COP29 Midpoint Dispatch: Evidence, clarity & trust are investable game-changers
Review of CCI focus areas and key sticking points in the COP29 negotiating process
The first week of the COP29 has seen negotiators from nearly 200 nations struggling through many long-running barriers to progress, while advancing important logistical questions around insight-sharing and performance tracking. Below, we share notes on our focus areas and other key elements of the ongoing negotiations, which are increasingly understood to be about national and collective responses to ongoing planetary health emergency.
Dr. David Michael Terungwa—CCI Africa Coordinator and Food Systems Specialist and Founder of the Global Initiative on Food Security and Ecosystem Preservation (GIFSEP)—offers these key takeaways on challenges and calls for expanded action:
The first week of COP29 has had mixed results due to significant challenges. Week one finishes with multiple issues outstanding, with the wider COP and geopolitical context difficult. The U.S. election results, Argentina’s decision to leave the negotiations, the failure of developed countries to meet the Adaptation Fund goals. There are questions about whether the COP29 can succeed on its core goals: agreeing on a new climate finance deal and following-up on the implementation of the first Global Stocktake.
Developing countries, represented by the G-77 + China bloc, called for more substantial climate finance, pushing for $1.3 trillion annually in grants rather than loans, which can exacerbate debt in already vulnerable economies.
This is a major question in the debate around the new collective quantified goal, and echoes insights from pre-COP29 workshops, specifically:
“the least developed, lowest emitting, and most vulnerable countries, should never have to borrow money for disaster response or adaptation, that grant-based finance is most appropriate, ethical, and effective, in such cases.”
There are concerns around conflicts of interest between fossil fuel businesses and the hard work of negotiating global collaboration toward climate goals. Trust will be a key metric as the process moves forward, and many proposals have been put forward that could achieve both trust-building and effective implementation.
Article 6.8 Non-Market Cooperation
The in-session workshop on Article 6.8 of the Paris Agreement highlighted the fact that designated national focal points tasked with adding non-market cooperative efforts to a new web portal have increased to 78, as of this week, but no nation has yet added one cooperative initiative to the portal.
CCI and the Climate Value Exchange would like to remind negotiators and observers of the long list of NMAs previously reviewed by the Parties, many of which are already active and delivering resources to mulitiple countries. We also share again our review of the value-building potential of non-market cooperation. There is, as we said in that brief, no excuse for not acting to accelerate cooperative action toward the climate value economy.
We recommend three new categories of indicator be included in future discussions on the questions of progress and efficacy of non-market cooperative approaches:
Trade benefits: Are NMAs moving participating nations closer to climate-smart trade as the norm?
Local benefits: Are NMAs bringing more resources for sustainable development to communities that need to revitalize or diversify their local economies?
Mainstreaming benefits: Are NMAs advancing not only innovative solutions but the transformation of mainstream activities across the economy?
The Future of Climate Finance
The Leaders Summit, the Leaders Summit of Small Island Developing States, and the meeting of the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action, alongside negotiations on the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) on climate finance have given us some new things to think about in terms of the future of climate finance:
Can justice and need be more effectively met by expanding and diversifying the list of contributors to climate finance funds and facilities, and by making it easier to reach communities directly (also diversifying recipients)?
Can the scale of funding available be increased quickly—for mitigation, adaptation, resilience, and overcoming loss and damage?
Are national governments adjusting public policy to allow innovative funding collaborations, to mobilize resources across the economy? And are they making these adjustments to mobilize resources domestically and in partnership with other nations?
Will vulnerable communities be prioritized in terms of financial benefits from climate risk reduction and resilience-related invesmtents?
An important detail of the draft Finance goal text is the proposed recognition that the new collective quantified goal should “respond to” levels of ambition in national plans for both decarbonization and adaptation. There is debate over the use of terms like “costed need”, though the benefit of such phrasing is to make clear both the need and the gaps in funding.
Food Systems
Before moving on from finance, a few notes from the COP29 side event co-hosted by CCI and the Good Food Finance Network, with FAIRR and the TAPP Coalition, on Friday, November 15:
Food systems are driving major climate disruption and cost, while losing trillions of dollars per year for the world economy, and while suffering serious climate impacts that threaten their long-term sustainability.
Friday’s discussion on Agri-Food Finance and Enabling Policies to Drive Climate Action offered important insights into the policy opportunities, including shifting of subsidies to reward positive impacts, and the legal context, including rights of nature
The event also touched on financial innovations that can meet these needs, both by including more diverse donors and beneficiaries and by reaching underserved local communities that need to build capacity and enhance resilience.
There is no single insight that covers the full range of policy and financial need, but it is critical that trust, information-sharing, and transparency support the rapid mobilization and scaling of these interventions.
Information, Participation, and Transparency
UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell celebrated the Enhanced Transparency Framework now being “fully operational”. He noted more than 2,000 experts have been trained in the last year, adding:
“Transparency is crucial, not only because it highlights progress in climate action but because it spurs more action. Enabling data-driven responses that build resilience and protect vulnerable populations by identifying risks and vulnerabilities, and leading to better resource allocation.”
Transparency is about efficacy and investability. It is also about trust: Do we know what works, who is doing it, and how it might be replicated elsewhere?
Meetings around Action for Climate Empowerment have resulted in recognition of the value of civic engagement, public information, training and other aspects of ACE. The Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) “acknowledged with appreciation the significant contributions of United Nations organizations and other stakeholders, including intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, in advancing the implementation of ACE”, “recalled the importance of ACE for empowering all members of society to engage in climate action”, and cited “the importance of integrating ACE elements into national climate change policies, plans, strategies and action…”
Toward Zero Harm
The UAE-Belem work programme on indicators gathered more than 7,000 adaptation-related indicators earlier this year. Its work has been recognized as critical to future work setting ambition and providing support for implementation of effective adaptation measures.
We see four major priorities in relation to the Global Goal on Adaptation:
Use the GGA to work toward a future in which people and ecosystems experience zero harm from industrial climate disruption, raising ambition across the board;
Add significant new funding to adaptation and resilience needs;
Prevent maladaptation and related disruption and destabilization, with sufficient;
Resources on the ground, in communities everywhere, making successful climate-resilient development possible at the human scale, now, before it is too late.
Follow CCI activities and coverage of COP29 at climatecivics.org
