Reversing climate leadership: an ethnographic account of the European Union’s U-turn on loss and damage at COP 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh

The European Union was among the first from the Global North to accept the Global South’s proposal to construct a Loss and Damage fund at the UNFCCC’s Conference of Parties in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2022. The establishment of this fund has, however, long been a red line for the EU’s negotiation strategy. So why did the EU accept the proposal, even though it remained convinced that the existing infrastructure was better suited to deal with the issue? Building on the literature of the EU’s leadership in climate negotiations, and an ethnographic account of my personal experience as a EU delegate at the COP, I argue that the EU accepted the proposal because of three interrelated reasons: First, it strived not to be seen as an actor blocking the negotiations after the failure of such a proposal at COP in Glasgow. Second, the EU became aware that several Umbrella Group members were willing to support the fund and did not want to be left behind. Third, the EU traded the establishment of the fund for a limited support for several of its own priorities. These findings reverse the understanding of climate leadership. Instead of treating it as a dependent variable (an outcome of the EU’s actions), it shows how leadership conditioned the EU’s negotiation strategy. This paves the way for future research on the EU’s climate leadership and, at the same time, provides a firsthand experience of the Loss and Damage negotiations at COP27 in Egypt.