Taking Stock of COP28
Kelly and CPL delegation with research partners from Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, and India
The end of the first week of the annual climate negotiations nearly always produces a feeling of malaise and pessimism. And sure enough, as we conclude the first week of COP28 in Dubai, the progress in the global climate negotiations seems too slow, the outcomes too uncertain, and the whole scene to be strangely divorced from reality (or perhaps a true reflection of the actual political pressures on the process). The main concrete progress in the first week, on the first day, was on operationalizing the Loss and Damage Fund, with some initial pledges made by Europe ($250 million +), the United States ($17.5 million), and a few other countries. The US also made a pledge to the Green Climate Fund of $3 billion (with no clarity how it will pay for it given Congressional opposition).
This next week will be (another) make or break moment for the UNFCCC. Trust in the process is especially weak due to the COP28 President’s now-revealed conflict of interest and the plain fact that global emissions are still rising and setting new records. It’s the right time for the Global Stocktake to be taking place. This year people, wildlife, and plants endured record high temperatures and the world came too close to hitting the limit set by negotiators in Paris of 1.5 degrees C. Negotiators not only need to take stock of the adequacy of progress against the goals of the Paris Agreement, but also whether the global COP process itself is adequate to the task and what else might be needed to make more rapid progress.
Kelly meeting with Ethiopia’s Energy Minister, Habtamu Itefa
The disconnect between the relentless math about the remaining global emissions budget if we wish to avoid 1.5 degrees warming and the fact that many countries are not on track to achieve their Paris Agreement pledges, the fact that not nearly enough public or private finance is flowing to cleaner energy in developing countries, the reluctance of governments, private actors, and philanthropies to invest in adaptation (notwithstanding the great new initiative announced by ClimateWorks) even when unprecedented warming and climate disruption is obviously already here all contributed to my sense of passing through an artificial reality at the COP. This sense of living in an AI-created world was reinforced by the strangeness of having a petro-state hosting the climate negotiations and where energy-intensive outdoor air conditioners pumped cooler air on overheated participants.
If the COP fails to reach an agreement coming out of the Global Stocktake, it will be another Copenhagen moment when governments did not seem up to the task of acting in time to prevent real harm. The question then becomes not whether to abandon the UNFCCC process altogether, but rather what else is needed. And even if the COP does reach an agreement, complementary action is most certainly needed.
Kelly Sims Gallagher is Dean an interim and a Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy at The Fletcher School, Tufts University. She is also the Director of the Climate Policy Lab.