The first week of the COP28 has been dynamic and intriguing for the HCSS delegation in Dubai. We joined and contributed to events discussing the core pillars of the HCSS Climate and Security Programme and the Energy and Raw Materials Initiative. In this post, we share some of our main takeaways from this first week.
On Monday Dec 4, strategic analyst Irina Patrahau moderated the first session of the TRENDS-Atlantic Council 3rd Annual Conference on Sustainable Security: The Soft and Hard Implications of Climate Action. The session brought together insights from a diverse group of panelists to discuss the political and strategic issues challenging climate action. The panel was joined by Erin Sikorsky, Director of the Center for Climate and Security and the International Military Council on Climate Security; HE Osama Al Gohary, Assistant to the Prime Minister of Egypt and IDSC Chairman; and Professor Ahmed Ali Murad, Associate Provost for Research at UAE University. Some of the key take-aways aimed to inform decision-makers engaging in discussions around strategic competition and climate finance at COP included:
- There is a risk that great power competition will negatively impact the energy transition, but this is not an immediate deal-breaker. As governments realise the criticality of climate action to address national security challenges, they will likely leave room for cooperation on climate.
- Climate finance is essential to address risks in regions vulnerable to climate change, and it remains a key impediment in the development and implementation of climate change mitigation and adaptation plans.
- Multilateral conferences like the COP play a key role in addressing some of these challenges as they provide avenues for continued dialogue, cooperation, and exchange.
إيرينا باتراهاو، محللة استراتيجية في مركز لاهاي للدراسات الاستراتيجية, تسلط الضوء على موضوعات مؤتمر "تريندز-الأطلسي" الثالث، الذي يعقد في المركز الإعلامي بـ"COP28".@AtlanticCouncil @skynewsarabia @COP28_UAE pic.twitter.com/YzXUN7yIKM
— TRENDS Research & Advisory (@TrendsRA) December 4, 2023
The first week of COP has been eventful in the climate change mitigation sector. One of the most prominent pledge, endorsed by 118 countries, commits governments to tripling global renewable energy capacity by 2030. Nuclear energy expansion and the reduction of methane and other greenhouse gas emissions were high on the agenda too. These topics were well supported by events on innovation and public-private efforts to scale promising technologies. An example is the U.S. Center’s event “Unlocking Innovation and Investment for the Clean Energy Transition’ that brought together the public and private sector to share good practices in scaling promising technologies across the US, UK and Canada. This was followed by a contribution by Microsoft’s Chief Sustainability Officer in the panel ‘Jump Starting the Global Deployment of New Nuclear Energy’, where she emphasised Microsoft’s role as a ‘first mover by design’, investing in new technologies to demonstrate their capacity.
The geopolitics of critical raw materials supply chains have played a relatively marginal role in the public debates at COP so far. A key development concerns UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ announcement for the need for secure and affordable minerals during a summit of the Group of 77 Developing Countries at the COP28. He proposed to establish a Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals to ensure that the transition to renewables is “just, sustainable and benefits all countries”. The EU Pavilion’s panel on ‘Global cooperation on clean energy innovation: the role of critical raw materials’ was among the few side events that addressed the topic of CRM. While a focus on innovation and knowledge sharing on CRM is essential, global cooperation on secure sustainable supply chains was unfortunately insufficiently addressed.
Adaptation and loss and damage are major topics at this year’s COP. The distinction between them is that while adaptation is meant to help communities prepare for and prevent climate-related disasters, loss and damage becomes important when disasters have taken place. The loss and damage fund has been widely talked about for the past year and was finally agreed upon on the very first day of COP28. However, the pledges to the fund so far have been underwhelming. With less than a billion dollars secured in pledges, the global community is still far off from the estimated annual needs of several hundred billion dollars. The pledges made by the US ($17.5m) and EU ($27m) have been especially meager.
In terms of adaptation finance, things are starting to look a bit better. While it is problematic that most adaptation finance is still provided in the form of loans (roughly 62%) rather than grants (a result of the heavy debt burden that many developing states carry), there is a move towards a better balance between adaptation and mitigation finance. While adaptation has received about 10% of total climate investments so far, the share of adaptation finance is starting to grow. This is helped by commitments by, for instance, the World Bank, who aim to achieve a 50/50 split between adaptation and mitigation in terms of its climate financing.
Stepping away from the financials, we have seen the adoption of the ‘Declaration on Climate, Relief, Recovery and Peace’. This non-binding declaration, signed by 74 countries including the Netherlands, recognises the possibility for climate action for resilience in the most vulnerable and challenging settings, and is intended to rally support and action to this end in order to prevent high costs to human development and stability.
Such declarations are solidified in events such as the Dutch co-sponsored event “Water for peace, security and health” held in the Water Pavilion. Here, participants spoke about the importance of climate resilient action, specifically for the WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) sector. More and more people, especially in vulnerable and warm places, are suffering from climate-related health problems, and a disease such as cholera has expanded to over 25 countries in the last year alone. Climate change will increasingly affect both the physical and mental health of people, and WASH will play an integral part in tackling these issues. This requires increased national and international cooperation on water resource management, the key to successful WASH services implementation.
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