Opinion In the hottest year in recorded history, COP28 will need to work on urgent course correction

It should ensure robust follow-up and accountability for all commitments made inside and outside the UN process.

Effective climate action requires an all-encompassing approach that engages multiple levels of governance and the full spectrum of actors and actions.

Lavanya Rajamani

November 29, 2023 09:52 AM IST First published on: Nov 29, 2023 at 07:00 AM IST

As another United Nations Climate Conference rolls around — COP28 opens tomorrow in Dubai, UAE — the nations of the world will come together to take stock of how far we have come and where we are headed in the global effort to combat the climate crisis. Three decades of multilateral negotiations have resulted in three legally binding treaties, including the 2015 Paris Agreement, and innumerable decisions calling for urgent action, all aiming to deliver a climate-safe planet. Without these multilateral instruments, we would be well on our way to an unimaginable 4°C world. But these global agreements have still not put us on the path to a liveable future and the world is rapidly running out of time.

The recent 2023 UNEP Gap Report found that if all unconditional national contributions made under the Paris Agreement are fully implemented, it would put us on track to limiting the average global temperature rise to 2.9°C, a far cry from the 1.5°C goal agreed in Paris and affirmed in Glasgow in 2021. If all conditional contributions — “conditional”, that is, on uncertain financing from rich nations — are implemented, we are still on track for 2.5°C. In its 2022 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that finance flows are three to six times below those needed for a Paris-aligned pathway. At 2.9°C, there will be catastrophic disruptions to natural systems, triggering many natural tipping points, and resulting in cascading impacts on people and the planet. Against this foreboding backdrop, and in the hottest year in recorded history, the world will be looking to COP28 to deliver a much-needed clarion call that can “course correct” our current unsustainable trajectory.

Of course, the UN climate negotiations cannot deliver a stable climate by itself. Constrained by a consensus-based decision-making process and the architecture of the Paris Agreement, which comprises primarily binding procedural obligations, negotiators have sought ever more creative ways to deliver breathtakingly ambitious announcements, striving to satisfy the intense public and media expectations placed on every COP. These announcements offer a momentary ray of hope but strain credulity soon thereafter. The 2021 Glasgow COP famously concluded with a decision to “phase down coal” (after India objected to phasing out coal). Needless to say, coal usage around the world, particularly in India, is neither down nor out.

Effective climate action requires an all-encompassing approach that engages multiple levels of governance and the full spectrum of actors and actions. The UN climate negotiations should therefore focus on doing what they can do best — play a norm-setting role. The negotiations can provide a clear direction of travel and catalyse action among states and the wider landscape of action. COP28 should aim to chart a course for the world we urgently need.

Delegates in Dubai will undertake the first “Global Stocktake” to assess our collective progress towards the Paris Agreement’s goals. The technical part of this two-year assessment concluded in September with a robust report highlighting gaps in ambition, implementation, and support. COP28 should take the next step and signal that we are not on track for the agreed temperature goal; indeed, perilously far from it. Current pledges are not sufficiently ambitious and, worse yet, unlikely to be implemented, given the unfulfilled promises of financial support.

Another much-needed signal from COP 28 would shift focus away from greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target-setting, as recent COPs have done to the exclusion of all else. The focus on target-setting — a knee-jerk reaction to public pressure — has led to ever more ambitious (and precarious) targets based on fanciful expectations of financial support. While this approach provides a momentary thrill, it misunderstands the drivers for national ambition. National politics and circumstances (and in some cases, legal interventions) determine real, on-the-ground ambition, not (primarily) international pressure. When targets are duly supported with international finance, technology, and capacity, and implemented, they generate the confidence for more ambitious actions. Increasingly, frenzied calls for stronger mitigation targets only lead to heavily caveated promises unlikely to be delivered. COP28 should therefore send strong signals on the need to increase renewable energy and energy efficiency, matched by a phase down
of unabated fossil fuels, but pivot to implementation and support rather than target-setting.

In addition, COP28 should reframe equity and fairness — between and within states — as an enabler of ambition rather than as a constraint. Addressing climate change requires large-scale system transitions, which may be deeply disruptive and disproportionately affect the marginalised. Just and inclusive transitions which prioritise the needs of those most affected and offer them alternative livelihoods are likely to generate a sense of ownership in addressing climate change and enable greater ambition. The loss and damage fund set to be operationalised at COP28 will also, if appropriately financed, foster trust in the system.

Finally, COP28 should ensure robust follow-up and accountability for all commitments made inside and outside the UN process. The recent tsunami of climate litigation around the world against governments, and the high-profile cases pending before international and regional courts, reflects the increasing demand for accountability. States and the UN process need to deliver on their promises to take humanity off, as the UN Secretary-General warned at the UN Climate Ambition Summit in New York, the “highway to climate hell”.

The writer is professor, International Environmental Law, Oxford