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COP28: Key outcomes agreed at the UN climate talks in Dubai [1]

['Carbon Brief Staff', 'Multiple Authors']

Date: 2023-12-13 18:53:58+00:00

Nearly every country in the world has agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels” – the main driver of climate change – at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

It is the first time such an agreement has been reached in 28 years of international climate negotiations.

The commitment is included in the first “global stocktake” of how countries can accelerate action to meet the goals of the landmark Paris Agreement.

However, many countries walked away from the talks frustrated at the lack of a clear call for a fossil-fuel “phase-out” this decade – and at a “litany of loopholes” in the text that might enable the production and consumption of coal, oil and gas to continue.

Despite an early breakthrough on launching a fund to pay for “loss and damage” from climate change, developing countries were left disappointed by a lack of new financial commitments for transitioning away from fossil fuels and adapting to climate impacts.

COP28 president and oil executive Dr Sultan Al Jaber hailed the “world-first” achievement of getting “fossil fuels” in a UN climate change agreement.

However, his presidency was overshadowed by allegations the UAE intended to use COP28 to make oil-and-gas deals.

Away from the negotiations, COP28 brought a wave of new international pledges – covering everything from oil-and-gas company emissions and tripling renewables, through to food systems and how the world can better integrate action on climate change and biodiversity loss.

Here, Carbon Brief provides in-depth analysis of all the key outcomes in Dubai – both inside and outside the COP.

Formal negotiations

Emirati leadership

UAE ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced that Dubai would host COP28 in November 2021. The UN climate change presidency is rotated around the world, with the UAE representing the Asia-Pacific region.

Dr Sultan Al Jaber was appointed COP28 president-designate in January of this year. The appointment of the head of the UAE’s state-owned oil company, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), to the role of arbiter of climate talks immediately sparked outcry.

According to Reuters, Greta Thunberg called Al Jaber’s appointment “completely ridiculous”, while former US vice president Al Gore said fossil-fuel interests had taken over COP.

In May, more than 100 US lawmakers and members of the European parliament called for his removal, the Financial Times reported.

Some, including US special climate envoy John Kerry, called the criticism of Al Jaber “unfair” and said it was important that oil-producing countries are included in the COP process.

In the days ahead of the summit, pressure on Al Jaber intensified after an investigation by BBC News and the Centre for Climate Reporting alleged that the UAE planned to use its role as COP host to strike “secret” oil-and-gas deals behind the scenes of the summit.

On Twitter, former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said the COP28 presidency had been “caught red-handed” and “will be under public scrutiny like no other ever before”. A COP28 advisory board member resigned over the allegations, Reuters reported.

The UAE’s COP28 team at first refused to deny the allegations to BBC News and said that “private meetings are private”. After the story’s release, Al Jaber released a statement saying that the allegations were “false, not true, incorrect and not accurate”, Bloomberg reported.

Al Jaber officially assumed the role of president during the summit’s opening on 30 November, taking over from Egypt’s COP27 president Sameh Shoukry.

In his first address to delegates, he vowed that this COP would leave “no issue off the table”, including “the role of fossil fuels” in driving climate change. (His remarks were misinterpreted by some as meaning he wanted fossil fuels to play a role in the solution to climate change.)

On the opening day, the COP28 presidency scored two big wins. First, it oversaw a new agreement on the operationalisation of a fund to pay for the loss and damage caused by climate change. (See: Loss and damage.)

This was a big priority for many parties arriving in Dubai, as illustrated by Carbon Brief’s interactive table of who wants what from COP.

Second, the COP28 presidency managed to get countries to agree on the official agenda for the conference without a time-consuming fight.

(Some items, such as one on mountains and climate change and another on the impact of unilateral trade measures on climate action, were removed from the agenda, with the presidency promising they would be taken up elsewhere.)

These two early successes left space for a “fight” over fossil fuels at COP28, Catherine Abreu, founder and executive director of NGO Destination Zero told Carbon Brief. This was in contrast to COP27 last year, she added.

At an opening press conference, Al Jaber touted the agreement on loss and damage as a “unique unprecedented achievement”.

In response to questions from journalists about his possible conflict of interest as an oil executive, he stated that he had invited countries to include the role of fossil fuels in negotiated texts, adding:

“You’re going to see full transparency and we will deliver what parties reach consensus on.”

The next day, the COP28 presidency and the International Energy Agency (IEA) launched a joint statement acknowledging that “fossil fuel demand and supply must phase down this decade” – the clearest signal yet that the UAE would, against expectations, facilitate ambitious action on fossil fuels at the talks.

The same day, a first early draft of the global stocktake text was released (the key agreed outcome from the summit, see: Global stocktake). It was the first UN document of its kind to include references to phasing out fossil fuels. (All of the COP28 texts can be viewed in Carbon Brief’s text tracker.)

However, crisis gripped the presidency again when remarks Al Jaber made regarding the science of phasing out fossil fuels during a live online event in November resurfaced in a story by the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting. On video, Al Jaber said:

“There is no science out there – or no scenario out there – that says the phase-out of fossil fuels is going to achieve 1.5C.”

The remark sparked fierce backlash from the scientific and political community.

The next day, Al Jaber faced journalists during a highly unusual COP press conference attended by Carbon Brief.

Sat at a table flanked by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chair Prof Jim Skea, he told reporters:

“We’re here because we very much believe and respect the science…Everything this presidency works on is centred around the science.”

At the press conference, Al Jaber also criticised the media for focusing on oil-and-gas deal allegations and his resurfaced remarks, while – in his opinion – omitting the presidency’s stated commitments to including language around fossil fuels in the negotiated texts.

The start of the second week saw the negotiations take centre stage.

The COP28 presidency announced a series of ministerial pairings to take discussions forward, as usual at UN climate summits. (Unusually, the presidency appointed the ministerial pairings six months in advance in a bid to speed up progress.)

When the ministerial pairings produced little progress, the presidency attempted to push talks forward by holding a “Majlis” on 10 December – an “Emirati tradition of bringing together a small, curated group to discuss specific challenges in an open, bold, and solutions-oriented way”, according to the UAE.

(At the summit’s end, Al Jaber said the Majlis made “all the difference” in agreeing the outcome of COP28. One seasoned COP observer told Carbon Brief they had been “pointless”, with countries merely restating existing positions.)

General view of the Special Spotlight: Majlis Style Conversation with Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, COP28 President at the UN Climate Change Conference COP28 at Expo City Dubai on December 10, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Credit: Photo by COP28 / Christopher Pike / Flickr.

The next day – amid observers reporting that negotiations had fallen into “disarray” – the presidency launched another draft version of the global stocktake text. It was widely interpreted as being much less ambitious than previous iterations, sparking protests inside the venue and pointed reactions from parties ranging from the EU to small island states.

Amid the furore, negotiations ran over their scheduled finish time of 11am on 12 December.

Speaking to journalists on 12 December, COP28 director-general, Ambassador Majid Al Suwaidi, addressed the dissatisfaction with the global stocktake draft, saying:

“As you know, yesterday we released a text. As you also know, lots of parties felt it did not fully address their concerns. We expected that. In fact, we wanted the text to spark conversations…and that is what happened.”

Early in the morning of 13 December, a final draft of the global stocktake text containing language on transitioning away from fossil fuels was released to delegates. (See “global stocktake” for a full analysis of what it contained.)

A few hours later, a plenary session was held where the text was adopted with no objections at lightning speed – prompting hugs, cheers and celebration in the room.

Presenting the agreement to the world, Al Jaber said:

“Together, we have confronted realities and we have set the world in the right direction…Our country has shown that we can deliver on the global stage for the benefit of the planet and its people. We have helped restore faith and trust in multilateralism.”

However, small island states – a group that has played a historic role in furthering ambition to tackle climate change – stated their frustration that they were out of the room when the text was gavelled.

UN climate chief Simon Stiell summed at the progress at COP28 by saying:

“While we didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end.”

COP28 eventually ended at 5.11pm on Wednesday 13 December, just 23 hours over time.

In addition to running into overtime, “rule 16” was applied to 12 agenda items where agreement could not be reached – the same number as the 12 seen at COP25.

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Global stocktake

At the heart of the COP28 negotiations was the culmination of the first-ever “global stocktake” under the Paris Agreement and, in particular, what it would say about fossil fuels.

In the end, the COP “call[ed] on” all countries “to contribute to” a list of goals, including “transitioning away from fossil fuels…accelerating action in this critical decade”.

After nearly 30 years, this is the first time a COP decision has explicitly called out all fossil fuels.

Nevertheless, the outcome fell short of the full “phase-out” many said was needed to stay below 1.5C, as well as in terms of the finance needed to support the transition.

The stocktake also calls on countries to contribute to the global tripling of renewable energy capacity and doubling of the rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.

Overall, the language in the stocktake text makes only limited calls to action, with most of the 196 paragraphs and 21 pages using non-operative verbs such as “recalls”, “notes” or “welcomes” that do not require any kind of response from countries.

It contains just eight “decides” and eight “calls on”, with the latter being the weakest of the various terms used to invite countries to take action in response to a COP decision.

The stocktake is a five-yearly process, designed to check progress against Paris goals and inform the next round of national climate pledges, known as nationally-determined contributions (NDCs).

It is a key part of the Paris “ratchet mechanism”, according to which countries must regularly ramp up climate action over time, until their collective goals can be met.

This process made COP28 the most important since COP21 in Paris, according to Liu Zhenmin, who is expected to be China’s climate envoy after veteran diplomat Xie Zhenhua retires. Liu told a 5 December side event at China’s pavilion attended by Carbon Brief:

“COP28 is the most important COP since the Paris Agreement, because the global stocktake will set the direction for future work on climate action.”

