What the comms and climate?
Blah, blah, blah. COPs - the talk shop, now sponsored by Coke, delivered by a country with a disdain for civil society. Here we are at COP27, another COP, again. But at MSQ/Sustain we will continue to lean into COP because we can use creativity to drive the nature and climate agenda and send the right signals to businesses, governments and financial institutions to leave our world in a better place than how we found it.
Here are some predictions and trends we see comms will need to tackle in the next year or two. Some are more technical than others but all are issues we, at MSQ/Sustain, are tackling:
Companies at the lynchpin of the global food trading system must be aligned with science-based targets. The world has missed many 2020 deforestation targets. We have to stop seeing revised roadmaps and turn pledges into actual implementation at COP27. We will need to showcase real action to put pressure on others and call out pledges that fail to be met.
I call this the ‘great call out.’ Watch out company x your greenwashing will not work - we are coming for you. Of course it is not just us but organisations like ClientEarth and Patagonia are already ramping up pressure on corporations. We feel this will only accelerate and every organisation and corporation needs to be savvy on greenwashing - as your mother told you, honesty is the best policy.
A greater diversity of voices. COP27 has shut down a lot of important debates and failed to invite in a wide range of non-governmental actors. We cannot let those on the frontline of climate change be silenced as they are not only great predictors of all our fate but we owe a duty of care to those that have contributed least to the nature and climate crisis but suffer most from it.
We cannot be credible accelerators of change without bringing a voice to the voiceless and reflecting the urgent needs of many on the frontline of the climate and nature crisis.
COP27 has been big on net zero and the carbon question. It isn’t all a carbon story. The regeneration of degraded land is not just about carbon, it immediately improves farmer livelihoods because it goes straight to productivity improvement. The underlying story is all about the development of jobs, income, and economic growth. And therefore, for some communities, emissions reductions are the third or fourth down the list of priorities.
Here we can see that climate seems to dominate targets but we are overshooting planetary boundaries, putting our life support system under strain, WITHOUT any acknowledgement or targets.
4. COP also centres on NDCs (nationally determined contributions). Existing nationally-determined contributions - the targets towards net zero- are reckoned to leave us on track for catastrophic rises of approximately 2.4C. The latest NDCs pre COP aim to reduce 2030 emissions by an estimated 5.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) more than the initial NDCs. This represents a 7 percent reduction from 2019 levels. According to the IPCC, however, emissions must decline by at least 43 percent from 2019 levels to keep the 1.5°C goal within reach.
So…NDCs are becoming a depressing signal of failure rather than a mechanism to ratchet up climate ambition. It is likely that the conversation may have to move to adaptation over temperature dreams of 1.5C limits. But let’s not lose faith so easily. We are the world’s greatest ecological engineers - we can do this! The anthropocene doesn’t need to create new levels of anxiety but open doors to opportunities and innovation.
And with that, let’s all think of new and exciting ways to accelerate change toward a future we can all live in and thrive with.
