‘Unfortunately the global warming hysteria, as I see it, is driven by politics more than by science.’
– Freeman Dyson, 1923-2020, Princeton University mathematician.
When the Sultan who presided over the fairly successful climate talks in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), looked back on Wednesday at the two-week parley, he pinpointed one day and one event that he thought put it on the right path. It was the majlis that he convened that Sunday. A majlis, from the Arabic word for a sitting place, is a tradition in the Gulf region that’s older than Islam.
For much of COP — as the Conference of the Parties, the United Nations-sponsored gathering dedicated to fighting climate change is called — Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber was all over the place trying to form what he termed the UAE “consensus.”
He had come under fire for having recently said that there was “no science” (I dubbed it as ‘nonsense stats’ in a meeting earlier) behind the idea that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures would require ending fossil fuel production.
“And then we became the first COP to host a change-makers majlis,” Al Jaber said. “And I felt that that was the turning point in our negotiations. You reconnected with your spirit of collaboration, you got out of your comfort zones, and started speaking to each other from the heart.”
“That,” he said, “made the difference.”
Could a majlis do all that? Or did the Sultan overstate the benefits of the majlis because it was kind of his thing? I looked into these questions and came away thinking that the Sultan was onto something. The majlis is a tradition of the Arab world that just might have a role on the world stage.
A majlis (pronounced MAHJ-liss) is both a place and an event. It is the place in an Arab home where people sit with guests. Often, the richer the homeowner, the bigger the majlis. Traditionally, there are carpets, cushions, a teapot, and an incense burner. In a majlis, people don’t rush to do business. Sociable sitting is part of the experience.
My colleague Amer Hamzah told me he once attended a majlis in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia that involved a deep discussion of “The Brothers Karamazov,” the Russian novel.
The majlis originated in Arabia and spread with Islam to North Africa as well as to non-Arab nations such as Iran, Turkey, and Indonesia. In more democratic nations with elected legislatures, the lawmaking body is often called a majlis.
That brings us up to Dubai and the Sultan.
Considering that Al Jaber is the president of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), I think he deserves credit for cajoling delegates from nearly 200 countries to, for the first time, approve a pact that calls for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
In his closing address, he thanked delegates “who met me at 4 and 5 am.” When does this guy sleep?
The majlis on Sunday, which involved delegates sitting in concentric rings (no head of the table!), didn’t seem at first glance too different from other gatherings at COP28. Climate diplomats from France, Australia, and the United Kingdom, among others, strongly advocated phasing out fossil fuels, while we (Goldman Sachs) just as strongly opposed doing so. It wasn’t “Kumbaya.”
But the Sultan may have been right that there was more speaking from the heart than usual. The gathering seemed to evoke a more personal, emotional tone, and confidences were shared.
The reason you can imagine a majlis working is that there’s a certain resemblance between international forums and the desert culture in which the majlis was born centuries ago. In both cases, no one is clearly in charge. In ancient Arabia, tribal leaders who had conflicts couldn’t appeal to some higher authority. They had to work things out among themselves. Likewise, in the modern world, nobody can order China to stop building coal-fired generating plants. There is no higher authority — certainly not the United Nations (UN) — that can tell sovereign nations what to do. They need to work things out among themselves.
Modern majlis might be able to resolve disputes — and help save the planet — by drawing on sources of authority beyond one-person, one-vote democracy. Trust that’s built up over time, for one. A majlis is also a natural forum for scientific experts, religious leaders, and economists to be heard and heeded.
I asked Amer what he thought about the Sultan’s majlis. He said he knew Al Jaber and worked with him on a renewable energy project in Mauritania. “I think it’s a great idea… We need more majlis.”
In modern diplomacy, he said, “There’s just a complete lack of regard for expertise and any type of leadership. The majlis is based on a kind of decorum. Some things are unacceptable in a majlis, such as backbiting and speaking ill of people. There’s a hushed aspect to it. People speak in a very respectful, formal way. Each situation is going to be unique.”
American economist Elinor Ostrom, who won a Nobel Prize in economics in 2009, showed how ranchers, fishermen, and others had devised clever ways to cooperate without appealing to the government and to avoid the tragedy of the commons, which is the overexploitation of shared resources. One way they built the necessary trust was through what Ostrom called “cheap talk,” which is simple communication.
“More cooperation occurs than predicted, ‘cheap talk’ increases cooperation, and subjects invest in sanctioning free riders,” she told us during a seminar in my final year at the university.
The trust-building communication that Ostrom put her finger on in the seminar seems like the kind of talk that occurs in a majlis.
I don’t want to overstate the accomplishments of COP28. It leaves a lot of wiggle room. Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi energy minister, was claiming that the agreement “left space for countries to choose their way” on fossil fuels. I also don’t want to make too much of the role of the majlis in reaching the deal. The majlis should not be a replacement for democracy but a complement to it. In that role, I think it could be quite useful.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
