As the world turns its attention to the 27th UN Climate Change Conference (CoP27) in Sharm El Sheikh, CoP26 President Alok Sharma reflects upon the achievements won thus far in the fight against climate change in our latest podcast. Sharma’s address at the Wilson Center also outlines the steps that need to be taken at CoP27 and in the future to ensure a sustainable and prosperous future for all.

Sharma observes that the CoP26 in Scotland last year represented a “fragile win” and that the Glasgow Climate Pact went further than many had imagined it would to keep accepted climate goals in place. “The pulse of 1.5 degrees remained alive,” he says.

A year on from Glasgow, however, the geopolitical landscape has altered. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered crises of food and energy security. Economic factors such as inflation and increased debt pressures have compounded the world’s existing environmental emergency in a moment when it is still making a tremulous recovery after Covid-19. 

“But as serious as these crises are,” Sharma remarks, “we must also recognize the seismic structural shift that is underway. Our global political economy built on fossil fuels for the last century is in a state of flux.” He urges the world community not to get bogged down in, and distracted by, these new challenges. In this way, global leaders might avoid the same mistakes committed during the financial crisis of 2008, when economic meltdown put climate action on the back burner.

Sharma highlights the excellent gains being made on climate action despite the changing currents, noting that “estimates suggest that by the middle of this decade, renewables’ capacity is expected to be up 60 percent on 2020 levels.” He cites cleaner energy initiatives undertaken across various countries, including the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, and the strengthened reduction targets of India’s 2030 Nationally Determined Contribution. Sharma also praises Kenya’s pursuit of its geothermal potential and welcomes Australia back to the forefront of the “fight against climate change.” Taken together, these actions and others offer a “future of hope.”

Yet Sharma also offers a note of frustration and urgency. He observes that his conversations today on climate issues have not changed in nature from those he was having three years ago at the start of his CoP Presidency tenure. In assessing the G20 Climate and Environment Ministerial Meeting in Indonesia in August 2022, for instance, Sharma reveals that “some of the world’s major emitters threatened to backslide on commitments that they had made in Glasgow and in Paris.” The urge to reverse progress reveals that there is still “a big deficit in political will,” he says. “What further evidence or motivation do global leaders need to act?”

A sharp critique of current infrastructure for addressing climate is at the center of Sharma’s current thinking. He says that the institutions currently in place to deal with climate action are ill-fitted to deal with today’s critical situation. “We cannot tackle the defining challenge of this century,” he argues, “with institutions defined by the last”. Sharma seconds the comments of Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados, at the UN General Assembly in September 2022 that there needs to be an “overhaul of global financial architecture.” “Countries must get access to the technical help they need through fully operationalizing the Santiago Network,” he says.

Sharma concludes by threading together the seeming paradoxes of our moment, noting that the positive work and progress already made in combatting global warming must be accompanied by adequate systems that recognize the systemic risk of climate change and manage it accordingly. If the global community can manage this task, he believes that the twenty first century “will be the century that we unlocked a just and sustainable path to prosperity for billions of people around the world.”