Climate Adaptation Finance Policy's Role at COP26
By Tarun Gopalakrishnan
The COP has become a large gathering including academics, activists and businesspeople, but inter-governmental negotiations remain at its core. These negotiations produce decisions that are often described as vague, incomprehensible and ‘watered down.’ This impression comes from comparing COP decisions to national policies or legislations (which are their own genre of esoteric, but more ‘readable’ on the whole).
This was my third COP, having attended my first (Paris in 2015) during my time in the Fletcher MALD. Over time, I came to understand a COP decision as an ‘agenda which sets other agendas’ – at parliaments, caucuses, boardrooms (and eventually, even around dinner-tables). At once, this makes COP negotiations very abstract, but also inherently and unavoidably political – leading to the oft-ridiculed spectacle of negotiators spending hours arguing over action verbs (‘requests’ or ‘directs’) or the merits of a technical committee versus a working group.
Personally, while I often need time to understand the nuances and implications of what is being discussed, I have never found the substance of the discussions particularly incomprehensible. The impact on human lives of a “process to set a goal on climate finance” is roughly analogous to that of a “continuing resolution to fund the [US] federal government while negotiations on the debt ceiling continue.” It is simply one ‘level of governance’ further away from the grassroots, but a level which is necessary because of the global collective action nature of the climate problem.
At COP26, I was most interested in the issue of climate adaptation finance - my PhD dissertation topic. Adaptation is a particularly interesting aspect of climate policy because it is inherently so ‘local’ – the best decision-making and solutions are those tailored to particular community and geographic realities. While emissions reduction has an inherently ‘global’ aspect – because greenhouse emissions released anywhere warm the whole planet – adaptation sometimes struggles for a comparable ‘internationalizing’ rationale.
One obvious rationale is finance – the most climate-vulnerable need finance to adapt, which is recognised in the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement. While the exact amount needed is highly uncertain - and dependent on the success of emissions reduction efforts - it has been clear for at least a decade that the amount being made available is orders of magnitude less than that needed.
Fletcher School research fellows Tarun Gopalakrishnan and Hengrui Liu in Glasgow
This disparity came to a head at COP26 – I had the opportunity to observe vulnerable countries, led by Bangladesh, insisting firmly on a quadrupling of available adaptation finance. This was resisted by developed countries reluctant to discuss not just numbers (e.g., $50 billion), but even the concept of numerical signposts (e.g., double finance over current levels). The final decision text refers to a doubling of adaptation finance - limited but significant progress.
That deliberation illustrates the continuing developed/developing divide. My dissertation effort aims to show how negotiations can proceed based on a new ‘internationalizing’ rationale that may reduce some of this polarization. The core idea is this – the rules by which adaptation finance flows from developed to developing countries are also, in a sense, the rules by which adaptation finance flows to vulnerable and marginalized communities within developed countries.
From this view, fair rules that recognize vulnerability and historic inequity - and avoid placing excessive demands on vulnerable communities to articulate their needs in unrealistically specific and quantified ways - is in the interest of all governments (at least all those which are accountable to their people). Apart from appropriate metrics and methodologies, an important component of ‘fairness’ is the question of who gets to decide where and how finance flows.
This aspect of fairness was also in the spotlight at COP26. The US made a $50 million commitment to the Adaptation Fund, a welcome-if-belated recognition of the importance of adaptation. However, the US is also reported to want a seat on the Adaptation Fund’s board, which has historically been a board evenly balanced between developed and developing countries.
This issue was discussed (very obliquely) in negotiations around whether a country which is not party to the Kyoto Protocol (i.e., the US) could sit on the board of a Fund created under the Protocol. The simple solution has always been a procedural decision that expands Board eligibility to countries which are part of the Paris Agreement – which the US is. This ‘simple’ solution has been dragged out because of a very pertinent political question – should a country be allowed to hold decision-making power over international climate finance, when its commitment to climate agreements is constantly in question?
An international relations ‘realist’ would suggest that the US’ financial clout requires it to be included in such decisions; a critical theorist would counter that the same clout should be cause for caution and suspicion. My view is that there is no black-and-white answer to whether the US will be a positive or negative influence on the Adaptation Fund board. The real answer lies in whether the American body politic internalizes the need for equity and fairness in adaptation finance, at home and abroad. ∎
Tarun Gopalakrishnan is a junior fellow at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.