Similarly, US climate envoy John Kerry told a 29 November briefing the stocktake was “a unique opportunity…to rally the world to significantly step up our collective efforts to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement”. He said it needed to be “candid, strong, visionary, comprehensive”.

In the two years leading up to the summit, a technical stage of the stocktake had already shown that countries were falling far short of their collective climate goals.

The task for COP28 was to turn these stark findings into action.

Ahead of COP28, the co-chairs of the “subsidiary bodies” of the UN climate regime, SBSTA and SBI, wrote in a 17 November joint note that this was a “pivotal moment”. They said:

“The first global stocktake, a crucial process that has been examining, over the last two years, where the world stands collectively in meeting the objectives of the Paris Agreement, needs to conclude at COP28 with a comprehensive outcome that clearly identifies a path towards radical decarbonisation of our societies.”

In an opening press briefing attended by Carbon Brief, COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber said:

“We’re laser-focused on keeping 1.5C in reach and delivering an ambitious global stocktake.”

Al Jaber used these phrases – “laser-focused”, “ambitious stocktake” and his “north star” of “keeping 1.5C in reach” – repeatedly during the summit.

This appeared to be deliberate communications strategy, setting up those outcomes as key tests – albeit ambiguous ones – for the COP overall.

Al Jaber was not the only one to speak repeatedly of “keeping 1.5C in reach”. Rueanna Haynes, AOSIS lead stocktake negotiator, told a 4 December briefing attended by Carbon Brief that the process was the “only stocktake that matters” for keeping 1.5C in reach:

“We are here to make sure that this first-ever stocktake under the Paris Agreement is a success, because it is the only stocktake that matters for keeping the 1.5C goal within reach.”

(The stocktake informs the next round of NDCs, which run to 2035 or even 2040. By the next stocktake in 2028, the carbon budget for 1.5C will have been all but completely used up.)

At the same briefing, Tina Stege, Marshall Islands climate envoy, zoomed in on what keeping 1.5C in reach might actually mean, arguing that the stocktake was “the tool we have” to “course-correct” and “address the root cause of the problem, which is the burning of fossil fuels”.

For many countries and campaigners, then, fossil fuels were the key focus – particularly after efforts to include them in the outcome at COP27 in Egypt had failed.

Ahead of the talks in Dubai, 106 EU, African and island nations backed a fossil fuel phase-out, with this list expanding to “at least 127 countries” as the talks went on.

At a briefing held by Climate Action Network on day one of the talks, Romain Ioualalen, global policy campaign manager of NGO Oil Change International, said COP28 would only be a success if it delivered a decision on the phase-out of fossil fuels.

This phase-out needed to be “fast, fair, full and funded”, he added, flagging the need for support for developing countries, if they were to play their part in a global effort on fossil fuels.

In the first week of the talks, the stocktake was shepherded by co-chairs from the UK and Singapore, who had to turn hundreds of pages of submissions into a coherent document.

As Carbon Brief noted ahead of the summit, these submissions were “as varied as the COP negotiations themselves”, with one expert saying the stocktake risked becoming a “dumping ground” for “politically thorny issues” that might hamper its ability to drive real action.

The first iteration of the text delivered by the co-chairs reflected the diversity of inputs in a 12-page list of bullet points – effectively a laundry list of all the ideas put forward by parties.

On energy, it listed: “phase down/out fossil fuels, phase down/out/ no new coal, tripling renewables, doubling energy efficiency, the role of transitional fuels”.

The second version, issued on 5 December, fleshed out these bullets into 96 different “options” and ballooning to 24-pages – nearly as long as the entire 25-page Paris Agreement.

This version included three options: a fossil fuel phase-out; a phase out for “unabated” fossil fuels; or “no text”, meaning there would not be any wording on fossil fuels.

The day after this draft was issued, on 6 December, the head of the Opec oil producers’ cartel sent a letter to member states – later leaked to the press – urging them to “proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy ie fossil fuels rather than emissions”. It warned:

“It seems that the undue and disproportionate pressure against fossil fuels may reach a tipping point with irreversible consequences, as the draft decision still contains options on fossil fuels phase-out.”

Indeed, Opec members within the Arab Group of nations at the climate summit – including Saudi Arabia – were prominent among those opposing language on fossil fuel phase-out.

However, they were certainly not alone, with the group of Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) including China and India also opposed – at least in part on the principled basis that, in their view, the stocktake outcome had no mandate to set sectoral targets.

At the end of the first week of the talks, the second iteration of the stocktake text was passed up to the ministerial level, accompanied by a compilation of views that parties felt were not yet reflected.

Later on the same day, 8 December, a third iteration came out, now with four options around fossil fuel “phase-out” and a fifth option for “no text”.

In total, this text ran to 27 pages and 206 paragraphs, containing 159 different options. As such, it remained more of a compilation of views than a clean set of choices for ministers to pick from.

Moreover, Carbon Brief understands that – beyond the “no text” option – this text did not reflect the views of those opposed to language on fossil fuels. As such, it represented the high point in terms of the wording on fossil fuel phase-out.

Three days later, on 11 December, the presidency itself released a new fourth version of the stocktake text. Fossil fuel “phase-out” was gone from the text, replaced with loose wording that “call[ed] on parties to take actions that could include” – making any response optional.

This text drew swift and near-universal condemnation, with David Waskow, director of international climate initiative at the World Resources Institute, telling a press briefing that the wording “could include” turned the text into a “choose-your-own-adventure approach to climate action”.

At a heads of delegation meeting that evening, Colombia, for AILAC, called the text “worrisome”, while Bangladesh for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) said that the north star of 1.5C was “missing” and that the “language is weak and in places contradictory”.

According to RTE, EU finance negotiator Eamon Ryan threatened to walk out of the talks if the wording was not strengthened and said “that one word ‘could’ just kills everything”.

Those condemning this draft of the text including the US climate envoy John Kerry, the LDC chair, the UK, the International Energy Agency’s Fatih Birol, EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra, COP26 president Alok Sharma, AOSIS, the German government and its climate envoy Jennifer Morgan.

Climate campaigners also reacted angrily to the text, holding an unauthorised protest at the COP28 venue where they called on negotiators to “hold the line”.

The fight over the stocktake language on fossil fuels was “not surprising”, said Dr Joanna Depledge, an expert on the international climate negotiations at the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance.

She told Carbon Brief as the talks were coming to a close:

“It’s crunch time. The climate change regime has been bypassing, avoiding, dodging, circumventing the need to phase out fossil fuels forever. The science and passage of time mean it just can’t do that anymore. And negotiators are being asked to bite the bullet, in Dubai, with a petrostate presidency.”

After hours of fevered speculation, including the wide circulation of a “leaked” draft that prompted the UNFCCC secretariat to deny its provenance, the fifth and final version of the stocktake text emerged in the small hours of 13 December.

The final stocktake deal, including the text on “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, came “after 12 hours of intense shuttle diplomacy”, said German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan.

It situates the call for “contributions to the following global efforts” in the context of the “need for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5C”, as well as recognising “different national circumstances”.

However, beyond the loose “accelerating action in this critical decade”, the wording does not include any near-term targets, pointing only to net-zero emissions by 2050.

(After the text was released, some climate scientists argued the scope of “fossil fuels in energy systems” meant their use in industry or as chemical feedstocks was not included. Others noted that, regardless, energy systems covered more than 80% of oil and gas use.)

The figure below illustrates the development of fossil fuel language, through each version of the stocktake text at COP28. Note how, between the 11 December and final 13 December drafts, the wording pointing to “both consumption and production of fossil fuels” was lost.

Although there was no agreement to phase out fossil fuels, many – though by no means all – reactions to the text were broadly positive.

Its adoption was greeted with a “sustained standing ovation and loud applause from across the room”, the Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported.

One developed country negotiator told Carbon Brief the outcome was “pretty strong given the circumstances”. They added:

“I think ‘transition away from’, with action in this critical decade and net-zero by 2050, sends a strong signal. The important thing now is delivering on it.”

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said the deal “marks the end of the fossil fuel era”. UN secretary general António Guterres responded to the text by attacking “those who opposed a clear reference to phase out of fossil fuels”, saying this was “inevitable”.

However, many noted that the deal came with very little in the way of climate finance to support developing countries “transitioning away” from fossil fuels.

Ahead of the COP, the IEA had promoted five “pillars” needed to get on track for 1.5C. The final stocktake went some way towards meeting four of them: tripling renewables; doubling efficiency; tackling methane; and an “orderly decline in the use of fossil fuels”.

However, the fifth pillar on finance for developing countries was largely missing. Responding to the deal, IEA chief Dr Fatih Birol said “greater efforts are needed on finance”.

Greater efforts in this area could have unlocked higher ambition on the other mitigation outcomes, Lola Vallejo, climate programme director for thinktank IDDRI told Carbon Brief. She added:

“It’s also a matter of balance and fairness – it’s a pretty big leap of faith to agree to targets without a recognition of the investment challenge alongside it.”

Others pointed to the continued approval of new fossil fuel extraction in developed countries – including the UK and the US – as well as the lack of clear differentiation in the stocktake text on who should be moving fastest to move away from fossil fuels.

In addition to the language on all fossil fuels, the final text repeats wording from COP26 on phasing down unabated coal power, but still does not define what “unabated” means. It also lacks wording from earlier drafts on ending permitting of new coal power.

The final text calls for the tripling of renewable energy capacity and doubling of the rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030, though without the specific numerical targets that had appeared in earlier drafts.

