Climate Diplomacy in the Dictator’s Shadow
The twenty-seventh UN Climate Change Conference, more widely known as COP27, is set to take place on 6–18 November in Egypt. Like previous climate summits before it, the negotiations will likely fail to reach the kind of sweeping agreements necessary to effectively counter or even mitigate the effects of climate change.
But this year’s COP is different for another reason: held in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, the summit will also be used to “greenwash” one of the most brutal and repressive dictatorships in the region, that of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has imprisoned and tortured thousands since coming to power in 2013.
As the conference gets underway, we take a closer look at the crucial issues up for negotiation at COP27, while also highlighting the political situation in the host country itself. After all, there can be no real climate justice without the protection of human rights.
