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LIVE Masterclass on Climate Negotiations [In partnership with Generation Climate Europe]

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LIVE Masterclass on Climate Negotiations [In partnership with Generation Climate Europe]

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On 15th October, YEE with GCE organised a live discussion with distinguished young leaders on climate negotiations and we asked them a series of questions:

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LIVE Masterclass on Climate Negotiations [In partnership with Generation Climate Europe]

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Sumi Akter was at a crossroads. She could either stay in her farming village in western Bangladesh where her husband couldn't find work or move five hours northeast to Dhaka, the country's capital. Moving meant leaving behind her extended family and the only place she'd known in her life. But staying meant economic peril for her and her two daughters.

Akter's hometown, Nasirpur, sits near the banks of the Kobadak River, which frequently swells with the ocean's tides, sending rushing water through farms and homes. As a child, Akter, who goes by the daak name Bethi, would watch as cyclones flattened Nasirpur's kutcha houses, made of mud and straw. Her father planted rice, jute, and vegetables on their modest plot of land only for the harvest to be washed away.

As the years passed, Nasirpur residents also began contending with declining snowmelt from the Himalayas and rising sea levels. These climate change-fueled phenomena made the area's river system saltier - a disaster for the farmers who depended on reliable freshwater flows. By the time Bethi was contemplating her move in 2018, many residents had already fled to bigger cities in search of work. The region's population had been declining, with one study finding 5.5 migrants from the area for every 1,000 people.

As Bethi weighed her options, she reached out to the Bangladesh Disaster Preparedness Center and spoke to a staffer at the front desk. The center is responsible for implementing the climate programs of another nongovernmental organization, Helvetas Bangladesh. Both groups work to reduce disaster risks by increasing coordination between various state and local governments, as well as funding skills training to ensure climate migrants succeed when they move. They offered Bethi a third alternative that she hadn't yet thought of: enroll in a training program and start a business.

Helvetas would pay for Bethi to attend a three-month beautician training course. After that, she could set up her own salon. Bethi, who had never worked outside the home, liked the idea but had many hurdles to overcome - including convincing her conservative family to let her work and securing 130,000 taka (roughly $1,300) in capital loans. She persuaded her family that working would help secure her kids' future, and found three groups willing to loan her the money.

Her perseverance paid off. Today Bethi owns and runs Boishakhi Beauty Parlour, named after her eldest daughter, just 10 minutes from Nasirpur. She has almost paid off her loans and has her sights set on expanding the salon's offerings - perhaps even one day starting a beauty school.

"I couldn't have imagined that I'd ever be fortunate enough to be able to get here," she told Grist, speaking in Bengali through a translator over Zoom. "I'd never imagined this life for myself, that I'd be able to stand on my own two feet, that I'd be able to transform myself in this way."

Bethi is one of millions of people worldwide whose lives have been indelibly altered by climate change. The planet has warmed by an average 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times, enough to accelerate or intensify an onslaught of cyclones, heatwaves, droughts, sea-level rise, and other natural disasters. The countries most vulnerable to climate change claim they have lost a fifth of their wealth due to climate change-driven increases in temperature and inconsistent rainfall patterns over the last 20 years.

The result is a widespread loss of livelihood and displacement that's only accelerating as temperatures rise. What's more, these losses are primarily suffered by low- and middle-income nations that were late to industrialize, and therefore did little to contribute to global warming historically. According to the World Meteorological Organization, natural disasters caused 2 million deaths worldwide between 1970 and 2019; more than 90 percent were in developing countries.

In international negotiations, these climate-related outcomes are grouped under the compact moniker " loss and damage." The origin of the phrase can be traced to 1991, four years before the first United Nations conference of parties, or COP, on climate change. Vanuatu, a small island nation in the Pacific, submitted a proposal to a UN General Assembly committee that year, arguing for an insurance scheme to "compensate small island states along with low-lying developing countries for loss and damage resulting from the consequences of sea level rise."

