Reflecting on COP27

By Lily Hartzell

The Fletcher MALD delegates at COP27

I just returned from COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and I have been reflecting on an interaction I had with a colleague at Fletcher before I left. Upon learning that this was to be my second time attending COP (I went to COP26 last year in Glasgow as well), he commented that attending for a second time will give me a trend line as opposed to an isolated data point. 

Indeed, comparing COP26 and COP27 has been instructive. I found this year’s conference to be much more scattered than last year’s. The Glasgow conference was focused on establishing a political mandate to raise ambition. I attended during the second week when the Glasgow Pact was being negotiated, culminating in an agreement to cement the 1.5 degree warming target and commit to phasing down fossil fuels. 

Sharm el-Sheikh aimed to follow up on this with an “implementation COP.” This lent the conference a different tone: countries and institutions were coming together to share what they had done over the last year. Goals have been set, and now it is time to achieve them. Particularly during the first week of the conference, this meant there were a lot of different announcements and workstreams to focus on. Together, however, I think they do represent progress.

Lily with Fletcher alum Alexia Latortue, Assistant Secretary of Treasury for Trade and Development

My focus at the conference was on finance, so I’ll pull some examples from that arena. One area of progress demonstrated at COP27 was on standard-setting. Hundreds of companies have pledged to become net-zero by 2050, but there is no clear understanding of how they should be held accountable to these targets, or even what “net-zero” means in a corporate context. To fill this gap, the UN Secretary General commissioned a High Level Expert Group to develop a set of standards that were published at COP27. The resulting report sets an appropriately high bar for companies to ensure that net-zero claims do not just become greenwashing: companies have to set interim targets every five years; their claims must include scope one, two, and three emissions; and companies must report their progress. While the standards are not binding, they represent an important step in ensuring the private sector provides more than lip service to climate change.

Another area of implementation progress is in the reform of multilateral development banks (MDBs). I was able to sit in on meetings with the Inter-American Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank, both of which are reorienting themselves to prioritize climate change and mobilize maximum private investment. They are reimagining the role MDBs can play to encompass public goods instead of focusing exclusively on country development. These individual reforms are lending momentum to a wider movement to reform the Bretton Woods system to align the trillions already in the international financial system with Paris goals.

The larger negotiated outcomes of Sharm el-Sheikh have yet to be decided, but it is clear that progress is being made in implementation of climate finance. The looming question, of course, is whether it will happen fast enough. ∎

Lily Hartzell is a MALD student at The Fletcher School.

Lily introducing herself at a morning meeting for research and independent NGOs (RINGO)

Women in leadership at COP27, including Dean Kyte and Reta Jo Lewis, President of U.S. ExIm