The 28th UN climate change conference concluded on December 12th. After two weeks of negotiations, a declaration was adopted, marking a significant yet somewhat diluted step towards abandoning fossil fuels and transitioning to renewable energy sources. Read more about the outcomes of the first week of negotiations in our piece.
The COP28 conference could have served as a crucial turning point towards ending the fossil fuel era for good. However, with a record number of oil industry lobbyists in attendance, it resulted in another year of no accountability for “polluters,” while the planet inches closer to 1.5 degrees of global warming.
The 21-page document, born out of intense negotiations, underscores the imperative to “divest from fossil fuels in energy systems” and achieve zero emissions by 2050. Nevertheless, this falls short of the comprehensive divestment many anticipated. Is this language indicative of progress compared to the previous draft, or is it a manifestation of political indecision?
The final declaration also urges countries to take significant steps towards achieving climate neutrality, including tripling renewable energy and doubling energy efficiency by 2030. Regrettably, it also leaves room for false solutions such as nuclear power or carbon capture and storage.
Climate financing
One of the most contentious issues at COP28 was climate finance for climate action. Civil society demanded new and additional contributions from developed countries to cover losses and damages from the climate crisis in developing countries.
However, developed countries failed to meet their commitment to mobilize $100 billion per year until 2020. Negotiations at COP28 have not yielded the expected results, despite increased climate finance from the EU.
The Global Stocktake (GST) calls on developed member states to urgently fully meet the target of $100 billion per year until 2025. In particular, there is a serious funding gap for adaptation, despite the growing needs of the most vulnerable countries and communities. This is why public funding through grants is essential. COP28 should have provided a clear roadmap and progress on COP26’s commitment to double adaptation funding from 2019 levels by 2025. However, this was not achieved in either the climate finance decisions or the Global Adaptation Goal.
Another important aspect was the negotiation of the New collective quantitative goal, the successor to the 100 billion dollar goal. Negotiations have been slow and unproductive, and instead of progress, the parties have only been able to agree on the procedural outcomes of the process in 2024, which puts enormous pressure on COP29, where the target is to be finalized. Developed countries have also been unwilling to commit to higher and more specific numbers and have tried to shift the burden to other funding sources and actors.
Loss and Damage Fund
In the first few days of COP28, funding was announced to launch a Loss and Damage Fund. The establishment of such a fund, despite significant flaws in its design, coupled with initial commitments of USD 655 million, and including USD 300-400 million from the EU in aggregate, is a positive step. However, the contributions from developed countries remain a drop in the ocean and are largely drawn from existing climate finance budgets and development programs that should go towards mitigation, adaptation and human development.
In addition to multi-billion dollar public financial grant commitments, the fund will need new sustainable sources of funding in the form of revenues from fair taxes and fees that will make big polluters pay. COP also created a new task force on international taxation, led by France and Kenya, which includes taxes on fossil fuels, aviation, maritime transportation, and financial transactions. However, as this initiative is outside the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) or any UN process, it is important that it and any other initiative reflect the principles of equity and tax justice and support parallel efforts to create a UN tax convention.
Global Adaptation Goal
The Global Adaptation Goal framework gives Parties an idea of how to move towards achieving the goal. However, despite a two-year work program and eight workshops, the framework lacks tangible global targets and sufficient or effective commitments on the means of implementation – primarily financial – and a collective commitment to create a sustainable future. At the very least, the global goal calls for developed country parties to prepare a report on doubling their collective assistance to developing countries between 2019 and 2025, but this is not in line with the required roadmap. The GCA also calls for a ministerial dialog on adaptation finance by COP29.
In 2024, COP will be held in Azerbaijan, one of the world’s major oil producing countries. We hope that the organization of the conference will allow Azerbaijan to make decisions on diversifying the country’s energy sector, rather than becoming a platform to promote the interests of oil companies.
Opinions of our network members:
Nugzar Kokhreidze, Chairman of the CAN EECCA Board, Chairman of the Research-Intellectual Club “Dialogue of Generations”, Georgia:
“COP28 was a challenging conference because, along with the climate crisis, it took place against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian and the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war. The issues of climate change and human rights violations are inextricably linked and therefore both crises need to be addressed. There are positive developments as a result of the conference, but they are not as high as the situation around the tangible climate changes being recorded in the world requires. However, the work continues and we, as representatives of civil society organizations, must do everything to ensure that significant steps forward are made at COP29 in Azerbaijan.”
Olha Boiko, CAN EECCA Coordinator:
“The fact that we still managed to include language on phasing out fossil fuels in the final COP28 decision says a lot about the collective strength of civil society advocacy. We have passed the “what” threshold and are now at the “how” level. CAN EECCA supports the call for a rapid, just and complete divestment from fossil fuels and stands ready to intensify our efforts to achieve this goal at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. At the next COP, we will have to face three huge challenges that affect the possibility of achieving an ambitious outcome: the growing number of fossil fuel lobbyists, the oppression of civil society and the military conflicts that are spreading around the world. We must be prepared to side with those who are fighting for their livelihoods, knowing that in the same room there are people fighting for new oil deals.”
Alexey Kokorin, climatologist, international consultant:
“The conference is certainly not a grand success, but definitely not a failure. It is a step forward in the right direction. For most countries the Loss and Damage Fund is a good solution. This is especially true for Central Asia, which provides access to all countries. There is also interest in nature and ecosystems. Support for these measures could be greater, despite the detachment from carbon reduction. It is important to emphasize that projects to protect nature and improve ecosystems can be implemented with financial support. The global outcomes have not yet been agreed, but there are logical steps towards a transition away from fossil fuel energy.”