The proposal didn't go anywhere, but the term slowly took on a life of its own. By 2007, COP formally recognized the need for "means to address loss and damage associated with climate change impacts in developing countries." Loss and damage became known as the third pillar of the Paris Agreement that was signed in 2016, when the world's countries agreed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The other two pillars, adaptation and mitigation, refer to efforts taken to protect communities from the future effects of climate change and actions taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions, respectively. If mitigation and adaptation entail avoiding temperature rise and its consequences, loss and damage tackles the unavoidable pitfalls of a warming planet.

In the years since, the clamor in favor of acknowledging loss and damage, and funding restitution for it, has grown louder. Increasingly, climate advocates and developing nations have framed loss and damage funding as a form of reparations. Since late-industrializing countries - which run the gamut from major international players like India and Brazil to small island nations like Vanuatu - have done little historically to cause climate change, they argue that it's unfair they now have to shoulder the burden of its deadliest effects.

Convincing early-industrializing countries like the U.S. to fund organizations like the one that helped Bethi could be one aspect of a global loss and damage program. The groundwork for this is already being laid: Helvetas Bangladesh is expanding its work with the help of a $250,000 grant from the Climate Justice Resilience Fund, a Washington D.C.-based philanthropy tasked with distributing money allocated during last year's COP in Glasgow, Scotland.

Loss and damage is expected to take center stage at the 27th United Nations climate change conference, or COP27, in Egypt next month. Famine-level drought in Somalia and devastating floods that left one-third of Pakistan, a country responsible for less than 1 percent of the world's carbon emissions, underwater have only added urgency to the issue.

Activists and developing nations hope to leave COP27 with a sustainable system for funding loss and damage restitution over the long term. In the past, countries have pledged funds to pay for climate projects in poor countries, with the assistance of the United Nations. The most prominent of these is the Green Climate Fund, which was established in 2010 with the goal of raising $100 billion per year to help developing nations respond to climate change. The fund does not cover loss and damage, and developed nations have only raised roughly $80 billion in loans and grants. Accessing money from the fund has also been a frustrating process plagued by bureaucratic delays for vulnerable countries.

Climate justice advocates hope to learn lessons from this failure as they try to establish a new mechanism to collect and distribute funding for loss and damage. The issue has been included for discussion in a provisional agenda, and they hope to see it formally adopted to the official COP agenda for the first time in the conference's history. And since the conference is being held in a developing country for the first time in six years, advocates hope to leverage media attention to make the moral case for loss and damage funding. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, India's environment minister Bhupender Yadav said that the focus on mitigation at last year's COP "caused disappointment among the smaller countries over the lack of discussion on loss and damages." He noted that India is working with other industrializing nations to demand compensation.

On the other hand, developed nations including the U.S. continue to sidestep the issue, fearing that acknowledging it would open up a Pandora's box of litigation and lead to unlimited financial liability. Last month, in response to a question about whether the U.S. plans to direct funding to pay for loss and damage in poor countries, climate envoy John Kerry said that "the most important thing that we can do is stop, mitigate enough that we prevent loss and damage. And the next most important thing we can do is help people adapt to the damage that's already there." In a nod to the gargantuan costs of the climate crisis so far, Kerry added: "You tell me the government in the world that has trillions of dollars, cause that's what it costs." Some estimates put the price tag on loss and damage anywhere between $290 and $580 billion per year by 2030.

But while the U.S. and most other industrialized nations continue to punt on funding loss and damage restitution, some smaller rich countries have been stepping up. Earlier this year, Denmark became the first independent country to officially fund loss and damage compensation, setting aside $13 million for the cause. Denmark was following in the footsteps of Scotland, which provided a major breakthrough at COP26 last year.

The first week of the conference, Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon acknowledged that the country's industrial past produced carbon emissions that built its wealth at the expense of nations now suffering the worst effects of climate change. More significantly, Scotland pledged £2 million (or about $2.3 million) toward loss and damage funding, becoming the first nation to put money on the table to compensate for loss and damage. It was a groundbreaking investment in keeping with the country's progressive positions on climate change: Scotland established a climate justice fund in 2012 to help the world's poorest countries adapt to climate change, and it has an ambitious goal of reducing carbon emissions by 75 percent by 2030.

