The big victory for climate at COP28

The 28th Conference of Parties (COP28) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) concluded a day late on December 13.

The battle over words and phrases was won, but not the war on climate change. This emerges starkly from the first global stocktake which was presented to the conference. It is the first such five-year review mandated by the Paris Agreement of 2015. Its conclusions are depressing.

Where do we stand currently in tackling what is universally recognised as an existential threat to human and even planetary survival?

We agree that our actions must be informed by the best available science. That science in the form of the latest assessment reports of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), included in the stocktake, says that the current nationally determined contributions (NDCs) conveyed by the states parties to the UNFCCC, if fully implemented, will only result in a meagre 2 per cent reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 as against 2019. Whereas, a 50 per cent chance of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050 requires the peaking of global emissions by 2025 — only two years from now — and their reduction by 43 per cent by 2030 and by 60 per cent by 2035. The gap is enormous and it would be a leap of faith to imagine that these minimal targets will be achieved. We are already at 1.1 degrees Celsius rise in global average temperature compared to the pre-industrial period.

The achievement of several NDCs of developing countries are conditional upon access to requisite finance and technology support from developed countries. The record so far is abysmal. In 2009, developed countries pledged to provide $100 billion per year to support climate action by developing countries. This figure has never ever been achieved. Even the modest figures claimed include questionable sources of finance such as philanthropic transfers, private capital flows and, sometimes, even existing overseas development assistance (ODA). The Indian Minister of Environment and Climate Change was right in pointing out at the conference that there needs to be an agreed definition of what constitutes climate finance. Serious reservations have been expressed over the $89.6 billion claimed by the OECD for the year 2021. A more rigorous analysis by OXFAM adds up to less than $25 billion which is also closer to our own Finance Ministry’s figures. And yet, the $89.6 billion figure is included in the declaration with a bland statement that there may be “diversity of definitions of climate finance”.

In 2024, negotiations will begin on climate finance in the 2025 period and beyond with the $100 billion a year as the floor. The IPCC report shows why there is little hope of adequate funding being made available to developing countries.

One, it estimates that between now and 2030, for implementing their NDCs, developing countries need $5.8-$5.9 trillion or roughly $800 billion a year for the next seven years. Two, for adaptation alone, about $215-$387 billion a year would be required in the same period. On date, only an additional $188 million has been pledged to the Adaptation Fund. Three, a loss and damage fund has been established at COP28, which is a significant and positive development, but has attracted only $770.6 million in pledges so far. It is not clear what would qualify as irreversible loss and damage from man-made climate impacts and which category of developing countries would be potential beneficiaries. It is unlikely that India would be in that list.

It should be obvious from these figures that there is a yawning gap between what science requires as the scale of effort and the resources deployed to achieve it in a constantly shrinking time frame. Given that most developed economies are suffering from low growth and inflationary pressures, it is delusional to think that financial flows will increase dramatically in the next few years.

There were some significant outcomes which should be welcomed as they have the potential of reorienting the global economy away from unsustainable growth patterns.

One, this is the first COP to acknowledge that we must not just deal with emissions but tackle their source, which is the fossil fuel-based energy system which powers all economic activity. After much contestation, the following landmark language was adopted in the final declaration: “Transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.” This is undeniably historic and was achieved despite high voltage lobbying by both oil producing states and multinationals. However, the declaration recognises the role of “transitional fuels” — a euphemism for natural gas, in facilitating energy transition.

Two, there are more credible targets such as tripling the installed capacity of renewable energy globally to 11,000 GW by 2020, and doubling the rate of energy efficiency gains from 2 per cent to 4 per cent annually by 2030. In both areas, India is a front runner.

Three, for the first time, nuclear energy has been brought in as a clean energy source as has green and blue hydrogen. These are also sectors that India is currently focused on.

There has been a tendency at recent COPs of interested countries banding together to adopt initiatives, make pledges and set targets for climate action in different sectors. These include an initiative led by the US on reducing methane emissions adopted at COP26. At COP28, we now have a Powering Past Coal Alliance and a Nuclear Power Group of 28 countries which aims to triple nuclear power capacity by 2030. India has generally stayed away from these groupings, preferring to go by consensus targets adopted by the UNFCCC. There is relief in India that the declaration only calls for “phase-down” and not phase-out of unabated coal power.

One should welcome the explicit linking of climate change to adverse impacts on health and food security and to biodiversity loss at the conference. We are finally moving towards acknowledging that climate change is only one component of a larger ecological challenge the world is facing and that intervention in one domain has feedback effects on other domains. There is no alternative to adopting a cross-domain and cross-disciplinary approach to resolving such deeply interconnected challenges. COP28 has at least pointed us in the right direction.