By Cristóbal Emilfork, University of California, Davis
Not only countries met at the COP. The venue also seemed to be a meeting point for diverse temporalities. As yet unproblematised, our notions about the meaning of the term “urgency,” what “speed” of response means, the linear or exponential time demanded by the climate crisis or the presence or imminence of the future “disaster” require us to stop the pace and think about whether we can dialogue in this field of multi-temporalities. – Cristóbal Emilfork
The afternoon of Tuesday, December 12, dawned hot in the bustling Expo City of Dubai. Faces were sweaty, not just from the scorching sun, but also from the mounting anxiety of reaching a satisfactory conclusion to COP28. Despite numerous drafts, endless negotiations, and countless deadlocks, the 198 parties seemed incapable of reaching a consensus in the frantic closed-door meetings leading up to the summit’s final whistle. However, in a seemingly sudden turn of events, Sultan Al Jaber, president of the COP (and of the national oil company), announced a narrow window of time would be granted to strive for a meaningful resolution.
The apparently straightforward decision to allocate “more time” (whether a day, a few hours, etc.) to pursue an agreement is significant, revealing certain ingrained notions regarding the management of time, its relationship to the climate crisis, and the pace at which it unfolds. What assumptions underlie the handling of the time variable by the COP’s conglomerate of parties? What is mandated, what is obscured, what is circumscribed, and what is implied in attempting climate governance, or rather, in grappling with the burgeoning climate catastrophe?
A preliminary examination necessitates an acknowledgment of the landscape. In the context of climate change, time serves as both arbiter and adjudicator. It will be time, rather than a reluctance to expedite mitigation and adaptation policies, that ultimately forecloses avenues for minimizing the impact on terrestrial ecosystems. While scientific data reiterate this point with a frequency verging on redundancy, political barriers appear largely impervious to this admonition when it comes to translating this particular “temporal seasoning” into action. Nevertheless, political discourse remains incessantly framed within this temporal continuum. How do we reconcile this paradoxical duality?
A telling example is the heated debate surrounding the use of fossil fuels and the transition away from them or, alternatively, reducing their usage (which became known as the “phasing out” or “phasing down” discussion). The latter option, instead of constituting a decline, could be sought as an effort for prolonging the period during which oil- coal, or gas-producing nations could continue extracting fossil fuels. In essence, the discourse regarding cessation or reduction could be reframed in terms of now versus the future, and with that, opening the possibility for a camouflaged masquerade that seeks to validate the old adage, “not today, but perhaps tomorrow.” And, as we’re all aware, “tomorrow never arrives.”
It is precisely these kinds of details that the parties must agree upon. In the COP venue, particularly in the spaces adjacent to the negotiations, the rumor that there were two scenarios (not necessarily phrased as such) was a quasi-undisputed truth: a territory where time seemed to be an easily moldable variable susceptible to be determined by the guidelines of the economic-climate governance, the one bordering with another space, where temporality seemed, instead, a sword of Damocles, fragilely held over the destinies of the planet.
In building 88 of the B7 venue area, you could perceive this dissonance. By chance – or irony – the structure was shared by organizations and usually categorized as located in the antipodes on the climate chessboard. Up the building’s narrow stairs, wandering around the second floor, were the booths of associations such as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries-OPEC, the European Nuclear Society, and the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, to name just a few. On the floor above, the Indigenous Peoples Pavilion or the Civil Society Hub organized their events. In the same building, just one floor away, I attended conversations where the perspective of the future was painted in abysmally dissimilar strokes. The sentiments that transpired were as well: while on the second floor, words like energy transition, renewable, green, and promising future were the language of the day, upstairs, disaster, urgency, sacrifice, death, and rights did the same. While on the second floor, the past was not an issue because everything was a present-future full of optimism and self-confidence on the Anthropos for resolving this disaster, the third floor returned again and again to the roots and to the memory that configures wisdom considered propitious to face the present times. The Anthropo-not-seen (De la Cadena 2015) was ironically hosting a group of people on one side obliged to address the worldly ways of being in the world dictated by the COP process and, by the other, translating its excess in a daily basis of negotiations to find an entryway into this climate forum.
At the end of the day, everything boils down to a contract made up of words (non-binding, by the way) that reveal not only universes of meaning but also wills for action. The rhythms with which these are implemented, as well as the perspectives of urgency held by each party, are not the same, and a discussion that would make them explicit would be conducive to dialogue. Some confusions can be fruitful, but others will only lead to divergences that will never meet.
It is in this same sense that the question about times must also be thought from its intimate relationship with the space (the spaces) from which it is formulated. How detached can it be? Is it desirable that it be so? Or do we need to make this “marriage” visible in order to better understand the actual scope of the proposed rhythms?
This is the case of the countries that make up AOSIS, the Alliance of Small Islands States, made up of 39 small developing islands. As territories disproportionately affected by climate change, the weight of urgency is particularly high. In her statement to the COP President, Ms. Anne Rasmussen, the group’s Lead Negotiator (from Samoa), declared that she was “little confused” by the agreement signed in plenary, claiming that they had not been present in the room when it had been agreed. The reason? A delay because they were negotiating as the Alliance in a statement. For Rasmussen, the problem could be summed up as a question of pacing: from an “incremental advancement” of the measures planned to be implemented by the parties, they should have to move to an “exponential step-change.”