(Along with cutting methane emissions from fossil fuel production, meeting these goals would provide 80% of the emissions cuts needed this decade to get on track for 1.5C.)

The text calls for “accelerating zero- and low-emissions technologies, including…carbon capture and utilisation and storage” (CCS), though this is tied “particularly” to “hard-to abate sectors”, weakly limiting the use of CCS as a cover for business-as-usual.

On non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases, the final text calls for “accelerating and substantially reducing” emissions “in particular methane emissions by 2030”. However, it lacks the numerical targets that had been in earlier drafts.

On fossil fuel subsidies, the text calls for the phasing out of “inefficient…subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible”.

Finally, the text “recognises that transitional fuels can play a role in facilitating the energy transition”. This wording, taken to refer to gas as a “bridge fuel”, was pushed by Russia.

Note, however, that it is in a separate paragraph, not linked to an operative verb in the text, as it is only “recognised” rather than tied to a “call”, “request” or “invitation” to action.

Beyond these details, the stocktake was never supposed to focus on cutting emissions alone, as AOSIS negotiator Haynes explained. She told the 4 December briefing:

“The stocktake is not just about mitigation, it is way more comprehensive than that. It covers the entirety of the Paris Agreement and, in fact, if we are to have a stocktake outcome that truly allows us to course correct, we do need to see the energy package as a component, but it does not stand alone and it cannot stand alone.”

EU lead negotiator Jake Werksman told a 5 December press briefing attended by Carbon Brief that this breadth made the stocktake “the mother of all cover decisions”, referring to the broad political “cover decisions” that have emerged from talks at COP26 and COP27.

As such, in addition to the section on mitigation, the stocktake also includes sections of:

Adaptation.

“Means of implementation and support”, meaning finance, capacity building and technology.

Loss and damage.

“Response measures”, meaning the impact of climate action on fossil-fuel dependent economies.

International cooperation.

These are covered in the relevant sections of Carbon Brief’s summary, below.

The final part of the stocktake decision was its “guidance and way forward” for all countries, on how to develop their next national climate pledges under the Paris regime.

The stocktake decides that all countries should submit their next climate pledges “at least 9-12 months in advance” of COP30, which will be held in November 2025 in Belem, Brazil.

It “encourages” them to submit “ambitious, economy-wide emission reduction targets, covering all greenhouse gases, sectors and categories…aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5C”.

(Many NDCs to date only cover carbon dioxide emissions, selected parts of the economy and do not set emissions reduction targets.)

The text also “encourages” countries to “align” their next pledges with long-term targets, such as the net-zero goals set by most of the world’s major economies.

(At the closing plenary, US climate envoy Kerry said both the US and China would update their long-term strategies “and we invite other parties to join us”.)

In addition, paragraph 169 of the text reminds countries that their next pledges have to include information on how they have been “informed” by the first stocktake.

Naoyuki Yamagishi, energy and climate director for WWF Japan, told Carbon Brief this was “a tiny little confirmation for us to hold them accountable” on the stocktake decision.

Kaveh Guilanpour, a former negotiator and now vice president for international strategies at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), told Carbon Brief:

“Coming into COP28, I was looking for three things in relation to the global stocktake: a clear and unambiguous signal that the world will accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels; that this will be reflected in the climate targets of countries to be tabled in 2025; and a commitment to enhance international cooperation to tackle climate change.”

He said the outcome delivered all three “to some extent”, but the “moment of truth” would come when countries file their new pledges in 2025.

Finally, the stocktake “decides” on a “road map to mission 1.5C” run by the presidencies of COP28, COP29 and COP30 (UAE, Azerbaijan and Brazil, respectively). This will “stimulate ambition…action and implementation over this critical decade” to “[keep] 1.5C within reach”.

In the closing plenary, the Brazilian COP30 presidency said this mission would work towards reduced dependence on fossil fuels, according to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin.

A separate four-year “dialogue” on implementing the stocktake outcomes will run from 2024 to 2028.

The final deal also removes the “invitation” in an earlier draft for climate scientists to produce a special report on progress since the first stocktake.

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Rules of Procedure

A key constraint on the annual climate talks is that all decisions must be made by consensus. (Note that, contrary to what might be expected, this does not necessarily mean unanimity.)

This is because countries have never been able to agree to the “rules of procedure”, first drafted at COP1 in 1995. This includes “rule 42” on decision-making by vote – on a one-party-one-vote basis – where no consensus can be reached.

After nearly 30 years, the text on voting rules remains in unresolved square brackets.

As Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported at the time, voting rules were blocked by “Opec member states”, who were then operating as a COP negotiating group. It reported:

“Many are concerned about the effects that this impasse may have on the negotiation of a protocol to strengthen the commitments in Article 4.2(a) and (b) of the convention. Since the Opec member states are largely opposed to the protocol negotiations and are holding up agreement on the rules of procedure, they could effectively block the future work of the COP and its subsidiary bodies.”

(This Opec blocking move was, in fact, “likely…devised by US oil lobbyists, who at that time were highly influential in the negotiations and working very closely with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Opec nations”, Depledge told Carbon Brief.)

Ever since then, each COP has agreed to apply the rules of procedure – except rule 42 on voting – meaning decisions must always be made by consensus. Dr Joanna Depledge explained that this was a “master stroke of the fossil fuel lobby” that makes negotiations “much tougher”:

“The absence of a voting rule is what makes all of this so much tougher…Preventing adoption of a voting rule and entrenching consensus was a master stroke of the fossil fuel lobby in the early days, and by that I mean mostly Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, heavily backed by US-based lobbyists.”

She added:

“To be fair, it wasn’t just the Opec countries: there were wider disputes over decision-making on climate finance, with donor countries insisting financial decisions should be taken by consensus, and developing countries wanting these to go for a vote. It’s not difficult to see why – developing countries vastly outnumber richer nations. But, ultimately, these disputes were provoked and fomented by the oil lobby.”

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Loss and damage

In an unconventional move, after officially launching COP28 on 30 November, Sultan Al Jaber immediately turned to one of the big-ticket agenda items – the loss-and-damage fund.

“Loss and damage” is a term used to describe the unstoppable harm caused by climate disasters. For more than 30 years, small-island states, in particular, have been fighting for funds to help them deal with everything from hurricane damage to sea-level rise.

Yet their efforts have been consistently hampered by wealthy nations, who feared being forced to pay compensation due to their outsized role in historic emissions.

Nevertheless, a concerted push by developing countries culminated in a decision at COP27 last year to finally set up a loss-and-damage fund.

As part of this decision, a “transitional committee” of 24 climate diplomats was tasked with hashing out the details of the fund. This included where it would be located, how it would be funded and which countries would pay into it.

The night before COP28 was due to start, the UAE presidency released a proposed text based on the one agreed at the transitional committee’s final session, which had finished three weeks earlier. (The US objected to the final outcome at the time, but it subsequently clarified that it supported the consensus reached there.)

The next day, around two hours into the opening plenary, Al Jaber asked the hall full of officials whether there were any objections to this text. With no one raising any, he gavelled the decision through, prompting a standing ovation.

The loss-and-damage fund being launched marked the first time a substantial outcome had been achieved during a COP opening session. It was the result of careful groundwork laid by the presidency, amid concerns that this historically controversial issue would otherwise be used to derail negotiations.

Laura Schäfer, a senior advisor in climate risk management at Germanwatch, told Carbon Brief:

“What we saw here was a kind of diplomatic coup of the UAE in pushing this to the very first day because they were so wary that this could crash COP.”

Countries agreed that the fund would be housed in the World Bank for at least four years, but it would also be an independent entity under the UNFCCC’s financial mechanism. They also agreed that it would have its own 26-person board, with the majority of members coming from developing countries.

The board will also be tasked with giving the fund a name. This came as the US – which for decades resisted the entire concept of “loss and damage” – pushed back against references to a “loss and damage fund”. Instead, US climate envoy John Kerry repeatedly referred to the “climate impact response” fund. The US State Department declined to comment on the reasoning behind this to Carbon Brief.

Despite being generally perceived as an early win, the fund remained highly contentious.

Unlike other forms of climate finance, there is no firm obligation for developed countries to pay into the fund. It will, therefore, depend on the generosity of wealthy nations and any other sources of money that can be leveraged.

After launching the fund, Al Jaber promptly announced that the UAE would be the first to pay into it, with a $100m contribution. Germany followed this with another $100m.

Here, too, there were signs of careful orchestration, as this brought the fund up to the minimum $200m level required to establish it as a financial intermediary fund of the World Bank.

Several other parties followed their lead with their own funding announcements, including the UK, the EU and Japan.

The UAE, classified as a “developing” country under the UN system, has no obligation to provide traditional forms of climate finance. Its contribution, therefore, fuelled wider discourse around whether relatively wealthy, developing countries should be providing climate finance. US climate envoy Kerry told a press briefing:

“There’s no limit on who can contribute to this…If you’re an emerging economy and you’ve got the ability to put a few hundred million or $10m or something in it, you want to help your fellow human beings, that’s open to that, too.”

(The US pledged just $17.5m to the fund – less than Ireland or Spain – which is still contingent on approval from a log-jammed Congress.)

More developed countries also pledged money for the fund in the following days, bringing the total to $770.6m by the end of COP28.

Campaigners were quick to point out that this funding – $115.3m of which will go towards setting up the fund rather than directly helping people – would cover less than 0.2% of the developing countries’ annual needs.

Moreover, some nations, such as the UK and Canada, simply re-pledged money for loss and damage that they had already announced.

Barbados climate envoy, Avinash Persaud, told Carbon Brief that while this was understandable in the short term, ultimately, “we need now to get new, additional sources”.

