After a week of heated debates on topics including climate finance, the energy transition, health and peace, COP28 week 2 kicked off with a day dedicated to youth and education, followed by negotiations on nature and food security. While all eyes are on delegates in Dubai to deliver a final agreement, here’s a recap of the major deals achieved in the second half of the UN climate summit.
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Day 8 (December 8) – Youth, Children, Education & Skills
Youth Day seeks to empower young generations to actively shape the outcomes of COP28 and future climate actions. It strives to offer clear, well-defined, and accessible opportunities for young people to play a prominent role in proposing solutions at all levels of decision-making.
Youth: YOUNGO, the official children and youth constituency to the UNFCCC launched the first-ever Youth Stocktake, a comprehensive analysis of youth involvement in climate diplomacy that presents strategies to enhance youth participation in the COP decision-making process.
Education: 38 countries signed the Greening Education Partnership Declaration, committing to incorporate climate education into their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs). The Partnership, a collaboration between the UAE, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the UN International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), revolves around four pillars: Greening Schools, Greening Learning, Greening Capacity, and Greening Communities.
Health: The UAE announced a new US$220 million funding package to help drive better health outcomes for youth in Africa. “Investing in youth will unleash the potential of millions on the African continent and will ensure a prosperous future for them, as people under 25 years of age constitute more than 60 per cent of the population of Africa. The future of the continent depends on quality health and educational services and learning skills for young people,” said Sheikh Shakhboot bin Nahyan Al Nahyan, Minister of State, who announced the financial grant.
Conservation: The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB), and technology company Esri launched Act30, which brings together a wide network of scientific experts and Indigenous peoples’ representatives to “help governments chart an effective and fair route to conserving their countries’ biodiverse areas.” The initiative is designed to support the 190 governments that have committed to the 30×30 target of conserving 30% of terrestrial, inland water, coastal and marine areas by 2030, under the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
Forests: A new Jurisdictional REDD+ Technical Assistance Partnership (JTAP) announced on Friday will help tropical forest countries access much-needed finance and accelerate large-scale conservation of forests through high-integrity researchers assessed rainforest carbon offset projects, also known as REDD+ projects. REDD+ stands for ‘reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries’ and it was created by the UNFCCC to guide forest sector practices to reduce emissions from forest degradation and implement sustainable forest activities. In a study by UC Berkley Carbon Trading Project and Carbon Market Watch published in September 2023, researchers concluded that REDD+ projects are typically unsuitable for carbon reduction and also lead to the displacement or dispossession of vulnerable communities.
Controversies: In a letter to 13 members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) written in response to the second draft of the COP28 final agreement published in the first week, OPEC’s head Haitham Al Ghais said the text put “undue and disproportionate pressure” on the fossil fuel industry, risking a “tipping point with irreversible consequences.” Concerned about the possibility that the climate summit would end in a deal to phase-out fossil fuels, Al Ghais urged OPEC members to “proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy i.e. fossil fuels rather than emissions.”
More on the topic: OPEC Head Urges Members to Reject Language Targeting Fossil Fuel Phase-Out at COP28
Day 9 (December 9) – Nature, Land Use & Oceans
This day focussed on co-designing and delivering land use and oceans conservation strategies to protect and manage biodiversity hotspots and natural carbon sinks, following the landmark 30×30 biodiversity goal adopted by world leaders last year at COP15.
COP29: Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, was confirmed as the host of next year’s UN climate summit, COP29. This marks the third time in a row that climate talks are hosted in an autocratic fossil-fuel producing state.
Nature: UNEP published the State of Finance for Nature Report, which suggests that finance flows to activities directly harming nature were more than 30 times larger than the total investments in nature-based solutions last year, which totalled around US$200 billion. According to UNEP, investments in harmful activities from both public and private sectors each year amounted to nearly $7 trillion – roughly 7% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Biodiversity: 16 countries – including Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Rwanda, France, USA and the United Kingdom – endorsed the COP28 Joint Statement on Climate, Nature and People, which calls for accelerated implementation of climate and nature action in line with the Paris Agreement, the Global Biodiversity Framework and the Land Degradation Neutrality Targets.
Fossil fuel subsidies: A dozen nations – including Canada and France – joined a Dutch-led coalition which aims to create a clear strategy for eliminating fossil fuel subsidies. It comes after governments at COP26 in Glasgow agreed to phase out “inefficient” subsidies, which last year hit a record US$7 trillion globally. The US and China, which provided $760 billion and $2.2 trillion in fossil fuel subsidies respectively in 2022, did not join the new coalition.
Activism: Hundreds of activists outside marched outside within the Blue Zone in the largest protest seen so far at COP28. Protesters called for a phase-out of all fossil fuels, a ceasefire in Gaza, climate justice and finance for developing nations as well as sustainable agriculture.
Diplomacy: Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua and his US counterpart John Kerry – who represent the world’s two largest economies and emitters – met for hours in the Chinese pavilion. Though the details of the discussions are not known, the conversation brings hope for a bolder COP outcome.
Day 10 (December 10) – Food Day, Agriculture & Water
This day was dedicated to addressing and promoting global food and water security to keep the 1.5C within reach. The focus was on finding sustainable alternatives to traditional agriculture, which is responsible for one-third of global human-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Adaptation: Delegates from vulnerable countries expressed concern over the new Global Goal on Adaptation draft text, arguing it is not ambitious enough to ensure an adequate adaptation response to 1.5-2C of warming. Concrete global targets, including a crucial target to protect 30% of land by 2030 are missing from the latest version.
Food security: 18 new countries signed the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action, bringing the total number of signatories to 152. The Declaration commits governments to formally include food and agriculture in national climate plans for the first time and to scale up funding. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) also launched a Global Roadmap to 1.5C, the first-of-its-kind for food systems. It sets out targets and timelines for 10 domains where immediate action is required, including livestock, soil and water, and food loss and waste.
Food systems: Brazil, Cambodia, Norway, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda stepped forward as founding co-chairs and members of the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation (ACF), a coalition aiming to transform national food systems to deliver universal access to affordable, nutritious and sustainable diets, aiming to accelerate major progress this decade. The five countries are pledging to update Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and other action plans in line with updated National Food System Transformation Pathways and/or Implementation Plans, by 2025 at the latest as well as to report annually on targets and priority intervention areas.
Joint co-chairs Brazil, Norway and Sierra Leone, alongside founding member countries Cambodia and Rwanda, plan to lead the way– reorienting policies, practices and investment priorities to deliver better food systems outcomes for people, nature and climate. Photo: AFC.
You might also like: Will the 2030s Be the Decade for Global Biodiversity Conservation?
Day 11 (December 11) – Final Negotiations
COP28 final agreement: The COP presidency released a new draft of the final agreement after hours of delay. While calling on countries to cut their consumption and production of fossil fuels – the first time this language figures in a COP deal – the draft does not refer directly to a phase out of planet-warming fuels, one of the key demands from activists and many developing countries. Nature-based solutions and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) were retained and calls earlier this week to include resilient food systems were acknowledged, though many pointed out that the deal is still missing language on food systems transformation from the mitigation section.
Biodiversity: Colombia has officially announced it will host the sixteenth edition of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, nearly one year after the adoption of the historic Global Biodiversity Framework in Montreal by 196 governments.
COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure. The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word. It is even worse than many had feared. It is “Of the Petrostates, By the Petrostates… — Al Gore (@algore) December 11, 2023
Featured image: Children and Youth Pavilion
This is part 2 of the COP28-Recap series. Check out ‘COP28 Week 1 Recap’ here. For Earth.Org’s full COP28 coverage, visit earth.org/cop28.
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