Although the monetary contributions were small compared to the need, it was a giant symbolic victory in the eyes of loss and damage advocates. "The biggest contribution of Scotland was de-tabooing the issue," said Harjeet Singh, the head of global political strategy at the Climate Action Network, an international coalition of more than 1,800 environmental groups. "No developed-country government was even agreeing to talk about loss and damage at that level. The biggest breakthrough was a government coming forward and saying, 'loss and damage is an issue, and I'm willing to put money behind it. It's a matter of justice.'"

Advocates hoped Scotland's commitment, which was announced early in the COP26 conference, would shift the conversation. "I was super excited and hopeful," said Eva Peace Mukayiranga, a climate activist from Kigali, Rwanda. "I thought now there would be no more blocking [from developed countries]. Surely, there would be no more blocking."

But Mukayiranga returned from Glasgow disappointed. For much of the conference, loss and damage advocates found themselves shut out of negotiations, leading some to later declare the proceedings " the most exclusionary COP ever."

Lorenzo Raplili,​​ a policy officer at the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network, was one of just a handful of Vanuatu citizens who managed to clear the various COVID-19 travel restrictions and make the two-day trek to Glasgow. A small island nation home to about 300,000 people, Vanuatu was recovering from Cyclone Harold which made landfall in 2020 and caused about $600 million in damages - 60 percent of the country's gross domestic product. Despite Vanuatu's position on the front lines of climate change, Raplili found that he and other advocates were not allowed to enter negotiation rooms where loss and damage was being discussed, even though the conference typically allows community groups and civil society representatives to observe COP proceedings.

"We were blocked by the security not to enter the COP negotiation," Raplili said. "We were surprised, and we were saddened to see that our agenda and our demands for COP26 were put aside. We were neglected."

Inside the negotiation room, representatives of developing nations initially proposed provisions that would support creating a funding mechanism for loss and damage. But in the final days of the conference, many of the provisions were watered down at the behest of the U.S. and European Union. Instead of a clear definition and a process for moving money to vulnerable countries, developing nations had to settle for a section of the final pact called the " Glasgow Dialogue." It acknowledged that climate change has already and will continue to cause loss and damage globally, and urged developed countries to "provide enhanced and additional support" to address impacts in countries vulnerable to climate change. It said nothing about how such measures should be funded.

Ultimately, the Scottish's government's path-breaking announcement didn't move the conversation "as we hoped for," Mukayiranga said. Her goal to establish a financing mechanism for loss and damage remains unmet. Thanks to contributions from a few philanthropic organizations and the governments of Wallonia, Scotland, and Denmark, the tally for financing loss and damage now stands at a paltry $19.5 million - a drop in the bucket compared to the billions of dollars in damages that developing nations face each year as climate-fueled flooding, hurricanes, and other disasters wallop vulnerable populations.

Mukayiranga is now looking ahead to COP27 in November. "I'm prepared for a fight," she told Grist. "They can't ignore anymore that we are facing loss and damage impacts, and we need loss and damage finance which is new and additional."

A number of roadblocks stand in the way of Mukayiranga and other loss and damage advocates. Despite the breakthrough in Glasgow, getting loss and damage on the COP27 provisional agenda has once again been an uphill climb - a struggle that advocates blame on continued evasion by the U.S. and other developed nations. The ongoing pandemic, food crises, and fears of an impending global recession are also bound to make the conversation harder. Finally, the demand for additional funding comes even as rich countries still haven't met their 2015 promise to funnel $100 billion a year to help developing nations adapt to climate change.

Despite all the hurdles, Singh framed the issue as a moral imperative. "Climate is a justice issue," he said. "A bunch of countries and corporations are responsible for the mess. They have to bloody clean it up. As simple as that."