Besides filling the fund, another major source of controversy ahead of COP28 had been locating it in the World Bank.

The US-based bank was perceived among developing country representatives and civil society groups as being too rigid in the ways it could accept and disperse funds, as well as charging high administrative costs.

Speaking at a side event, World Bank president Ajay Banga appeared to emphasise the bank’s hands-off role, telling the audience:

“The reality is the bank is currently not planning to play the role of allocating the money…That could change…but, currently, that is not the case.”

Experts noted the potential for “conflict” between the rules of the UNFCCC and the World Bank, which will have to be resolved fast to get the funds flowing.

“The World Bank will have to think critically if it can play the role it is being asked to in an effective manner,” Dr Rishikesh Ram Bhandary, a climate-finance expert at Boston University Global Development Policy Center, told Carbon Brief.

Developing countries have secured various “safeguards” that, if the bank failed to meet them, would trigger a search for a new home for the fund. Banga said he anticipated the fund would start distributing money next year.

Despite these issues, Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA, told Carbon Brief that, ultimately, reopening negotiations was perceived as “too risky” by developing countries. “It would have been more likely to get worse rather than to get better,” he said.

The other major decision on loss and damage to emerge from COP28 concerned the location of the Santiago Network. Parties agreed to set up this institution in 2019 as a way to link countries with the technical know-how to deal with loss and damage.

At the UN climate negotiations in Bonn earlier this year, negotiators tried to reach an agreement on the location of the network so that it could be properly launched.

In the end, developing countries in the G77 and China group were split over whether the network should be in the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) or a consortium of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS).

Just four days into the summit, the G77 and China reached a consensus on locating the network at UNDRR/UNOPS, leaving the path clear for these negotiations to be resolved. The final text also mentions “exploring areas for collaboration” with the CBD.

With the loss-and-damage fund wrapped up early, many campaigners turned their attention to how the topic was treated in the final global stocktake.

They wanted to ensure it was given equal weight with other big topics, such as mitigation and adaptation, in the document. This, they argued, would encourage nations to act on loss-and-damage in their future climate plans and provide adequate funding.

In the end, loss-and-damage received mixed results in the final text. Colin McQuistan, head of climate and resilience at Practical Action, said the inclusion of a standalone section on the subject was a “big win”, but noted that it was not framed as an “independent third pillar of climate action alongside mitigation and adaptation”.

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Adaptation

Another important decision to come out of COP28 was a “framework” that is meant to guide nations in their efforts to protect their people and ecosystems from climate change.

This marked a big step forward for the “global goal on adaptation” (GGA), which was originally intended to raise the visibility of adaptation so it was on a par with mitigation in the UN climate process.

This has long been a priority for the most climate-vulnerable countries, particularly the African nations that first proposed the goal.

Yet, despite being “established” with the Paris Agreement in 2015, the GGA received little attention at UN negotiations until six years later at COP26. There, the African Group led a successful push for a two-year “work programme” to jump-start the goal.

In Dubai, the GGA was expected to finally have its moment. With the work programme wrapping up, parties were tasked with agreeing on a “framework” that countries could use to guide their adaptation progress.

Many of the decisions on the table centred around technical issues, which, nevertheless, could have big implications.

Among them were what “themes” should be covered by the goal. Parties agreed on water, food, health, ecosystems, infrastructure, poverty eradication and cultural heritage.

Within these themes, negotiators discussed sub-goals that countries could work towards, such as achieving universal access to clean water or protecting 30% of ecosystems.

There is a general understanding that, unlike cutting emissions, climate adaptation is a highly varied and context-specific issue that cannot be easily quantified.

The GGA has, therefore, often been framed as an aspirational “guiding star” that does not attempt to be too prescriptive, but could still help guide future planning and spending on climate adaptation.

In the highly politicised environment of UN climate negotiations, developing countries wanted to make money a central part of the discussion. They reasoned that any ambitions set out in the framework would require major investment, which many of them could not afford.

Adaptation efforts in developing countries are severely underfunded. Unlike efforts to cut emissions, adaptation projects – which tend not to directly bring in revenue – struggle to attract private investment. This means that public, grant-based funding from wealthy nations is seen as particularly important for supporting these kinds of projects.

As it stands, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that the adaptation finance needs of developing countries are up to 18 times higher than current flows of public finance from developed countries.

Developed countries pledged at COP26 in 2021 to double adaptation finance from a 2019 level by 2025 – amounting to roughly $40bn. But, again, progress on this goal has recently stalled.

Negotiations around the GGA got off to a bad start. Draft negotiating text did not emerge until five days into the event, due to objections by the large G77 and China group of developing countries.

G77 countries wanted adaptation finance to feature prominently in the GGA framework, including a specific target for how much money should be provided. Developed countries indicated they wanted to see progress on the GGA, but did not want to focus on money.

When asked whether the EU supported an adaptation finance goal in the GGA, EU lead negotiator Jacob Werksman told Carbon Brief that parties already had such a goal – doubling adaptation finance. He continued:

“There is a conversation that will happen next year in the context of the NCQG [new collective quantified goal], which will describe how it is that we will be continuing to deliver on public finance and other sources of finance over the medium and longer term from 2025 and onwards. And I think that’s the right moment to reflect on how we can continue to accelerate more and more resources coming from all public sources, going into adaptation.”

The US and the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG) similarly argued that GGA talks should not “prejudge” outcomes from the post-2025 climate-finance negotiations next year.

Actual financial targets were never explicitly part of the GGA’s mandate. However, developing countries and civil society were keen to see strong language on finance that actually compelled developed countries to pay out money and held them accountable.

Another issue was the UNFCCC principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities” (CBDR–RC), which places a greater burden on developed countries to deal with the climate change they largely created.

Many developing countries wanted to acknowledge the principle in the GGA talks. Saber Hossain Chowdhury, Bangladesh’s climate envoy, told Carbon Brief:

“CBDR–RC is at the heart of the Paris Agreement. Equity is something that is very important and we are going to insist on it.”

Developed countries, on the other hand, completely opposed its inclusion.

Yet, while many developing country groups seemed willing to engage, observers told Carbon Brief that the LMDCs and Arab Group were keeping the focus on CBDR–RC in order to block progress.

There were reports of frustration from more climate-vulnerable groups, such as the LDCs and AOSIS, and speculation that adaptation could be used as a bargaining chip in wider negotiations. However, the LMDCs rejected the idea that the G77 was divided.

Emilie Beauchamp, a climate adaptation specialist at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), told Carbon Brief:

“If countries keep getting stuck on issues related to CBDR in the GGA, things are going to break and parties are going to walk away. That’s what is very dangerous – you see hijacking of the GGA with negative outcomes for all the other groups.”

The first two versions of text that emerged from early consultations were so unpopular among parties that they only started properly negotiating with two days to go. (Notably, the second version included an annual target of $400bn in climate finance – roughly the upper limit of the current “adaptation finance gap” estimated by UNEP.)

When national ministers were tasked with corralling parties into some kind of agreement, Chilean environment minister Maisa Rojas confirmed that “the two most contentious issues” in GGA talks were finance and CBDR–RC.

Finally, just two days before COP28 was officially due to end, a draft decision was produced by the presidency. It included three options concerning CBDR-RC, weaker language on finance and no mention of a financial target.

Many parties expressed their dissatisfaction, but said they could work with the text. Soon after the text emerged, Mokoena France, an adaptation negotiator with the LDCs from Lesotho, told journalists:

“One thing we have realised that the text doesn’t have explicitly is the means of implementation, for the GGA framework. We think that is very critical for the implementation of the GGA framework.”

As negotiations continued and another text was released to general disapproval from developing countries, the African Group released a statement saying that they “[could not] accept a GGA framework without means of implementation from developed countries”.

Ultimately, however, the final text was waved through with even weaker language around both finance and CBDR-RC. Previous wording that “request[ed]” developed countries provide developing countries with finance was deleted, as was text about “taking into account the priorities and needs” of “particularly vulnerable” countries such as small islands.

Rather than mentioning CBDR-RC explicitly, the text only refers more vaguely to “provisions and principles” of the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement.

There was little in the text that compelled developed countries to provide more money to developing countries. Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, told Carbon Brief that the US had successfully led the opposition to adaptation finance in the negotiations.

As for the rest of the text, there were various changes made in the final document that reflected on-going debates throughout COP28.

Developed parties, such as the EU, as well as the G77 had agreed that there should be more time to carry out risk assessments and implement national adaptation plans (NAPs). As a result, the various “governance” targets for monitoring adaptation progress were pushed back to 2030, rather than some being set for 2025.

(There was also an agenda item specifically on NAPs at COP28, but it ended up being kicked down the road into future talks, with nothing more than a procedural decision. Another adaptation agenda item, concerning the annual report on the Adaptation Committee, was also delayed until future meetings.)

As for the “thematic” targets in the GGA, none of the more specific goals included in earlier drafts made it into the final texts. Instead, there was vaguer language around “attaining resilience” or “reducing impacts”. (Earlier drafts had contained language on “universal health coverage” and ensuring 30% of ecosystems are “maintained, enhanced or restored”.)

Bethan Laughlin, a senior policy specialist at the Zoological Society of London, told Carbon Brief that there were understandable motivations behind less precise targets:

“I think it comes down to a desire for national choice over actions, but at the same time what’s the point of a framework that’s meant to be actionable and measurable…If you don’t have actionable frameworks to work towards.”

Ultimately, Laughlin said the lack of quantifiable targets in the final text was a “real disappointment”.

