Post-Mortem: Imagine If COP26 Had Been Guided by the Equity Sequence™

by Suhlle Ahn

In a much-publicized speech at the opening of the 26th Conference of the Parties at Glasgow, Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Amor Mottley made an impassioned plea to her fellow leaders in attendance to “try harder.” 

“Try harder,” she said, “because our people, the climate army, the world, the planet, need our actions now—not next year, not in the next decade.”

Moments before, she had remarked:

“Today we need the correct mix of voices, ambition, and action. Do some leaders in this world believe that they can survive and thrive on their own? Have they not learned from the pandemic? Can there be peace and prosperity if one third of the world—literally—prospers and the other two thirds of the world live under siege and face calamitous threats to our well-being?...

Our world, my friends, stands at a fork in the road—one no less significant than when the United Nations was formed in 1945. But then, the majority of our countries here did not exist. We exist now. The difference is we want to exist 100 years from now. And if our existence is to mean anything, then we must act in the interest of all of our people who are dependent on us. And if we don’t, we will allow the path of greed and selfishness to sow the seeds of our common destruction. The leaders of today—not 2030, not 2050—must make this choice. It is in our hands…

For those who have eyes to see, for those who have ears to listen, and for those who have a heart to feel, 1.5 is what we need to survive. Two degrees, yes, S.G., is a death sentence for the people of Antigua and Barbuda, for the people of the Maldives, for the people of Dominica and Fiji, for the people of Kenya and Mozambique, and yes, for the people of Samoa and Barbados. We do not want that dreaded death sentence.”

Sadly, although consensus isn’t universal that the summit was a failure, it’s nearly universal among serious climate watchers and activists that the conference itself—criticized by many as “the most exclusionary COP ever”—and the final COP26 agreement, largely failed to meet the moment. 

What if, I couldn’t help but imagine—because I’ve been steeped in thinking about the Equity Sequence™ and its relevance to the most pressing forms of inequality weighing on the world today—what if those with decision-making power had truly applied Equity Sequence™ thinking and Equity Sequence™ questioning in drafting the Glasgow Climate Pact? 

What if those in whose hands decision-making power rested had thought deeply about the inequity between that one third of the world who are making policy decisions, and that other two thirds whose fates are being sealed by those decisions?

What if those decision-makers had put equity at the forefront of values in crafting a deal? 

What if they had asked themselves the five simple Equity Sequence™ questions?

What if they had taken time to consider the many voices not included and not consulted, and the voices implicitly included, like those of the fossil fuel industry?

And what if, in asking and challenging themselves in this way, they had felt compelled to answer with candor, and in so doing, they’d felt enough conscience and sense of urgency to try to reach a different outcome? 

Instead, we have what is, and what might have been. 

For those who wonder about the power of Equity Sequence™ to spark transformative change, perhaps this imagined COP26 can serve as a motivating thought experiment. Because it is exactly this kind of consequential decision-making that ought to be made with Equity Sequence™ thinking—with democratized intent—at its core. 

True, no amount of probing is going to open the eyes or ears or hearts (to quote Mia Mottley) of someone dead set against seeing, hearing, or feeling. A bad faith actor can dance around any question, answer disingenuously, and fail to see when the most obvious answer is in front of their nose, begging to be seen.

But if enough good faith actors can be rallied; persuaded to ask and answer with honest intent; and motivated to act accordingly, in good faith and with collective force, then those of us who can imagine a more equitable outcome have to maintain hope that one is still possible. 

In his own post-mortem on the summit, Guardian columnist and environmental activist George Monbiot gave a stark and unsparing assessment of the outcome, calling it more like a “suicide pact” than a climate pact, and stating bluntly that our only hope now of staying within the 1.5C mark lies in the possibility of triggering a sudden shift in public opinion and social behavior. 

How?

By getting enough of the population—25%, apparently—to CARE enough.

As Monbiot puts it:

“There’s an aspect of human nature that is simultaneously terrible and hopeful: most people side with the status quo, whatever it may be. A critical threshold is reached when a certain proportion of the population change their views. Other people sense that the wind has changed, and tack around to catch it.”

What happens at this point?

According to Monbiot, human-created systems, like natural systems, can suddenly flip. And massive changes in social convention and behavior can follow rapidly.

He further calls out:

 “A fascinating paper published in January in the journal Climate Policy showed how we could harness the power of “domino dynamics”: non-linear change, proliferating from one part of the system to another. It points out that “cause and effect need not be proportionate”, a small disturbance, in the right place, can trigger a massive response from a system and flip it into a new state. This is how the global financial crisis of 2008-09 happened: a relatively minor shock (mortgage defaults in the US) was transmitted and amplified through the entire system, almost bringing it down. We could use this property to detonate positive change.”

Or, to quote Greta Thunberg, who tweeted the following on the Monday after the Glasgow summit: 

“A reminder: the people in power don’t need conferences, treaties or agreements to start taking real climate action. They can start today. When enough people come together then change will come and we can achieve almost anything. So instead of looking for hope - start creating it.” 

Seen in the rearview mirror, Glasgow may turn out to have been a momentous decision-making opportunity for creating greater equity squandered. But if Monbiot and Greta Thunberg are right, countless new decision-making opportunities large and small are about to be created by countless numbers of people in reaction, and as a consequence. So there is still time to inject and invest these decisions to come with the energy of untapped voices, and to make them with greater equity in mind.