Hence, the annual convocation of nearly two hundred “parties” to the climate change summit not only brings together delegations from all corners of the globe consisting of high-profile politicians and their respective officials, business leaders and their inevitable lobbyists, academics, activists, indigenous peoples, young individuals, and representatives of various religious traditions. The COP also serves as a convergence of “multitemporalities” – diverse temporal perspectives that intersect, merge, blend, clash, and blur. Recognizing and understanding this reality is crucial, as its acknowledgment may potentially pave the way out of the labyrinth1.
This doesn’t mean that the various timeframes have equal footing in the multinational COP setting. The distribution of power also takes on a temporal dimension. I’d venture to suggest that within the expansive confines of Expo Dubai, it was the “present” that wielded the most influence, a tyranny expressed through slogans like “The time is now!” Such phrases echoed through the political corridors, accompanied by an uncanny sense of celebration emanating from some of the country pavilions. Many of these nations proudly showcased their ongoing efforts in adaptation and mitigation, as well as the latest technological advancements they were actively pursuing at this very moment.
Anyone walking through the corridors surrounding the various pavilions and buildings of the COP was immersed in a theatrical experience: a large marketplace in which press conferences, presentations of cutting-edge technologies, and talks presenting new data confirming the critical climate situation, competed for time slots to capture the attention of accredited guests. The lack of time (or the saturation of it) formed the perfect frame for a clock that, like an eternal litany, made seconds, minutes, hours, and days go by. It was simply impossible to fit everything offered into a person’s daily time frame.
The implicit message was clear: you must master urgency. “Urgency,” therefore, can serve as a catalyst for action, a narrative of condemnation, or a term that has become a cliché, blending into the background as an invisible framework of such events. Acknowledging urgency doesn’t necessarily mean embracing it, and in that regard, neither does coordinating a series of policies that begin to take effect cohesively. Moreover, some may think that nothing more can be done: that what awaits us is not the Apocalypse but that we are already immersed in it.
The link between climate change and apocalyptic thinking cannot be ignored, and from there, the millenarian paradigm modulates these times from the perspective of catastrophe. A cataclysm that, nevertheless, opens up to transformation and hope. Are we living in such times? Apocalyptic thought gives meaning to a certain moment in the chronos of history (and beyond). It does not, however, question alternative ways of understanding this temporal variable. In other words, it surrenders to that paradigm as the only one against which human history must be articulated or confronted. In this regard, the perspectives of indigenous peoples open up to alternative understandings of current times based on previous dystopian experiences they have had in history, for example, about colonial violence. (White 2017, 2018). Other narratives and understandings can knock on the door of the COP for the sake of building a cosmopolitics (Stengers 2005) where other worlds have a place (Bold 2019) at the discussion table.
In spite of the above, the apocalyptic time could be the bearer of a novelty: the waiting comes to an end, the litany agonizes, tomorrow finally arrives.
The fact that we’re living in unprecedented times may contribute to this dilution of the sense of immediate action. In reality, we’re stumbling blindly toward a catastrophe whose arrival remains uncertain. We can only speculate, relying on data, modeling, and advanced predictive science. Yet, the future seems elusive, hesitating to make its entrance into a present reluctant to relinquish control.
Perhaps it is time to delve into alternative temporal frameworks. Indeed, the time of COPs presents a unique temporal dimension compared to the negotiation processes that precede and occur alongside them–save for the experts and government officials orchestrating behind the scenes of this global stage. It’s akin to the Olympics and their build-up, where global attention is fixated on these pivotal moments and not on the interval in between. It is a time that feels profound and weighty, where days, hours, and minutes carry more significant value, at least theoretically.
Can we immerse ourselves in this temporal context during COPs? Is the narrative of tipping points, while crucial, sufficient to address the past-present-future trajectory of the climate crisis, or should we try another on? How do we reconcile exponential time with the linear perspective? And is “urgency” truly an effective catalyst for tangible change?
References
Bold, Rosalyn. (ed.) Indigenous Perceptions of the End of the World Creating a Cosmopolitics of Change. 1st ed. 2019. [Online]. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
De la Cadena, Marisol. “Uncommoning Nature.” E-flux journal 65, May–August (2015). http://supercommunity.e-flux.com/texts/uncommoning-nature/
Stengers, Isabelle. “Introductory Notes on an Ecology of Practices.” Cultural Studies Review 11 (1): 183–196.
Whyte, Kyle. “Indigenous Climate Change Studies : Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene.” English Language Notes 55, no. 1 (2017): 153-162. muse.jhu.edu/article/711473.
Whyte, Kyle “Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 1(1-2), 224-242. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848618777621
Cristóbal Emilfork is a socio-environmental anthropology Ph.D. student at the University of California, Davis working at the crossroads of STS and Environmental Humanities. Currently, he is investigating how knowledge about Climate Change in the Global South is constructed from the study of melting glaciers in Chilean Patagonia. He holds an MSt in the Study of Religions from the University of Oxford and an MA in Sociology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