The final text also retained language concerning the need for “transformational” adaptation. Some developing countries had called for removal of these references, on the basis that the concept is poorly defined and would place additional barriers in their path to obtaining adaptation finance.

Parties did not agree to set up a specific agenda item to continue discussing the GGA, as some had hoped for.

However, they will now engage in a two-year work programme to establish which “indicators” can be used to work out how well adapted they are in the future.

There were some positive signals for countries seeking adaptation finance in the final global stocktake text. It “urges” developed countries to prepare a report on their progress towards doubling adaptation finance by 2025 and also “recognises” that this finance will ultimately have to be “significantly scaled up beyond the doubling”.

Finally, the text also “decides” to convene a ministerial dialogue “on the urgent need to scale up adaptation finance…to ensure the mobilisation by developed country parties of the adaptation support pledged”. (This is one of only eight uses of the relatively strong word “decides” in the text).

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Mitigation work programme

The first decision under the Sharm el Sheikh mitigation ambition and implementation work programme (MWP) was adopted on COP28’s final day.

The programme is focused on accelerating and identifying the best clean-energy pathways through to 2030, building on two global dialogues held this year – one on power and one on transport systems.

At the climate negotiations in Bonn in June, an intense fight broke out over the agenda, which meant it was not accepted until the day before the two-week session was meant to close. This was due to a deadlock around whether the MWP should be added to the agenda, as, although mitigation is widely agreed to be vital, the economic toll of taking such actions could be a significant burden to many developing countries.

Ultimately, the MWP, along with a proposed item on financial support, was dropped from the agenda, with an informal note issued by the SB chairs capturing the work on it at Bonn.

Going into COP28, therefore, some observers were concerned that similar disputes over the phase out of fossil fuels and the finance needed for a just transition, would once again emerge.

The initial text produced on 2 December was an “informal tool” rather than a draft text, due to disagreement over duplication with the stocktake. This was also the case with the texts released on 3 December and 5 December, although both contained more elements of what can be considered a draft text.

COP28 delegates on 2 December 2023. Credit: UNFCC / Amira Grotendiek / Flickr

Speaking at a CAN briefing on 6 December, Avantika Goswami programme manager Centre for Science and Environment, said the MWP discussion so far has “not been fruitful, it’s been extremely procedural”. Goswami added:

“What we are finding in this work programme right now is that no substance is being discussed. And conversations are stalled and delayed, potentially to see what outcome is produced from the global stocktake, which, in our opinion, would be a lot of good time available here wasted, if we leave COP28 with no substantial discussions on mitigation ambition.”

On 9 December, finally, a draft text with formal status was released, although it was peppered with brackets. This included key areas of divergence, such as whether to “encourage parties to consider…with a view to urgently scaling up” action and on whether “highlight the importance of accelerating the just energy transition”.

Fights around the mandate of the MWP – in particular, with discussions on the role of fossil fuels continuing in the GST negotiation – dominated disagreements, limiting progress on other matters over the following days.

This included the potential of regional dialogues, which the US, EIG, AOSIS, LDC and AGN expressed interest in during meetings known as “informals”.

Speaking to Carbon Brief on 10 December, Tom Evans, policy advisor at thinktank E3G, said:

“I think what’s disappointing is that there aren’t some of the technical refinements that could be done in the MWP. There’s a huge opposition to regional workshops, breaking these things down on a regional level. Other than that, we’ve heard some complaints about costs and admin.”

Following draft negotiation texts on 9 December, there was a gap of four days without any additional texts being released, as discussions stalled.

Challenges in the MWP continued around whether the decision text should include any high-level political messages – such as a stance on fossil fuels – or whether that falls outside the mandate of the programme, noted TWN.

As such, conversations remained procedural, with WWF noting in its newsletter that “parties have not stepped up on increasing ambition or discussing enough substance to agree on any energy-package language”.

Kay Harrison (New Zealand) and Carlos Fuller (Belize) were appointed as co-facilitators of the MWP on 9 December, in an effort to progress the negotiations beyond the “incremental progress” seen in the first 10 days of talks.

The final text released and accepted on the final day of COP28 is procedural more than substantive, due to challenges around the mandate of the programme and the continued mistrust amongst parties regarding who will bear the mitigation burden and how (as was seen in Bonn), suggested India’s Centre for Science and Environment in a Twitter thread.

CSE Climate Change wrote:

“Developing countries feel they already lost the equity fight by taking on equal mitigation share across the board and coming up with NDCs. They don’t want new pressures channelled through this work programme, which is fair.”

All references to 1.5C were removed from the final draft, including the point from the previous draft noting “the assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the impacts of climate change will be much lower at a temperature increase of 1.5C compared with 2C, and the resolve to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C”.

The removal of this, along with the emphasis on the “urgent need for parties to increase efforts to collectively reduce emissions through accelerated action and implementation of domestic mitigation measures” (a reference to Article 4, paragraph 5 which states that support shall be provided to developing country parties to support these collective efforts) and the recognition of that countries have “different starting points, capacities and national circumstances”, speaks to the lack of substantive conclusions in the MWP.

Beyond COP28, the MWP will act as a process under which mitigation outcomes from the GST could be taken forward. There is a level of uncertainty around this, however, as it is unclear whether the “road map to mission 1.5C” (see Global stocktake) will tie in with the MWP.

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Finance

Besides the early adoption of the loss-and-damage fund, none of the biggest items on the COP28 agenda focused exclusively on climate finance.

However, the topic still permeated the event and was a key talking point in most of the negotiations.

As the talks came to a head on 12 December, the official closing day of the summit, a panel of African leaders told a press conference that financial support would be “essential” if they were to transition away from fossil fuels.

They were not alone.

In order to achieve any of the lofty aspirations of COP28 – from fossil-fuel phaseout to tripling renewables (see sections on Global stocktake and Renewables and nuclear) – developing countries emphasised again and again that they would need large amounts of money.

This position is well-founded. In a new report launched at the start of COP28 from the High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance, chaired by leading economists Vera Songwe and Nicholas Stern, the authors conclude:

“The world is badly off track on the Paris goals, as the first global stocktake shows, the primary reason for which is insufficient investment in key areas, particularly in EMDCs [emerging markets and developing countries].”

The report emphasises that these nations will require around $2.4tn of investment a year by 2030 to meet their climate goals. As for where this money will come from, many of the ideas discussed in the report were also discussed throughout COP28.

Currently, a small group of “developed” countries that includes the US, western Europe, Japan and other “global north” nations, is obliged under the UN system to provide “climate finance” to help developing countries take climate action. Most of this finance comes in the form of development aid.

These parties were tasked with providing at least $100bn of climate finance annually to developing countries by 2020 and until 2025. They have so far failed to do this and, in doing so, have contributed to a general lack of trust within this critical part of the UN climate system.

However, a recent report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) concluded that, despite the lack of publicly available data, the goal was “likely to have already been met as of 2022”.

This was repeatedly cited as positive news by developed countries at COP28. They wanted it reflected in the outcomes within the “long-term climate finance” agenda item, which concerns the delivery of the $100bn goal. However, developing countries argued that the OECD’s conclusions were essentially conjecture and should not be considered.

There were also suggestions from some developed countries that, rather than the OECD, Oxfam’s estimates of progress towards the £100bn should be used to assess progress. (The NGO does not fully count contributions delivered as loans, slashing climate finance estimates by around three-quarters.)

The final text did not explicitly reference either the OECD or Oxfam. However, it “notes the different estimates” of progress towards the $100bn considered by the UN’s Standing Committee on Finance, in a report which incorporates both organisations’ work.

Part of the reason developing countries want to keep the focus on past failures is that, even if the £100bn goal was met in 2022, developed countries are still obliged to make up the shortfall for 2020 and 2021 – which stands at $27bn. In the global stocktake outcome, developed countries agreed to “fully deliver, with urgency” the $100bn pledge.

Meanwhile, negotiations continued over the development of a post-2025 climate finance goal to replace the $100bn pledge, termed the new collective quantified goal (NCQG).

This is expected to be the biggest agenda item at COP29 next year in Baku, Azerbaijan. In the meantime, countries have been carrying out various “dialogues” involving experts and ministers, laying the groundwork for the decision.

Developing countries, which expect to be the main beneficiaries of this new target, want to move faster on deciding its details. Developed countries, on the other hand, have been happy to delay discussions on anything substantial until they are forced to do so.

Alex Scott, a climate diplomacy lead with the thinktank E3G, told Carbon Brief that there had been some discussion at COP28 of pertinent issues, including the timescales of the NCQG. Some parties proposed setting sub-goals for underfunded areas, such as adaptation, but this was “definitely too politically contentious”, Scott said.

With little agreement among parties, the focus throughout much of the talks ended up focusing on how to continue with workshops. Ultimately, negotiators agreed to go beyond such technical discussions and make space next year to start work on a draft decision text ahead of COP29. Joe Thwaites, a climate finance expert at NRDC, told Carbon Brief:

“With a major new finance goal due to be agreed in 2024, this COP’s decisions were never likely to make new finance commitments. COP29 will be the finance COP.”

The NCQG, along with the loss-and-damage fund, is an area where developed countries are keen to discuss expanding the climate-finance donor base. That is, broadening it out to include relatively wealthy emerging economies, such as China and the Gulf states.

In her role representing the Council of the EU presidency, Spanish environment minister Teresa Ribera told a press conference:

“The EU will keep on providing financial assistance to the most vulnerable countries, but we need to enlarge the base of contributors and change the logics being applied up to now. Other relevant principles may be important in this discussion – the fair approach relates to historic responsibilities, but it also relates to the financial capacities of today, or the polluter pays principle.”

