Fletcher Deans Talk COP27: Implementation COP, Africa COP or Finance COP?
By Vishal Manve
On November 30, 2022, The Fletcher School at Tufts University hosted a Post COP27 Debrief session with Dean Rachel Kyte, Academic Dean Kelly Sims Gallagher, and student delegates to document successes and failures at COP 27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, at the end of the two-week conference in November 2022.
Kickstarting the event, Dean Rachel Kyte recounted how COP 27 was the second-biggest COP with 50,000 people convened in the middle of a desert. “There were multiple perspectives based on your vantage point and depending on how you looked at what the COP stands for and where we are in the climate crisis,” Dean Kyte said.
She further questioned if COP 27 resulted in the “gas industry making sure it came across as a clean or cleaner energy solution, depending on which text you read” or if it was the Africa COP based on developing countries engaging in clever climate diplomacy.
Dean Kyte also noted the historic agreement on Loss and Damage engineered because of “Pakistan's stubbornness and refusal to be kicked to the side” but further questioned the stymied progress on the global goal of adaptation.
“This was supposed to be an implementation COP. In the run-up to Paris, COPs had to do one thing but in the time between Paris (2015) and the agreements on the rulebook, COPs had to do another thing. Now, COPs' to-do lists have increased with accountability being a crucial part of it,” Dean Kyte said.
She further emphasized how “governments are tasked with negotiations and engaging in trade fairs for action and involving themselves in advocacy.”
“The finance discussion became a profoundly different discussion and a year ago, the private sector arrived with capital and asked for investment direction but that has not happened because most countries do not have regulations administration in place or effective pricing on carbon in their economies,” Kyte added.
Meanwhile, Dean Gallagher kickstarted the conversation with a focus on how far the COPs have progressed since they were convened for the first time.
“I first went to COP 2 and after college when I was working for an environmental NGO and there were 1500 people. The big COP was COP 3 when the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997 and everyone was shocked because there were 5000 people. Now when we go to COPs, the final tally is close to 50,000 people which is a bewildering experience,” Dean Gallagher said.
Gallagher further said how this felt like a “climate finance COP with the focus on establishing a new fund for Loss and Damage” but questioned the lack of further details on which countries would be contributing to the fund.
“There was a part of negotiations that focused on establishing and achieving a new goal for climate finance that goes beyond the $100 billion that was enshrined in the Paris agreement and the negotiations were slow and unproductive and will conclude next year,” Gallagher added.
“I was surprised that there were no calls for Middle-Income countries like UAE, Saudi Arabia, China, etc to contribute to global climate finance. Countries that are still under G 77 and hence have no obligation under the convention to contribute to climate finance for developing countries but have the capability and moral obligation as big fossil fuel producers and emitters,” Dean Gallagher further explained.
Gallagher questioned the role of the private sector in its inability to deliver accountable climate finance, therefore resulting in “gigantic greenwashing”. Though, Dean Gallagher highlighted some major developments including U.S. President Joe Biden’s doubling of adaptation finance initiatives but explained how it lacked scale due to the fund increasing from $50 million to just $100 million.
“We have a very big financing gap and no real answers for developing countries on how they can actually pursue a low-carbon resilient model and get the financing they need to support economic growth in a climate-constrained world,” Gallagher added.
Professor Gallagher further highlighted how there had been negligible change in country NDCs based on UN Emission Gap reports, and with the current emission pathways, the world was on track for a 2.8-degree centigrade rise in emissions by the end of the current century, confounding the climate crisis further.
“We are not even close to being on track and there is no movement on keeping track, which is concerning,” Gallagher spoke of implementation policies for country-level NDCs’.
On JETP, Dean Gallagher highlighted concerns about “saddling developing countries with additional debt and not offering them adequate finance and how JETPs would be instituted for biggest emitters and not for everybody else.”
Post Doctoral Fellow Abay Yimere and MALD candidate Eda Kosma were on the panel offering their insights.
“This time, agriculture was discussed at COP, which is important for Africa and the nature of the discussion could help developing countries. It was good but had its own limitations,” Yimere added.
He further added how COP 27 was insufficient in progress for developing countries including countries in Africa, specific lack of focus on mitigation. He further highlighted how this resulted in more “bilateral engagements between developing countries.”
Eda highlighted how her focus was on the Global Stocktake mechanism, written into the Paris Agreement.
“The global stocktake has this difficult task of finding a way to put pressure on countries to catalyze the ambition by assessing collective progress of the international community on goals of the Paris Agreement and defining progress has been a big challenge,” Kosma added.
Concluding the discussions, Dean Gallagher spotlighted the urgent need for a south-south climate finance conversation that was at the margins at COP 27.
“When the UNFCCC was negotiated and adopted in 1992, there were some countries that were nowhere close to where they are today in terms of emissions. In 2000, there has been tremendous growth in emissions and currently, we have enormous needs in terms of less developed countries. The onus is on these countries to come up with a different approach, Gallagher highlighted.
“We can take a nationally determined approach to climate finance and domestic finance and help break through bifurcated regime where advanced industrialized countries are mobilizing finance. These developing countries can bring in the private sector on a national basis into climate financing,” Gallagher concluded.
You can watch the whole session here. ∎
Vishal Manve is a MALD Candidate at the Fletcher School.