:22:55] I remember, along with the chair of AOSIS, we stayed up the entire night waiting for that call when we could be invited to see the draft text and no phone call came through. I think we went to bed at around 6.30 in the morning. And it’s still nothing had happened. For me, I was determined that I will be the last person in that room to leave. I am not gonna leave this place unless we have something on this. We’re not leaving empty-handed. [00:23:43][47.9]

Femi: [00:23:46] The final gavel didn’t fall until Sunday morning. Take me through those 36 hours. [00:23:55][9.0]

Shauna: [00:23:58] So, a lot of things happened in those 36 hours. One was the chair of the AOSIS had to leave the conference due to a family emergency and announced that I would be stepping in his role as the chair of the AOSIS. And by now, we have these very uneasy discussions about countries most vulnerable to climate change. And we were sandwiched between the developing countries and the developed countries. What was really helpful during those 36 hours was we were seen as a trusted partner. We were seen a country that was not compromised and that was genuinely working in the interest of the most vulnerable countries. That really helped to be a bridge builder, I think. [00:25:01][63.2]

Femi: [00:25:03] What got you thinking that a change in the text from most vulnerable to particularly vulnerable would make a difference? [00:25:14][10.6]

Shauna: [00:25:16] So one of the countries called for an urgent meeting of both the developing countries and the developed countries. And in the morning, when we walked in on one side of the room, it was all the negotiators, ministers, and whoever who has been leading up until that point. On the other side of table, it was us. People from the developing countries. And it was a packed room. It was intense. And it felt like, honestly. The room is going to explode because we all knew why we were there. And we all know what we were going to talk about there is really going to make this cop a failure or a success. As a minister from a small island country, I know how much we are spending on loss and damage. I know how much we are compromising, how much our budgets are squeezed. Because we are having to pay more and more to provide fresh drinking water. We’re having to provide more and more to protect literally our islands from eroding. We know how much we are having to take money from our education budget, from our healthcare budget, from our social services budgets to compensate for the losses and damages because of severe weather and flooding and water resources. This is for me. Honestly speaking, that was what was going on in my mind. How can I use this moment to convince these people on the other side of the table, hey, we have to come out of this with a deal, with a win for small islands? And that was really, honestly, that what was on my mind, I did not think about anything else. So what happened was in the initial meeting of the developed countries and the developing countries, We wanted a break and we… Took a break and we had a separate meeting with the developing countries and we talked about this. I mean, it was very loud. People were shouting, people were angry, people were like, why is this happening? It was just very messy, just like any other cop last minute meetings, right? And the chair of the G-77 was Pakistan, if you remember how Pakistan was affected so much by the floods that year. And they were a champion in loss and damage discussions, really lobbying for the need to establish a fund as well. And I went around to him separately and I said, look, I’m going to propose a change to the text. And I would like to propose that I want to include the word particularly vulnerable countries to climate change, because I knew if that word was not included in that, that’s a dead deal. So what’s the risk, you know? It’s dead or it’s alive, right? How could I revive it back? And I thought that I am going to take this risk, because as a Maldivian here, I cannot live with my conscience right without saying that. He looked up at me and he said, how could we say no to something from the Maldives? And I think at that point I realized, okay, maybe this is the moment to do it. I mean, I was risking my reputation as minister as well, I guess. That’s not something done in negotiations. But a lot of these rules about these things in my mind are constructed by us. The whole point of negotiations is benefiting the average person on the ground in these vulnerable countries. And if that’s the outcome of this risk, I am happy to take it. I’ll do it. I’ll it any day. Growing up in an authoritarian regime, taking that risk, having been arrested twice in my life, having had terrorism charges pressed against me, what more can it be, right? We have to be fearless to achieve what you want. So I went back and I just put my hand up and I said I wanted to include it. And then again, this was very rushed. Split seconds, if it had extended even for one more minute, people would have had an issue with it. But I think cop presidency and the chair, they were very, very good at managing the chaos and they did not leave room for any further changes. And once that was agreed, boom. And then we regrouped with the developed countries and we said we are in agreement to include countries that are particularly vulnerable to climate change. And that’s what gave us the Loss and Damage Fund agreement at COP.

While the Loss and Damage fund was established at COP 27, it wasn’t operationalized until a year later, at COP 28. Shauna spent that year in informal negotiations, hashing out the details of the final agreement. But when it came time to see the gavel fall on her efforts, Shauna wasn’t there. 

Femi: Where were you during COP 28, that was in the UAE. [00:31:17][2.6]

Shauna: [00:31:18] Just days before COP 28, the new government was elected, and unfortunately, we lost elections. But we had done everything. We were a member of the transitional committee for loss and damage. And we really shaped the framework on it and the discussions around the establishment of the fund. But unfortunately, politics have changed in the world. The focus on climate change has changed. Geopolitical issues have taken over and many of those partners who were progressively involved in the establishment on the loss and damage outcome in COP 27 are no longer in government. And climate change, unfortunately, is not a focus in some of these countries. And it’s a very different world compared to what it was just in 2022, right? It’s progressing very slowly. The implementation of it is very slow. [00:32:25][67.3]

Femi: [00:32:27] When the history of climate crisis negotiations is being written or being revisited, examined by students in the future, what would you like them to know about the way you negotiated for the Loss and Damage Fund? [00:32:45][17.4]

Shauna: [00:32:46] Well, I think it’s the ability to reimagine the world from a very different perspective and to be able to leave some of our personal biases and to really think of how global in nature climate change is now. The world is so interconnected. Building that relationship with both developing countries and the most vulnerable countries and the real decision makers was, in my opinion, a really important part of achieving something concrete in COP27. [00:32:46][0.0] [1893.0]

That was Aminath Shauna, the former environment minister of the Maldives. The loss and damage fund still hasn’t made any disbursements. 

The board hopes to start making payments later this year.

Credits (DD, then FP) 

Next time on the show… In 2000, Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini traveled to New York on a mission. She wanted to convince the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution, to declare that women should be meaningfully included in all aspects of the peace making process. It doesn’t sound like a controversial idea – but it was.

Sanam: I remember even then thinking to myself, I am consciously choosing the most difficult thing you can possibly do because not only I’m trying to work on the idea of peace and conflict prevention, which is obvious, but is incredibly difficult because we assume war is inevitable, but to then suggest that women should be involved. I mean, we didn’t have the words for these things. Now we say women peaceholders, but we didn’t have a vocabulary then. So I knew I was doing something. Incredibly hard, but I was doing it consciously. And I sometimes think like, how crazy must I have been in my twenties? But there you go.

That’s next week, on The Negotiators.