This is a highly controversial issue at UN talks, particularly in the context of past failures by developed countries to deliver climate finance.

Some large, emerging economies already distribute significant sums of climate-related finance to other global-south nations, but it is not considered under the politicised term of “climate finance” in the UN context.

Jonathan Beynon, a climate finance expert at the Center for Global Development, told Carbon Brief that disputes over who should bear responsibility for providing climate finance could be seen across many negotiating tracks at COP28:

“There are growing signs that some developing countries recognise that not all developing countries are the same and that the larger emitters should start contributing. So while developed countries must deliver on existing promises and continue to take primary responsibility, a more nuanced approach seems the best way forward.”

Many global-north countries, particularly the US, have failed to provide their “fair share” of climate finance, based on historical emissions. However, analysis by Beynon and others suggests that, based on such metrics, there are various wealthy nations outside the global north that could be candidates to be future climate-finance donors, including COP28 hosts the UAE.

Outside of the negotiations, there was a growing sense that climate funds mobilised through the UN system would not be sufficient to meet the challenges ahead. Instead, many argued for changes to global finance “architecture”, such as those outlined by the High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance in its new report.

Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley, speaking at an event attended by Carbon Brief, welcomed the new loss-and-damage fund, but questioned whether there was a need to go beyond traditional climate finance and “laborious treaty negotiation” to raise sufficient funds:

“It cannot be governments alone, because more money is circulated among non-state actors than perhaps around two-thirds of the countries of the world, whose balance sheets are miniscule in comparison to the major non-state actors.”

This builds on a growing movement, led by Barbados and a handful of other nations from the global north and south, to reform the international finance system and help to raise the trillions of dollars that are needed for climate action.

As University College London economist Mariana Mazucatto said at the same event: “Actually, there’s plenty of finance out there, it’s just often not being directed”.

Among the ideas being proposed to raise funds for climate action are levies attached to high-emitting sectors and reforms at multilateral development banks (MDBs) to free up more finance.

These ideas came to the forefront in the UAE-led Leaders’ Declaration on a Global Climate Finance Framework, which was endorsed by 13 national governments on the third day of COP28.

This was viewed as an effort to bring together various efforts from recent months to drive widespread financial reform, including Barbados’ Bridgetown Initiative, the Paris pact from the financial summit held earlier this year and the Nairobi Declaration that emerged from the first African Climate Summit.

One of the declaration’s priorities was “building better, bigger and more effective MDBs”. This has been a growing area of concern in the international arena and the final global stocktake agreement at COP28 reflected this by “call[ing] on MDBs and other financial institutions to further scale up investments in climate action”.

Another venture, set up by France and Kenya, was termed the Taskforce on International Taxation to Enhance Development and Climate Action. This was intended to push for climate levies on aviation, fossil fuels and financial transactions, specifically.

These issues found their way into negotiations as well. The global stocktake “emphasises” the role of “governments, central banks, commercial banks, institutional investors and other financial” organisations in “ensuring or enhancing” access to climate finance.

It also says these institutions should “accelerate…new and innovative sources of finance”. The document specifically mentioned taxation as an option – the first time it has been referenced in a COP decision text.

Meanwhile, negotiators also discussed draft reports undertaken by the Standing Committee of Finance on ways to achieve Article 2.1c of the Paris Agreement, doubling adaptation finance and defining climate finance. These are all contentious issues in UN negotiations.

Article 2.1c refers to the section of the treaty that describes making all financial flows consistent with the Paris Agreement.

Scott told Carbon Brief that, in theory, discussions of this topic could cover the kind of systemic changes being discussed outside the negotiating rooms. However, developing countries have resisted developed-country efforts to raise this issue, viewing it as an attempt to divert the conversation away from the provision of traditional climate finance.

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Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on agriculture and food security

The Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on implementation of climate action on agriculture and food security (SSJW), agreed at COP27 last year, is the only formal UNFCCC workstream to address agriculture and food systems.

SSJW is the successor to the Koronivia joint work for agriculture, which was established at COP23 in Bonn, in 2017.

The goal of the SSJW negotiations at COP28 was to establish a roadmap for the joint work. There were three main elements to this: to agree on a set of topics for the three mandated workshops to be held under the joint work; to establish the online portal for submissions under the workshops; and to determine how the work itself should be carried out and synthesised.

Under the SSJW, as with Koronivia before it, a series of workshops brings together a wide range of voices on a particular topic, with each workshop resulting in a synthesis report.

Such reports are “a form of recommendation”, said Marie Cosquer, co-coordinator of the Climate Action Network’s agriculture working group and advocacy analyst at Action against Hunger. She added:

“Even if it’s sometimes very top line, it’s still a political signal for countries to orient and define their food-systems policies.”

On the first day of the negotiations, some developed countries suggested that it would be more constructive to start with a clean sheet, having failed to come to a consensus at the last session of the subsidiary bodies in Bonn. But developing countries supported using the informal note prepared in Bonn in June as the basis of negotiations.

As a result, the negotiations began “very blocked”, Cosquer said. She told Carbon Brief:

“We were really disappointed to see that nothing has moved since Bonn.”

Parties reportedly “lamented” the lack of progress in the negotiating rooms over the course of the first several days, with some noting that the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture gave added weight and urgency to the work being done there. Both parties and observers said they lamented that one year of the SSJW mandate had already passed, with nothing to show for it.

There were two elements “gluing up” the negotiations, said Teresa Anderson, global climate justice lead at ActionAid. She told Carbon Brief:

“One is the process and the bureaucracy entailed in making outcomes. And one is the content – and, of course, we need the right bureaucracy, we need the right systems in place, in order to have the right conversations about the content.”

The G77 plus China negotiating bloc put forward a proposal for a “coordination group”, which would help facilitate implementation of the joint work. Developed countries expressed concerns over what that group would achieve and the costs it would incur to implement additional meetings.

Anderson noted that it was clear that changes needed to be made in the process in order to begin to effectively implement the joint work, but “developing countries hadn’t proven to developed countries that this [coordination group] is really the right structure to solve the problem”.

As the negotiations progressed, the coordination group remained the major sticking point, with the G77 plus China bloc insisting that if they could not come to an agreement on the group, there would be no agreement on anything else.

Ultimately, the SSJW negotiations ended with a procedural text. This “essentially means, ‘we talked, we’ll talk again’”, Anderson told Carbon Brief. She continued:

“There’s a long, bloated, confusing text now, with everybody’s pet pieces and pet hates all in there. That’s now being recorded as an informal note, which means that it can be picked up to be discussed again next year.”

The draft decision on the Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on agriculture and food security. Source: UNFCCC

The informal note that will be forwarded to Bonn has no legal status, and may or may not be used as the basis of the next round of negotiations.

Annex I of the informal note contains a still-bracketed decision to establish a coordination group to “facilitate the Sharm el-Sheikh joint work…for the duration of the mandate established” at COP27.

Annex II lays out the seven proposed topics for the three workshops, with two options for each of the first two workshops and three for the final one:

Scaling up means of implementation, including finance, technology development and transfer and capacity-building.

Risk management, including early-warning systems for food security.

Approaches to sustainable agriculture and food security.

Holistic approaches to agriculture and food security.

Fisheries and aquaculture.

Understanding sustainable food systems through climate action.

Measuring, monitoring, reporting and verifying climate action for agriculture and food security.

Clement Metivier, acting head of international advocacy at WWF-UK, told Carbon Brief:

“The key word is implementation. And the big question is: how can the UNFCCC actually help with implementation at the national and even the local level? When we talk about agriculture and food security, this is very much about local issues and very concrete solutions. And, obviously, this [COP] process is very different from implementation on the ground.”

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Article 6

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement covers international carbon markets and other “cooperative approaches” that nations could use to help meet their climate targets.

Outside the international climate regime, the so-called “voluntary” carbon market (VCM) has been under intense scrutiny this year, after high-profile investigations highlighting its shortcomings.

Carbon markets are also contentious at the COP with some countries opposed to the idea in principle. At COP25 in Madrid in 2019, negotiations on Article 6 ended without agreement.

Those cracks were smoothed over at COP26 the following year. There, rules were finally agreed on bilateral country-to-country carbon trading under Article 6.2, on the centralised international carbon market under Article 6.4 and on “non-market approaches” (NMAs) under Article 6.8.

Ahead of this year’s talks, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) said that, with those rules already agreed, Article 6 was no longer high on the political agenda.

It said that this was an opportunity to “avoid extreme politicisation and focus on key decisions to operationalise international carbon markets”.

At COP28 in Dubai, however, countries once again failed to reach agreement on Article 6.2 and Article 6.4, both of which were subject to “rule 16”, meaning talks will resume next year.

Independent climate policy analyst Catalina Gonda, who was advising a number of NGOs on Article 6 at COP28, told Carbon Brief:

“Overall, it is good to see both 6.2 and 6.4 texts will continue to be discussed next year, as they were clearly not ready for adoption.”

Similarly, NGO Carbon Market Watch said in a statement: “No deal was better than agreeing to a bad one that would torpedo the Paris Agreement.”

However, the outcome was “disappointing”, said Juliana Kessler, research associate at thinktank Perspectives Climate Research. She told Carbon Brief:

“The Article 6.2 and Article 6.4 negotiations outcome at COP28 is disappointing and sends the wrong signals to carbon market actors. The further delay of the Article 6.4 mechanism – which is expected to become a benchmark [for quality] – is very problematic.”

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Article 6.2

Against the hopes of IETA, the Article 6.2 discussions were indeed heavily politicised, with deep disagreements over whether – and how – to impose processes and controls on bilateral trading.

