The Singaporean social entrepreneur shares her first-hand experience of the optimism and paradoxes of the major climate conference
“It is not until the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten, and the last stream poisoned that we will realise that we cannot eat money.”
I was no older than 17 when I saw this Native American quote engraved on a decorative wooden tile at the Singapore Zoo. It popped into my head time and time again when I was in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt attending the inaugural Singapore Pavilion at the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) as a panellist.
It first came to my mind when I was being driven through perfectly manicured boulevards dotted with neon palm trees, set against a backdrop of alternating souvenir shops and sprawling resorts with outlandish names like Royal Albatross, Rixos or Charmillion on what should have been barren desert.
It came to me when I realised that 44,000 attendees had flown into Egypt to make this the second most attended COP in history, on planes that guzzle 14,400 litres of fuel per hour.
I thought about it again when I saw fridges fully stocked with products from Coca-Cola, which is both the world’s worst plastic polluter and a sponsor of the world’s largest climate conference.
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It also came to me when I was reading speculations that 400 private jets had made their way into this little desert outpost at the Southernmost tip of the Sinai Peninsula.
But perhaps, it was sitting through the long negotiations that were the essence of the conference that the full impact of the quote hit me.
One negotiation on if there should be targeted help for the female population in a climate crisis that disproportionately impacts them almost stalled as an aggrieved party thought the proposal was “not doing enough for women and girls”.
Another negotiation saw small islands and developing nations demand justice in the form of the US$100 billion in climate funding promised to them 13 years ago at COP15, only to be asked for empathy and time from one of their developed counterparts.
In all these moments, I sat wondering, how many more trees need to be cut down, fish have to disappear and streams poisoned before we realise what the Cree people knew so long ago—that we cannot eat money?
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