SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt – As I flew home from COP27, the airplane was quiet and I reflected on my past ten days in Sharm. COP27 was an exciting and overwhelming experience for me. With hundreds of interesting panels going on simultaneously in different pavilions and negotiation rooms, I have suffered from FOMO (fear of missing out).
Will these talks lead somewhere? It is too early to tell as negotiations continue this week, but we can expect some outcomes by Sunday.
As it is too early to comment on the outcomes, I want to share my experience at COP and especially what did not convince me. I think the best word to describe it is “controversy." First, the U.N. event is all about inclusivity and making sure that every party is heard: Egypt, the host country, is not exactly a champion in granting peaceful assembly and free speech.
During October, Egyptian authorities arrested dozens of people for calling for anti-government protests during the conference. Ahmed Attar, executive director of the Egyptian Network for Human Rights, told Middle East Eye on Tuesday that up to 1,000 people have been arrested in recent weeks. The arrests targeted journalists, lawyers and mostly young people.
Do you remember the large protests of thousands of young people taking over Glasgow streets at COP26 last year? Nothing like that happened in Sharm, where outside the venue there was literally the desert only. Not activists, only hundreds of security people.
What I found even more inappropriate was the reverential procession of the prime ministers during the plenary session on Monday and Sunday. All of them thanked President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for hosting the event and organizing it so accurately. Well, on the organization, I tend to disagree, and here is why.
Food & Drinks
During my first day at COP, I queued for 45 minutes to get a bad quality chicken sandwich. Do I like chicken? Not really, but there was no vegetarian option (ridiculous, at a climate conference!). Plus, the sandwich cost an exorbitant US$11. Prices were so insane that, starting last Thursday, a magic 50% discount was applied to all food items sold in the venue.
Still water and soft drinks were given for free, with Coca-Cola (sponsor of the event) included. Being one of the biggest plastic polluters on this planet, the American giant was distributing the drink in glass bottles. What a brilliant idea! You know what? When I finally got a chance to enjoy the beach, there were Coca-Cola plastic bottles floating above the coral reef. Honestly, that was sad.
Logistics
Bringing almost 40,000 people to a small town for two weeks is not sustainable by definition. Accommodations were crazy expensive, with prices ranging from €350 per night to infinite. The venue was built for the sole purpose of this event, with the upside of everything being clean, neat, and shiny.
But the downside was that if you took the wrong exit door – as happened to me once – you found yourself in an open-air dump. Yet another logistical nightmare was a river of foul-smelling sewage that was flowing in the Blue zone last Wednesday evening. Not exactly the Nile experience I was looking for.
Security and surveillance
Security was abundant in Sharm, and I felt controlled all the time. There were hundreds of security people on the streets. Taxis were requested by the government to install cameras pointing at passengers. The COP27 app seemed to be spyware. As reported by Politico, the app can listen to private conversations and access encrypted data. A sort of “surveillance tool” that could be weaponized by Egyptian authorities to track activists, government delegates and anyone attending COP27.
On top of this, I lost count of the number of times that my passport was controlled. This happened especially on my way back to Sharm from Dahab, a little village around 60 kilometers north of the Red Sea resort area. At that point, I realized that Sharm is a walled city and not everybody is allowed to get in. Can you imagine the wall that former President Trump wants to build on the U.S. border with Mexico? That is the one in Sharm.
I was taking a picture of what looked crazy to my eyes when the driver firmly told me, “Excuse me, you are not allowed to take pictures." His tone was not nice, and I felt uncomfortable. Last, when I was asking local people their opinion on Egypt's president, I was repeatedly told to lower my voice. They did not want to comment.
The event was controversial down to its DNA. Before landing back in foggy Milan, I asked myself a last question: Was it worth going there? For my personal development, yes. For the outcome of the negotiations, no. It helped me get many insights, meet incredible people, and slightly understand how the U.N. system works. But my presence there did not change a dial in the progress of the negotiations, which is the ultimate goal of a COP.
So what? I will hopefully be able to do my job better as I am even more convinced of the need for the private sector to embrace a climate journey. Will I attend future COPs? It is, once again, controversial. On the one side, there is the excitement of being part of an exclusive event (there are no chances you can buy a pass; the only way to get in is through an accredited institution). On the other side, COPs are losing their essence. Maybe we should go back to the days when COPs were a bunch of negotiators sitting at a table, trying to find agreement. Some 4,000 to 5,000 people were enough to do the hard work.
With time, COPs have become an exclusive playground for which it is hard to get a ticket. This makes it fascinating. COP28 will take place in the United Arab Emirates, and the trend does not seem different. Oh yes, yet another human rights champion. But besides all these controversies, what really matters are the negotiation outcomes that we will see in the coming days. Stay tuned.
Editor's Note: This is an edited version of a story first published on the Caldo blog.