COP27 gave countries reporting on their use of Article 6.2 a free hand to mark information as confidential, with oversight limited to a review of reported information by a UN technical team.

At COP28, some countries were pushing for a clear process for “identifying, notifying and correcting Inconsistencies”. Earlier draft texts at the summit included a lengthy section on this topic – but it was reduced to a single paragraph in the penultimate draft.

They also wanted a more clearly defined sequence for the authorisation of carbon-cutting schemes and the subsequent issuing of related carbon credits, as well as tightly limited rules on when the authorisation of carbon credits could be “revoked”.

Gonda told Carbon Brief that the US was the main proponent of looser rules, opposed by the EU, Latin American countries and others. She explained:

“We have a paradoxical situation in which stringent rules are being negotiated for a highly regulated UN-governed carbon market (6.4), while countries also have the option to exchange carbon credits under ‘cooperative approaches’ of Article 6.2, through highly unregulated bilateral or multilateral agreements and without independent oversight.

“The main dispute in these Article 6.2 negotiations is between those favouring voluntary standards and vague, expedited processes – mainly the US – and those [including the EU, AILAC and others] advocating for greater stringency, supervision and cooperative approaches to minimise the already large asymmetry between 6.2 and 6.4.”

Andrea Bonzanni, IETA director of international policy, told Carbon Brief:

“The gap in expectations remains large and it will be difficult to bridge. However, Article 6.2 does not need further guidance to be implemented.”

Kessler said that the lack of agreement on Article 6.2 left this implementation wide open to interpretation by the countries pressing ahead with such carbon-trading. She explained:

“Adopting the Article 6.2 decision would have brought important clarifications on basic definitions, the authorisation process, reporting processes and the dealing with inconsistencies therein. The resulting lack of guidance causes uncertainty and undermines transparency – leaving key design choices to states engaging in bilateral Article 6.2 cooperation without a guiding star.”

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Article 6.4

In order to start operating, the international carbon market under Article 6.4 needs rules on how to define the number of carbon credits each project generates.

Draft recommendations on Article 6.4 “methodologies” were up for approval at COP28. They define key ideas such as the “baseline” against which emissions reductions or emissions removals can be “credited”, generating “Article 6.4 emissions reductions” credits that can be bought and sold.

The draft rules say the baseline has to be consistent with the host country’s climate pledge, rather than being set against “business-as-usual”. They also set out how the issuing of Article 6.4 carbon credits should avoid “locking in” emissions inconsistent with climate goals.

These recommendations were developed by a “supervisory body” that oversees the Article 6.4 international carbon market.

While these recommendations had broad support at COP28, agreement foundered on rules for carbon credits generated via “removals”, meaning engineered or natural processes that suck carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere.

(An earlier draft of this guidance had been sent back to the drawing board at COP27.)

Many approaches to carbon removal are non-permanent, Gonda told Carbon Brief, carrying risks of reversal. Using non-permanent credits to offset ongoing fossil fuel emissions “should be treated with extreme caution and limited in some way”, she explained.

While the draft guidance on removals set out to do this in a number of ways, including “buffer pools” of credits that could be held back as insurance, it left a variety of matters unfinished.

This included a tool to assess the risk of reversals and a decision on how long projects would need to be monitored after they stop issuing credits. This monitoring is needed to ensure that the carbon removed from the atmosphere is still being stored – in other words, it has not been “reversed”.

A number of other important matters had been left unfinished ahead of COP28, including the “sustainable development tool” that carbon-credit projects will have to use under the Article 6.4 market, as well as a grievance procedure for dealing with disputes.

The supervisory body is also yet to draw up tools to help carbon-credit projects work out the appropriate baseline for crediting and to demonstrate that the emissions being reduced or removed are truly “additional” to what would have happened anyway.

It is also yet to develop a tool on avoiding the risk of carbon “leakage”. Most of these tools are mandatory, meaning projects would not be able to start issuing Article 6.4 credits until the tools are in place.

The EU pushed for COP28 to adopt the recommendations on methodologies, while asking for more work to be done in the document on removals. (The EU’s Article 6 negotiator Martin Hession had co-authored the recommendations on methodologies.)

The group of Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs), on the other hand, insisted that the two documents be adopted as a package. (Maria AlJishi, Article 6 negotiator for LMDC member Saudi Arabia, had co-authored the recommendations on removals.)

In addition, the draft text at COP28 “provided insufficient guarantees on safeguards and human rights”, Gonda said, as well as failing to “clearly state the need to establish an independent grievance mechanism before moving projects forward”. She added:

“This is extremely risky, as seen with the clean development mechanism [CDM, the carbon market under the Kyoto Protocol], where multiple projects faced allegations of human rights violations and environmental impacts and where an independent grievance mechanism was never adopted, leaving communities completely unprotected.”

At a 3 December COP28 side event attended by Carbon Brief, supervisory body chair Olga Gassan-zade said they had “worked 10-12-14 hour days just to bring this package to this meeting. We rely on the support of parties to allow this package to proceed.”

In the end, however, COP28 was unable to sign off any decisions on Article 6.4. This means the international carbon market it is supposed to set up will be put on ice for another year.

Finally, COP28 was also discussing a proposal from the Philippines for Article 6.4 to allow “emissions avoidance” schemes to generate carbon credits.

Emissions avoidance has a narrow and specific meaning under the CDM, but is used in a wide variety of ways in other contexts.

In the Philippines proposal, it could include generating carbon credits by agreeing not to develop new fossil fuel infrastructure or reserves, tapping into a huge potential supply of hypothetical “avoided emissions” that could then be used to “offset” ongoing emissions.

Carbon Brief understands this is opposed by all other parties, with those publicly stating their opposition including India, the EU, the Coalition for Rainforest Nations and the UK.

Also up for debate at COP28 was whether to allow credits from “conservation enhancement”. Many also opposed this, or said that such projects could instead generate emissions reductions or removals that are already eligible under Article 6.4.

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Article 6.8

The third part of Article 6 on cooperation is via “non-market approaches” (NMAs) under Article 6.8.

The idea has long been ill-defined, but has been pushed by those that object to market-based mechanisms on principle, particularly in light of issues with some carbon-market schemes.

Disagreement over the meaning of NMAs continued at COP28. Draft texts “invite[d] parties to consider non-market approaches, including domestic fiscal measures [such as carbon pricing”.

This proposal was backed by the EU, but opposed by several groups of developing countries including the LMDCs and AILAC, according to Down to Earth.

The final version of the text, published on the evening of 13 December, eschews specific examples of NMAs and simply “encourages parties to continue identifying opportunities” to use them.

(The text offers an insight into the position of those promoting NMAs, noting the “importance of ensuring the integrity of all ecosystems…recognised by some cultures as Mother Earth”.)

The text “takes note of the progress” in setting up a “web-based platform” for sharing NMAs, adding that this has not been completed according to the timelines agreed at COP27.

The text asks the UNFCCC secretariat to complete the platform before the next climate talks are held in Bonn, in June 2024, and “encourages” countries to use it to submit information on NMAs.

The text also asks countries to submit ideas for the ongoing work of the “Glasgow committee” on NMAs, which was set up at COP26 and is continuing to operate.

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Voluntary carbon markets

The COP28 presidency said ahead of the talks that it “aim[ed] to restore credibility and confidence in VCM by convening the highest level governmental and institutional leaders to publicly recognise high-integrity VCMs as catalysts for climate action”.

The summit also saw a huge number of VCM-related announcements, from the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets (ICVCM), from a group of EU countries on “high-integrity” markets and from the head of the World Bank Ajay Banga, among many others.

These efforts are, on the one hand, a response to the scrutiny over certain VCM schemes, and on the other hand a reflection of slow progress on Article 6.

One long-time observer of carbon-market discussions at the COP told Carbon Brief:

“There was a lot of love for the VCM out there in the pavilions and side events…the VCM seems to be taking on renewed strength from this COP.”

UNFCCC chief Simon Stiell offered a somewhat contrasting perspective on the matter, telling a 4 December event at COP28:

“Markets can help us increase ambition and reduce emissions…[But] voluntary carbon markets cannot substitute for government action…And voluntary markets cannot substitute for robust internal emission cuts by the private sector, this means it is ensured that emissions reductions are not substituted with offsets or carbon credits.”

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Response measures

Established at COP17, “response measures” has traditionally been seen as a staging ground for disputes outside of climate target-setting.

The latest iteration of the response measures work programme (RMWP) spans dialogues on the just transitions of the workforce, socio-economic and economic assessments, diversifying economies and creating decent work conditions and quality jobs.

At COP28, battles over the impacts of response measures were expectedly protracted, but following heated discussions a clean text was produced ahead of closing.

With the EU’s carbon border justice adjustment (CBAM) tax entering into force in October and its deforestation law in July, as well as the ensuing north-south trade and environment spats at the WTO, discussing climate-related trade measures was a running undercurrent throughout many of the negotiations at COP28, as well as the RMWP.

Four days before the start of COP28, the BASIC group of countries submitted a proposal to the UNFCCC and the UAE presidency to add an item on “unilateral trade measures related to climate change” to the COP28 agenda.

A proposal submitted by BASIC countries to Simon Stiell and the UAE presidency to include a discussion on trade measures related to climate in the COP agenda. Source: UNFCCC (2023)

The presidency included this additional item in the provisional COP28 agenda, but eventually dropped it. Discussions on response measures, however, continued under SBSTA and the global stocktake.

This year, countries were supposed to conduct a mid-term review of the six-year work plan of the forum, its council of experts (KCI) and decide which additional activities should be added to it.

As of 1am on 6 December, there were 56 unresolved points of disagreement in the draft negotiating text.

