COP26: The Fight Is Not Over
Lina Yassin (second from right) participates in a panel discussion at COP26
As someone from a country that lives in constant devastation because of extreme weather events, climate change is a personal issue to me. I started my climate activism in 2013 because my country witnessed flash floods that destroyed many people's homes and even lives. My country, Sudan, still struggles with present day climate change impacts, and it's only getting worse. Last year, we witnessed one of the most devastating floods in Sudan’s history; these floods destroyed 100 thousand homes and impacted over a million people in total. Some of those families are still living in temporary shelters today because they cannot afford to rebuild their homes.
I started my journey as a climate journalist because I wanted to raise awareness about climate change and let the world know what is happening in Sudan. In 2015, I read about the Paris Agreement, and I remember thinking "we might actually fix this". The Paris Agreement represented hope for many people like me who come from countries that historically contributed almost nothing to the drivers of climate change but suffer the most from the impacts now. My first international climate conference was COP21. I was only 18 at the time, and I was chosen to be part of the Climate Tracker team to report on the COP for Sudanese national newspapers. During my 1st week at COP21, Trump won the US elections, and we all knew that one of his first orders was to withdraw the US from Paris Agreement. All the hope that I had for Paris Agreement was crushed, but that did not stop me from advocating for climate justice.
I continued attending COPs as part of Climate Tracker until COP25, when I finally joined for the first time as a junior negotiator with the Sudanese delegation. COP26 was one of the most critical climate meetings in the history of climate policy. It was the meeting that will determine the future of climate policy and give us a rulebook to implement the Paris agreement. It was also happening after two years of a global pandemic – a glimpse of what life could look like if we didn't address climate change now. I had the pleasure of attending COP26 with support from Weidenfeld-Hoffmann Trust to represent my country as a delegate once again and negotiate for stronger deals.
After two weeks of intense negotiations and to put it simply, COP26 was not the success we wanted. Governments have agreed on a weak climate deal which barely allows us to hold the temperatures to a rise of 1.5C. But more importantly, many of the critical pledges to phase out coal, reduce subsidies and protect forests, at COP26 failed. My country - and many other developing countries - came to COP26 expecting stronger financial pledges that will help us adapt to climate change impacts. In 2009 developed countries committed to mobilizing $100 billion a year for combating climate change by 2020, and just weeks before COP26 started, they declared that they would not meet that goal. During COP26, Africa and other “like-minded” countries announced that the world needs $1.3 trillion a year to combat climate change through mitigation and adaptation, and the current goal - which we failed to meet - is less than 10% of that. So, as you can see, we have a long way to go but little time left, so what do we do? We fight harder.
I am determined to learn more about climate policy through my studies at Oxford because I believe that my country - and all other developing countries - need more climate leaders to negotiate stronger climate deals and develop more effective climate policies. Even though COP26 outcomes was a disappointment for me, I am optimistic about the future of climate policy in my country because I know that I will play a role in shaping that future.
