2023: Addressing climate change

23 January 2023

2022 brought more extreme weather events across the Indo-Pacific, including devastating heatwaves, floods, and cyclones. The human and material damage of these disasters is straining developing economies and threatening to push millions into poverty. Yet, COP27 ended with mixed results in November last year. On the one hand, it surprisingly delivered an agreement on loss and damage. On the other, it failed to commit to phasing out all fossil fuels.

Here, 9DASHLINE asks a select group of experts how they assess this round of negotiations. Given the poor performance of industrialised countries in delivering promised climate finance, what are the prospects for the loss and damage fund, details of which are to be negotiated at COP28 this year?

CONTINUED CREDIBILITY CRISES

DR JULIA TEEBKEN — POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER, PAUL AND MARCIA WYTHES CENTER ON CONTEMPORARY CHINA, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

The outcome of COP27 is mixed. On the one hand, COP27 was praised as an important step towards justice, given the “breakthrough agreement” on establishing a loss and damage fund for “vulnerable countries”. To that extent, global governance actors such as the EU succeeded in recognising the necessity of acknowledging some of their historical responsibilities, despite the widespread reluctance to call the fund climate compensations or reparations. Further, a shift in pressure from and increased leverage of countries from the Global South and non-conventional actors could be observed.

On the other hand, however, commitments remain vague and given the past implementation gaps in the promised USD 100 billion of climate finance, to which many industrialised countries failed to contribute adequately, the new fund likewise demands caution and expectation management. The operationalisation of the fund has been pushed to COP28. Continued domestic crises are among the many barriers — the outcome of the United States midterm elections is one example, which tinkers with Biden’s promises of contributing more fairly to the USD 100 billion target. The political heavyweights, such as the US, are good at putting on a show, but given their political unpredictability based on the politicisation of climate change in a long-troubled political system, the time for grand showmanship is over. Every new and unkept promise will put the global governance of climate change on increasingly shaky ground.

The extent to which this new promise and older commitments can be kept alive remains to be seen. One constant in global climate governance is the omnipresence of various credibility crises. Transformative (environmental) responses are not even remotely in sight. This leads us to ask a different set of questions about our dominant social order, economic system, and imperialist modes of production.

As long as these questions are not being asked, one façade of hope is this: youth activism. Despite a striking resemblance to Severn Suzuki at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, global youth, their relentless engagement, and growing expertise on climate change-related matters present us with an important actor in global climate governance, that we are well advised to recognize. From now on, it will be important to increase, maintain and listen to more radical voices to actively disrupt business as usual and ensure the climate agenda does not get swallowed by some compromised showtime experts.

FOUR DIMENSIONS OF CLIMATE ACTION

DR OLAF CORRY — PROFESSOR, SCHOOL OF POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

COP meetings have become bewilderingly complex affairs, but can be assessed in relation to the four dimensions of climate action: cuts, contributions, capture, and compensation.

Cuts: In terms of cutting emissions, COP27 made stuttering progress extending the ‘mitigation work program’ only to 2026 and with no new targets. Hopes turned to implementation, but little was achieved and in terms of outcomes, the UNFCCC process remains a failure with a record annual emissions forecast for 2022. At the margins, the announcement of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA) at COP26 gathered a little more steam.

Contributions: Hopes had been high for increased climate finance for adaptation and mitigation in vulnerable countries, which UNEP warned is 5-10 times lower than it should be. Despite anger at the failure to deliver the USD 100 billion per year announced over a decade ago, a framework was agreed upon at COP27 for a “global goal on adaptation”. But except for a ‘Sharm-el-Sheik dialogue’ due to report at COP28, nothing substantial was achieved on climate finance.

Capture: with ‘net zero’ now the leading framing, speculations about large-scale capture (and permanent removal) of greenhouse gasses have moved from the periphery to centre stage. While some removals may be needed, the risk is that inflated promises of future removals replace or slow near-term emissions cuts, defeating the objective. Negotiations over carbon trading saw a shocking suggestion to allow ‘removals’ to be traded as part of country contributions to reducing emissions. The suggestion was sent back to the supervisory body, but it was agreed that countries selling credits can claim ‘confidentiality’ — a massive potential loophole. Planning huge capture and storage of atmospheric CO2 while ‘fossil fuel phasedown’ fails to make it into draft texts at COP27 is contradictory, even if a high-level UN expert group targeted corporate greenwash.

Compensation: the ‘Loss and Damage’ that was finally agreed at COP27 is explicitly not ‘compensation’ or recognition of liability but is in effect about climate reparations. This was achieved through decades of campaigning, but how this fund will work and whether it will help the most climate vulnerable remains to be seen.

CLIMATE FINANCE MUST GET CREATIVE

DR JOSHUA BUSBY — PROFESSOR, LBJ SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

While the recent climate negotiations yielded a landmark agreement on a new loss and damage fund, it is not clear how it will work, whether developed countries will contribute, and who will be eligible to receive funding. Leveraging resources from wealthier countries to support loss and damage will have to overcome major headwinds. For example, appropriations by US Congress for international climate finance in 2022 were below what the Biden administration asked for. The partisan makeup of the House of Representatives is now less favourable to the climate agenda than it was before.

This suggests that US contributions to adaptation and mitigation, let alone for the more contested loss and damage fund, will be challenging and require a creative search for other instruments to support international climate finance, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as well as private foundations. Linking debt relief to funding for climate finance may be a fruitful way forward, particularly with newer donors like China.

More focused efforts to support climate resilience of especially vulnerable island countries may find more support, though the volume of resources will likely never be commensurate with the need. Sizable commitments have emerged for certain countries related to the mitigation agenda, namely for the just transition away from coal and forest protection. Advocates will have to think carefully about what might motivate wealthy countries to contribute to other climate finance efforts, including but not limited to loss and damage.

DEVELOPED COUNTRIES MUST STEP UP

DR ANNA STUENZI — POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOW, UNIVERSITY OF ST GALLEN, AND PRESIDENT, FORAUS

The science is clear, greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced rapidly. Instead, emissions in 2022 were estimated to be the highest ever recorded. For a long time, international climate change negotiations focused on the responsibility of high emitters such as the US and European countries (or at least tried to do so). Yet, with rising emissions worldwide, mitigating climate change can only be achieved if all emitters, both past and present, rapidly reduce their emissions. At the same time, countries must prepare for and prevent costs from climate change effects (which are currently happening) and bear the losses and damages arising from natural hazards and catastrophic events. While developing and small island states have contributed little to global emissions, they are the ones who must bear the greatest consequences of climate change. The Paris Agreement underlines that all countries must contribute to mitigating climate change albeit with differentiated responsibilities.

Last year’s climate conference (COP27) revolved around the complex topics of responsibility and action through the lens of the past, present and future. The results were mixed and point toward lengthy discussions at future meetings. On the bright side, countries agreed to set up a new fund which will contribute to developing countries’ costs for loss and damage caused by climate change. A fund per se is not going to be the solution as key questions — who receives money, for what and who contributes to it — are yet to be clarified. But at least there is a financing channel and some acknowledgement that damages from climate change could be (partly) covered by countries with responsibilities for high emissions.

However, countries are falling far short of what is needed to stay below 1.5°C. One reason may be that the European countries who pushed major emitters for increased efforts to accelerate their emissions cuts lacked a sufficiently credible bargaining chip. Historically, developed countries bear great responsibility, and promised to deliver USD 100 billion from 2020 onwards for mitigation and adaptation — but this has yet to be delivered. Therefore, before they can call for greater ambitions, they need to step up to their own pledges.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform. Image credit: Flickr/Friends of the Earth International.