Byron Blake | Mirror, mirror on Dubai: Did COP 28 bend the carbon arc?

The IPCC Climate Report of 2023 stated starkly: “National climate action plans remain insufficient to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.” Further, the May 2023 WMO Report projected that the defensive wall of 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in mean global temperature would be breached within the next four years. And then the UNEP “Emissions Gap Report 2023” asserts that “governments plan to produce double the fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C”.

Against the reality of 2023 reaching 1.4 degrees C, these authoritative, globally accepted reports make it pellucid that even with decisive and massive action now, the die has been cast. Some optimists, however, still cling to the hope that with the required level of coordinated action now, not a decision to act in the future, and, if fortuitously complemented by a La Niña period in the next three to four years, the CO2 arc could begin to bend in a positive direction.

There is consensus that the Conference of the Parties (COP) 28 at the end of 2023 represented the last chance for the global community to act in that manner. COP28 had all the technical and scientific information to justify the strong, self-sacrificing action needed for self-preservation. And if any country required additional incentives, every continent had, in 2023, the tastes and costs of nature’s potential fury in the forms of extreme weather-related conditions, including historic cold and heat, wildfires, floods, droughts, and landslides. The record-breaking losses in species, lives, and property were carried in real-time for all to see and feel.

FOUR MEASURES

That was the backdrop for COP28 against which success should be measured. I had four measures that I posed to myself as questions at the start. These were:

1. Would there be an agreed declaration at the close of the conference?

2. Could a COP hosted by a highly oil-dependent country, chaired by its largest oil corporation’s chief operating officer (CEO) and set in the most oil-dominated region on the globe rise to the occasion?

3. Could countries, particularly the richest and most culpable that had circumvented every agreed action for over 30 years, change radically? and

4. What would the required decisions and actions at COP28 need to look like to generate the needed confidence in threatened populations since action must be at the level of countries, corporations, and individuals and will require time?

I was very sceptical, but to avoid willing it into being, I resisted the temptation to comment even after the end of the high-level segment that attracted …. world leaders.

COP28 ended on December 13, almost three weeks ago. Leaders and over 83,000 other governmental, non-governmental, and media representatives have returned to their countries. An eerie silence, as though COP28 has never been, has fallen across the globe.

Having been an active negotiator at all the major climate change conferences between 1992 and 2005 and many meetings of the COP up to PODNAN, 2008, we break the silence and assess COP28 against our four questions.

Question 1 is answered in the affirmative. After delaying the adjournment of the conference on December 12 and indulging in continuous shuttle negotiations among the various groups, the chairman circulated a draft agreement and reconvened the plenary late on the 13th. The plenary adopted the agreement, which, in the words of the chair “signals the ‘beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era by laying the ground for a swift, just and equitable transition, underpinned by deep emissions cuts and scaled-up finance”. As the chairman gavelled the agreement, delegates rose slowly to their feet, clapping politely. They then disappeared quickly, but quietly, conscious that the chairman’s statement, accurately translated, is an agreement which :signals the ‘beginning of the end’ of development as we know it in small island and low-lying states and parts of many large states”.

Questions 2 and 3 can be addressed through two measures, namely:

(i) The aggressiveness of the agreed measures to reduce Co2 and other greenhouse gas emissions;

(ii) The amount of financial resources committed to facilitate adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage.

In respect of (i), the major oil producers, covertly led by the chairman, if the report in the Guardian of Sunday, December 3, has any credibility, ensured that there was no decision to “phase out” fossil fuels. Their initial tactics of focusing on coal ensured that influential developing countries like China, India, and South Africa, as major coal producers, supported the resistance to firm measurable action to reduce fossil fuels. Given the admission in the agreement that “fossil fuels [are] the main driver of climate change” and the scientific and practical evidence of the increasingly disastrous impacts of climate change, it is impossible to conclude anything other than that COP 28 has left the global community at the mercy of a charged natural environment. If the voluntary decisions of the last 30 years offer any guidance, we can safely conclude that COP 28 has bent the Co2 arc upwards.

DISASTROUS EVENTS

The conditions for potentially disastrous events are thus set to increase. Action by the most vulnerable in areas of adaptation, mitigation, and recovery from loss and damage for the most vulnerable will be vital to their years of survival. It is reported that Simon Stiell, executive secretary of UNFCCC, repeatedly called Climate Finance the “great enabler of climate action”.

So how did perform concerning point (ii)? It opened with the announcement of the operationalisation of the Loss and Damage Fund with a contribution of US$100 million by the host. By the end of the conference, total contribution had reached US$ 700 million. That tactical act not only disarmed critics, but created a positive atmosphere, at least for the High-Level Segment.

During COP 28, the Green Climate Fund received additional pledges, taking it to US$12.8 billion; the LDC Fund US$174 million; the Adaptation Fund US$188 million; and there might have been other specific small pledges.

Also, discussions, while not a decision, continued towards a ‘new collective quantified goal on climate finance’ in 2024. The new goal will start from a baseline of US$100 billion per year. That US$100 billion looks like the US$100 billion promised in 2009 for AOSIS members not to insist on their long-held 1.5 degrees Celsius. It reached US$83.3 billion in 2020.

The adequacy of the financial pledges at COP 28 should be assessed against the conclusion in the Global Stocktake that “these financial pledges are far short of the trillions eventually needed to support developing countries with clean-energy transitions, implementing their national climate plans and adaptation efforts. (Our emphasis). The Global Stocktake was before the failure of COP 28 on greenhouse gas emissions.

The critical decisions required under Question 4 would have included (i) the phase-out of fossil fuels; agreed, rather than voluntary, actions; significantly increased and committed levels of financial resources; and significant reform of the multilateral financial infrastructure or mutually agreed mechanisms or arrangements for managing the financial resources. COP 28 failed to make any such decisions.

Our overall assessment is that COP 28 was a dismal failure – a failure that magnifies the existential threats to the global community and small and low-lying states in the immediate future. This might well explain the silence of leaders on return to their jurisdictions. This, however, is an accelerating oncoming train that cannot be moderated by inaction.

Two specific questions to our Jamaican policymakers in COP 28. One, having participated in the critical discussions on water, has this triggered any thoughts on possible adjustment to our policy on economic activities in the Cockpit Country?

Two, as one of the 28 countries that launched the declaration to triple nuclear energy capacity between 2020 and 2050 at COP 28, what does this mean for nuclear activities in Jamaica?

- Byron Blake is former Jamaica deputy permanent representative to the United Nations and former assistant secretary general of the Caribbean Community. Send feedback to ambassadorblake@gmail.com