My job as Kenya climate change negotiator - Okumu

Michael Okumu has been at the core of climate change negotiations on behalf of Kenya since 2016.  

He and other climate change negotiators have been busy since November 6 last week when the 27th Conference of Parties (COP27) climate change summit started.

The Star caught up with him as he was leaving an African Group Negotiators (AGN) briefing for African ministers in readiness for the ministerial phase of the negotiations at the ongoing COP27 in Sharma El Sheikh, Egypt.

Before he could get into another meeting, Okumu shared his experience as a climate negotiator for the last six years.

He is the deputy director in charge of climate change negotiations and he coordinates all the negotiators in COP and ensures that Kenya gets the best out of every COP.

Okumu’s day starts at 8am and depending on the intensity of the negotiations, he can end his day as late as midnight.

Why climate change negotiations

Okumu said climate change is a global challenge that has no boundaries. In 1992, parties came together to form what is called the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The convention, he said, helps countries share ideas and come up with solutions to tackling the global problem.

“For the individual countries, however mighty or rich you are, it is impossible for people to individually address climate change. So as a result, parties had to agree on what policies, actions and strategies to put in place to reduce global emissions,” he said.

Okumu explained that this is because climate change is caused by global emissions, and the emissions arise due to human activities including transport or energy.

He said different countries have different circumstances and this therefore means that countries have to agree on how they can work together to control global emissions.

“So as such, every year, countries that are party to the UNFCCC come together to discuss and agree on the best policies to put in place at individual country level or globally to address emissions,” Okumu said.  

He said the impacts of climate change being experienced today are due to the anthropogenic activities of developed countries.

Okumu said developed countries have over a period of time been releasing quite a lot of emissions into the atmosphere. In the process, he said, they have ended up interfering with the climate system, resulting in extreme weather events.  

“The emissions that we are releasing as developing countries today will end up affecting our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. That is why we need to work together as countries to address emissions,” the negotiator said.

He said countries have different interests but the convention and the Paris Agreement states that developed countries who are responsible for these problems are supposed to support developing countries to implement climate change mitigation and adaptation activities.

“Unfortunately, this is where the war normally is in the negotiations. The developed countries try to run away from that responsibility, but we the developing countries try to push them to take the responsibility and provide the financing that is necessary to do various things,” Okumu said. 

“This is where push and pull normally is. They do not do what they are supposed to do, so we have to push them to accept that.” 

He said there is a growing trend where presidents of developed countries give beautiful speeches on how serious they are in tackling climate, and how much they are willing to do to fight climate change.

“But when we now retreat as parties to the negotiation halls, it becomes difficult for the developed countries to put most of these good things that their leaders promised into pen and paper because they will be held accountable and that is where we normally struggle," Okumu said.  

 Negotiators at COP27

So far, Kenya has about 40 negotiators at the ongoing COP27. He said in the past three to four years, the country has tried to build the capacity of negotiators by first bringing in people with technical expertise in various thematic areas.

“After that, we ensure that we understand the items to be discussed properly. We normally have pre-COP workshops where we develop the capacity of the negotiators. We identify the items, the right people, then we develop that capacity to get indepth and understand what is on the table for discussion,” Okumu explained.

After that, he said they come up with ‘country positions’. This is basically a response to the items on the table as per the Kenyan policy.

“After we have done the country position, we need also to engage with the African Group of Negotiators so that we influence that position, which will be a position of 54 African countries. So it is stronger than the Kenyan position," he said.

In this COP27, there are 175 thematic items being discussed and each of the thematic item may have a legal issue. To address this, we come up with teams of people who are knowledgeable in each of the thematic areas.  

At the negotiating table, he said, there are professionals from academia, civil society, government and international organisations.

“So far we have about 40 negotiators and these are people from the private sector, civil society and non-government officials,” he said.  

Okumu said there are still many items which have not been agreed upon.

He said this week the negotiations will be at the ministerial level where in the next two or three days, ministers will have discussions on those particular areas that technical people were not able to agree on.

African ministers will be making political decisions on certain technical issues.

He said this means the sessions will now be shared by ministers and not by technical people.

“Some of these decisions will be made either in closed door meetings or some late at night. Unfortunately, this is where Africa or developing countries miss the mark. This is because most of our ministers may not be able to stay for that long due to fund limitations or due to other urgent issues to address elsewhere,” Okumu said.

“This is a crucial week. We have handed over the battle to the ministers so that they can take up from where we left and push the African agenda in the political segment." 

This article has been published with support from MESHA/IDRC grant for the coverage of COP-27.