The COP 28 UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, was the biggest of its kind. Some 85,000 participants, including more than 150 Heads of State and Government, were among the representatives of national delegations, civil society, business, Indigenous Peoples, youth, philanthropy, and international organizations in attendance at the Conference from 30 November to 13 December 2023.
COP 28 was particularly momentous as it marked the conclusion of the first ‘global stocktake’ of the world’s efforts to address climate change under the Paris Agreement. Having shown that progress was too slow across all areas of climate action – from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, to strengthening resilience to a changing climate, to getting the financial and technological support to vulnerable nations – countries responded with a decision on how to accelerate action across all areas by 2030. This includes a call on governments to speed up the transition away from fossil fuels to renewables such as wind and solar power in their next round of climate commitments.
Below we unpack the significance of this crucial decision and some of the key highlights from COP 28 that marked major steps forward in the global effort to address the climate emergency. Of course, the work doesn’t begin and end with COP 28, so we’ve also outlined some of the challenges and opportunities heading into 2024 and beyond.
COP 28 closed with an agreement that 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 COP 28 President Dr. Sultan Al Jaber said: “We have language on fossil fuel in the (COP) final agreement for the first time ever.” It clearly points to the direction of travel in the energy transition, and that the scale and pace of change can’t be stopped or reversed.
The call on nations to transition away from fossil fuels was part of a decision by nearly 200 Parties on the world’s first ‘global stocktake’ to ratchet up climate action before the end of the decade – with the overarching aim to keep the global temperature limit of 1.5°C within reach.
“Whilst we didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end,” said UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell. “Now all governments and businesses need to turn these pledges into real-economy outcomes, without delay.”
The ‘global stocktake’ is considered the central outcome of COP 28 – as it contains every element that was under negotiation and can now be used by countries to develop stronger climate action plans due by February 2025.
The stocktake recognizes the science that indicates global greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut 43% by 2030, compared to 2019 levels, to limit global warming to 1.5°C. But it notes Parties are off track when it comes to meeting their Paris Agreement goals.
The stocktake calls on Parties to take actions towards achieving, at a global scale, a tripling of renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency improvements by 2030. The list also includes accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power, phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, and other measures that drive the transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, with developed countries continuing to take the lead.
In the short-term, Parties are encouraged to come forward with ambitious, economy-wide emission reduction targets, covering all greenhouse gases, sectors and categories and aligned with the 1.5°C limit in their next round of climate action plans (known as nationally determined contributions) by early 2025.
In a major step forward, Parties agreed on targets for the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) and its framework, which identify where the world needs to get to in order to be resilient to the impacts of a changing climate and to assess countries’ efforts.
The GGA framework reflects a global consensus on adaptation targets and covers the themes of water, food, health, ecosystems, infrastructure, poverty eradication and cultural heritage.
The decision gives adaptation progress a future orientation for the first time, reflecting aspiration and ambition, as opposed to the previous practice of measurement against past efforts.
While adaptation efforts are more difficult to quantify (unlike the efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) and are very specific to the locations and geographies of implementation, the GGA aims to guide adaptation planning and strategies at all levels, and to align the finance, technology and capacity-building support needed to achieve these.
Climate finance took centre stage at the conference, with Stiell repeatedly calling it the “great enabler of climate action.”
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) received a boost to its second replenishment with six countries pledging new funding at COP28 with total pledges now standing at a record USD 12.8 billion from 31 countries, with further contributions expected.
Eight donor governments announced new commitments to the Least Developed Countries Fund and Special Climate Change Fund totalling more than USD 174 million to date, while new pledges, totalling nearly USD 188 million so far, were made to the Adaptation Fund at COP 28.
However as highlighted in the ‘global stocktake’, current climate finance flows channelled by multilateral, bilateral and private sources taken together are far short of the trillions eventually needed to support developing countries with clean energy transitions, implementing their national climate plans and adaptation efforts.
In order to deliver such funding, the ‘global stocktake’ underscores the importance of reforming the multilateral financial architecture, scaling up climate finance through grants and concessional finance and accelerating the ongoing establishment of new and innovative sources of finance.
At COP 28, discussions continued on setting a ‘new collective quantified goal on climate finance’ in 2024, taking into account the needs and priorities of developing countries. The new goal, which will start from a baseline of USD 100 billion per year, will help support the implementation of a new round of national climate plans that need to be designed and submitted by early 2025.