Some of these were on the forum’s functions, modalities and composition, but a majority of brackets surrounded its work programme – and whether it would consider the positive co-benefits and negative trade-offs of climate policies.

Article 3.5 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Source: UNFCCC (1992)

Capacity-building was an area of contention, with G77 countries demanding an assessment of the negative impacts of unilateral measures and assistance in minimising these harms. There are no references to cross-border impacts or unilateral measures in the final response measures text.

With brackets showing no signs of lifting before the SBI/SBSTA closed, KCI co-chairs held lengthy discussions, reassuring countries their concerns would still be up for discussion in full during the second week.

On 6 December, subsidiary body chairs concluded they were unable to close the work on response measures and forwarded the text to the COP presidency.

On 8 December, COP president Al Jaber appointed Andrei Marcu of Honduras and Georg Børsting of Norway to conduct informal consultations on response measures.

Response measures co-facilitators Andrei Marcu of Honduras and Georg Børsting of Norway. Credit: Earth Negotiations Bulletin/IISD (2023)

Under the Paris Agreement, the global stocktake “may also take into account” the impacts of response measures, as well as loss and damage.

According to a synthesis report of submissions to shape the stocktake’s political outcome, “almost all parties” had views on the impacts of response measures, but only one party “did not see the need” for a stand-alone section on it.

Avoiding unilateral measures featured as a high priority in the stocktake submissions of developing country blocs, such as G77 China, LMDCs, BASIC and ABU, many of whom pointed out that “protectionism” could increase the costs of implementing the Paris Agreement.

Separately, Russia proposed the stocktake consider the “socio-economic risks of [an] accelerated fossil phase-out”, specifically impacts on electricity prices and unemployment.

Russia’s submission to the global stocktake. Source (UNFCCC, 2023

Countries, notably the US, wanted the positive impacts of response measures and their lack of implementation by “major emitters” captured in the global stocktake.

US submission to the global stocktake on response measures. UNFCCC (2023).

Many of these views were reflected in the first sets of building blocks of global stocktake text.

In the final version of the global stocktake, response measures were included as a stand-alone section. However, the only explicit reference to “unilateral” trade barriers is under international cooperation.

The global stocktake included language from Article 3.5 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate that touches upon “unilateral” measures. Source: UNFCCC (2023).

It also “notes” that the global low-emissions transition provides “opportunities” and poses “challenges to sustainable development, economic growth and eradication of poverty, “encourag[ing]” states to promote policies mindful of these considerations when diversifying their economies.

According to Pascal Lamy, former WTO director-general and coordinator of the Jacques Delors thinktank, the dissimilarity between climate and trade governance is a key driver of disagreement around the responses to policies, such as CBAM. In a media huddle on the morning on 9 December, Lamy told reporters:

“The trade governance system is based on rules, with no quantitative target. On the climate side, we have a target, which is net-zero emissions, but we have no rules. This is where we have friction, inevitably, because the Paris Agreement leaves total freedom to countries to decarbonise the way they want to do it in a nationally determined manner: it’s an N-DC not an MDC (multilaterally determined contribution).”

To Dr Vaibhaiv Chaturvedi, a fellow at Indian thinktank Council on Energy Environment and Water (CEEW), threats to the “nationally determined nature” of pledges on top of “frayed, withering” trust from lack of pre-2020 actions by developed countries were a source of “major discomfort” for developing countries. He told Carbon Brief:

“What does it do to the nationally determined nature of the Paris Agreement if some other country is trying to regulate your own emissions in some industries?”

To Sandra Guzmán, founder of the Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean (GFLAC), finance discussions – including the non-delivery of $100bn and the post-2025 goal – were particularly important in this context. She told Carbon Brief:

“I’m from Mexico. I would like my country to continue improving its decarbonisation pathway, but it’s one thing to set a target and a plan to do so and another to receive imposition without the support to do so. We are just starting on this path and we are not there yet. CBAM might be good for the European Union, but not for the developing world.”

To Lamy, countries urgently needed a conversation where trade, climate and development are considered together. He added:

“Developed countries don’t like to discuss this in COPs, and there is huge resistance from developing countries to discuss this in the WTO because of an understandable fear against green protectionism.”

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Just transition work programme

Launched within the Sharm el-Sheikh implementation plan, the just transition work programme (JTWP) held its first high-level ministerial round table at COP28, preparing the work programmes’s activities for the next five years.

Disagreements arose around the focus of the JTWP, with developed countries broadly viewing it as a labour transition, while developing countries argued it needs to be more multilateral.

This echoed the disagreements seen at Bonn in June, when the G77 and China said their views were being overlooked in the talks, which they described as being “mitigation-centric”.

As Anabella Rosemberg, senior advisor on the just transition at CAN, explained to Carbon Brief, the JTWP struggled to encompass a workers transition, the social elements around this, as well as an international cooperation and development aspect.

“It has been almost a philosophical conversation here about whether we’re talking about just transition pathways or pathways to just transition.”

These debates led to continued challenges in the JTWP negotiations, with 12 drafts of the text produced before consensus was reached.

On 8 December, new co-facilitators – Marianne Karlsen (Norway) and Simon Cardy (South Africa) – were appointed to preside over discussions after negotiations had failed to reach a consensus. Following group huddles, parties welcomed a text as the basis of negotiations, reported ENB, and set out their remaining concerns.

Many of these concerns, as with other negotiations at COP28, centred around the need for support to enable global-south countries to undertake a just transition. Within the JTWP, this went beyond financial support and included patent and licence restrictions, as well as punitive tax and trade measures.

Speaking to Carbon Brief, Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins senior campaigner at charity War on Want, explained how the JTWP was playing out as a microcosm of wider positions at COP28.

“The G77 – on the back of the loss-and-damage win – sees this as a potentially unifying fight. They said…if they don’t get a just transition work programme, that it could break the process for them. All the other stuff is either going to be enabled or constrained by the lack or presence of this aspect.”

In an effort to move the JTWP forwards, G77 and China brought a bridging proposal on the scope and preamble during the consultations under the presidency on 8 and 9 December. This was not reflected in the draft text released on 9 December, however, as the US said “it would take us backward if we take in [a] new option”, noted TWN.

Within this new draft, however, “pathways to just transition” was introduced by the developed countries, a linguistic difference that caused frustration for numerous parties.

The language had previously been accepted by 180 countries within the International Labour Organisations’ guidelines for a just transition, noted Bert de Wel climate policy officer at the International Trade Union Confederation speaking to Carbon Brief, adding:

“It’s watering down, stretching out the definition, diminishing the role of workers in this definition. While, at the same time, it’s obvious that we recognise that national circumstances are different between Poland and Senegal.”

Developing countries broadly wanted to retain “just transition pathways” – in line with the title of the work programme. For example, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay said the original language was stronger in linking transition pathways to justice and equity, noted TWN.

Additionally, the change in language occurred during the closed-door consultations under the presidency, noted TWN. The exclusion of key parties both during this process and going forwards was flagged as a concern by many throughout COP28.

Another draft was released on 10 December, which was close to a clean text, and retained reference to “just transitions” plural. The final text was released in the early hours of 13 December and passed through the closing plenary.

It did not differ greatly to the 10 December text and includes human rights within the final preamble – something observers told Carbon Brief had been in question.

Reference to “country-driven, gender-responsive, inclusive and participatory, socially just approaches to pathways to just transition, taking into consideration human rights, labour rights, rights of Indigenous Peoples, vulnerable groups, children and youth, local communities and ecosystems” was removed from the text.

Changes to the timeframe of submissions under the JTWP were also changes, with parties and non-party stakeholders invited to submit their views on the work to be undertaken by 1 March each year from 2024.

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Other matters

Gender action plan

The gender action plan, launched at COP25 in Madrid and building on COP20’s Lima work programme on gender, aims to mainstream gender-responsive thinking and policy across the UNFCCC negotiations.

Currently in the penultimate year of its five-year mandate, the gender action plan was “set to be an extremely procedural negotiation” at COP28, said Bridget Burns, the executive director of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization. She told Carbon Brief:

“We came to COP hoping to use it to make progress in talking to governments about what they hope and expect for next year and to share what we hope and expect for next year. But they ended up in a lot of meetings to debate language that had already been agreed.

“I think we’re seeing some governments using it as an easy strategic blocking negotiation.”

Finance remained a sticking point across the negotiations, with developing countries holding the line that they need resources in order to implement gender-responsive policies at the national level.

The text that was ultimately agreed upon was significantly “diminished”, with “quite crucial things missing”, Rebecca Heuvelmans, advocacy and campaigning officer with Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF), said.

References to a number of workshops and reports carried out under the plan, including a report from the International Labour Organization on gender and a just transition, were not included in the final decision.

Language on supporting Indigenous women was also removed from the final text.

Russia, in particular, “seemed to take a strategy of wanting to really block a lot of the aspects of the negotiations”, Burns said.

According to Sascha Gabizon, executive director of WECF, Russia argued against the specific inclusion of Indigenous women and attempted to change references to “gender” in the text to references to “sex”. She told Carbon Brief:

“They are very much politicising anything which has to do with gender equality in the negotiations. So that doesn’t really look good for the future.”

The gender action plan is set to be renewed and renegotiated at COP29 next year.

Action for climate empowerment

Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) aims to encourage people to engage in climate action in different ways – through education, training and global cooperation, alongside public awareness, participation and access to information.

The “Glasgow ACE work programme” was agreed at COP26. At last year’s talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, countries agreed on a new four-year ACE “action plan”.

This plan “focuses on immediate action through short-term, clear and time-bound acti

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