As COP26 enters its final and over-running hours in Glasgow trying to reach agreement on the final form of words in the text, some reportage struck me. It was from Professor Mark Maslin a Climate Scientist at University College London. He was speaking to the BBC Radio 4 news on the Saturday morning after the conference should have closed.
He said, ‘The great thing is that there are three paragraphs all about 1.5 degrees, so reiteration, all the countries of the world saying we have to get there.
What’s exciting is the reason why this is being held up is all the small island nations and the least developed countries of the world want stronger text. They are almost doing the UK Presidency’s job for them.’
For me, this illuminated the very essence of co-production. For those unfamiliar with the term, co-production is a messy process and one I am employed to facilitate and promote. It is also a rich, human process. I find it sufficiently fascinating to study in my free time — specifically for implications in the policy-making domain.
Whilst there is no single definition of co-production, I’m going to loosely propose one. Many definitions encompass service delivery. What I’m after is something that is broadly able to capture any activity from policy and research, through to grassroots activity. This isn’t perfect, but it’s my freshest thinking today. Co-production can be described as a mutually beneficial, collaborative way of working on issues involving citizens directly affected by said issues alongside governmental and non-governmental organisations wherein every person has access to an equal voice, decision-making power and the necessary resources to achieve a shared goal.
In the case of COP26, the shared goal could be defined as the commitment to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius. What we are witnessing as COP26 overruns, when all the speeches are over, and many ‘leaders’ have returned home on their planes is compelling. The least affected nations, with the most power, as represented by money and harmful climate behaviours, are being kept in the dialogue by smaller nations who are being harmed by climate change today.
I looked back at the last sentence because it’s a bit long. For clarity and the readers’ sake, I do generally aim to be a bit more Hemingway about things, but… There you have it. Doing co-production, which is essentially what COP26 is doing, does take longer. That’s because all the stakeholders are there and need, sometimes have to demand, to be heard.
In co-production circles, there’s a lot of talk about things being not ‘real’ co-production. It describes a phenomenon where the process might look like co-production but is a shallow, box-ticking performance. In the not real co-production, or faux pro, power isn’t shared, equality isn’t assured, accessibility isn’t guaranteed. Stakeholders are shepherded through a process that serves the powers that be more than those who are most affected by the eventual outcome.
From my viewpoint in the UK, some voices in the process have been more amplified by the media than others. Fortunately, the internet allows us to explore and reflect on the contributions from people marginalised by the mainstream.
Some of us might have heard the powerful testimony of some of those smaller island nations. People who are working to secure stronger commitments from powerful nations. Voices from citizens of the Marshall Islands. Or from Tuvalu. A small nation whose Climate Minister Seve Paeniu told delegates that his island home is ‘literally sinking’.
His compatriot Simon Kofe, Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister, delivered his filmed speech for maximum impact. He appeared behind a lectern whilst waves from the Pacific Ocean lapped around his legs. We can see that those most affected by climate change have a platform at COP26. They are ‘given’ the appearance of equality in the process. However, in the words of one activist, they are not heard. It is this not hearing that means small nations are still having to fight at the very last knockings to gain some equity in climate change outcomes from the largest nations.
It was the youngest climate activists who have called out the UK Presidency, for their failure to truly deliver the shared power and equity that is needed to combat that the most pressing issue the world faces. Laura Aguilar from Colombia told CNBC that COP26 has been ‘even uglier than I imagined. It is based on racism and classism and discrimination by the Global North.’
She went on to say that the UK, as the COP presidency should ‘say sorry to people from the low- and middle-income countries for their lack of accessibility, for their lack of commitment’.
It’s at this point, people will say, COP26 isn’t co-production. They can point the finger and say faux pro because it didn’t deliver on the fundamentals: an equal space for all stakeholders where everyone has an equal voice.
Yet, I would argue that it is still a co-productive process. In the act of bringing people together to work collectively on a plan for the future of the world itself, COP26 has surfaced the power differentials and biases that are often hidden by warm words and political spin. That familiar place the media hypnotises the masses into where those with power say one thing, yet do another.
I am the first to agree that co-production as a process is not a perfect one. It does not, yet, have a mechanism for divesting itself of all the problematic perspectives people can bring to the work. In COP26, co-production is not a process in which rich western leaders stepped off their private planes and straight out of all their privilege. They brought it with them. They bring it in them.
But it is in these interactions, and I include every single climate activist not invited into the hall but standing outside on the streets of Glasgow in these interactions, that surface those colonial standpoints that are so embedded we don’t see them.
They are invisible to many people, despite infecting so much of public life and western government. Why else, for example, would Simon Kofe from Tuvalu be standing in the Pacific Ocean speaking in English to an international audience?
As I say, it’s bringing people together in this way that will help us see those biases. As Professor Maslin said, it’s ‘exciting’ to sense that smaller interests can, in this process, exercise power and more importantly prevail based on their own lived experience of climate change. I am too jaded by structural power imbalances to be excited. But I remain hopeful. I remain interested and engaged in co-production as a process to deliver change. As I type, COP26 continues. The outcome is uncertain. Tuvalu is still surrounded by rising water.
What I have learned from COP26, is that co-production can happen on a global scale. I’m also interested to note that the international process mirrors what I often find in local co-productive projects. I think the best way I can describe is this. Those directly affected bring the passion and their truth and hang in there in a process that doesn’t always deliver on the promises of equality and inclusion. Those with the least to lose, who arrive with the most power and privilege, fail to articulate their learning. And it’s this which makes me wonder how much they transform their personal perspectives and behaviours from being in the process.
Most assuredly, the world is waiting on it.