There is no official definition of loss and damage, and the lines between adaptation measures, humanitarian aid after natural disasters, and loss and damage funding can be blurry. It may be difficult, for example, to distinguish between interventions that help people adapt to climate change versus those that address losses they've already experienced. Not only that, but many climate-related phenomena, such as sea-level rise and the loss of culture that can be a consequence of migration, occur over decades and are hard to quantify.

These are some of the challenges that advocates face as they gear up to push for a funding mechanism at COP27. Among the open questions are: What is the true scale of loss and damage? How should non-economic impacts, such as loss of language or culture, be addressed? And what are potential sources of funding, given that developed nations have blown past the 2020 deadline they set in Paris to provide $100 billion per year in climate-related financing to countries in need?

One analysis conducted by researchers at the Basque Centre for Climate Change in Spain estimated that global warming will cause between $290 billion and $580 billion per year in damages in 2030. That figure, the analysis found, is set to balloon to $1.1 trillion to $1.7 trillion per year in 2050. The estimates do not include non-economic losses due to displacement. Island nations and communities that live on the coasts, for instance, are increasingly having to move inland. The dispersion of these communities can lead to the loss of languages. With rising sea levels, burial sites in these communities are also underwater. Some argue that it is too difficult to put a monetary value on such losses, and that they should be addressed separately. (For example, language loss could be addressed through the support of archival work to document and preserve artifacts of the language in question.)

The massive scale of funding required could come from a number of sources. Taxes on fossil fuel sales, a reduction in fossil fuel subsidies, a tax on international airfares, and debt cancellation for vulnerable countries could help fund the climate compensation package for developing nations.

"There are many ways of raising money if you have political will," said Singh. "How could we raise trillions when it comes to COVID response? How could we raise trillions when we were faced by a financial crisis, or when we have to now mobilize money to support Ukraine?"

Singh and others advocates want to see a funding mechanism for loss and damage established and operationalized in the next three years. This year, they want countries to agree to establish a fund and define its function. By COP29, they want funds mobilized and channeled to developing countries.

It's an ambitious timeline. Whether it'll be met depends very much on the talks in November. In an exclusive interview with Grist, Rania A. Al-Mashat, Egypt's minister of international cooperation, noted that the African continent's contributions to global emissions are miniscule compared to the harms it suffers as a result of climate change. Nevertheless, she demurred on questions about the country's position on loss and damage.

"Egypt, as president of COP, has very clearly said we take an impartial role," she said, "but Egypt has been a very key player in the negotiations from the very start."

The Egyptian COP president, Sameh Shoukry, has said that loss and damage is a priority for the country in November, alongside mitigation and other issues related to climate finance. Last month, Shoukry convened a meeting of the heads of delegations to exclusively discuss loss and damage - a first for a COP presidency. Al-Mashat said that the gap between the money available and the funds needed to finance a global green transition is "very, very big."

"It's on the negotiators at COP to really assess how much of that needs to be generated," she told Grist.

In the last year, wealthy nations have moved away from some of their hardline positions on loss and damage. Civil society groups in the European Union believe Ireland could follow in Scotland and Denmark's footsteps. Australia, which has historically obstructed progress in climate negotiations, also looks set to change its tune with the election of a new and more progressive government.

One reason for the shift may be that the conversation around compensation liability is not emphasized as much as it was in the past. In order to assuage wealthy nations' fear that they will be on the hook for some unlimited amount in damages, developing nations and climate justice groups have consciously moved away from emphasizing compensation liability and instead have set their targets on an account of loss and damage that does not necessarily imply complicity. Article 8 of the Paris Agreement, for instance, explicitly states that the agreement recognizes loss and damage, but does not "provide a basis for any liability or compensation."

Some advocates have also pointed out that refusing to fund loss and damage could actually increase the threat of litigation. For instance, Vanuatu, the island nation with a population of about 300,000, is currently seeking an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the legal implications of climate change. An advisory opinion is not binding, but it can help developing countries and small island nations understand the legal arguments they could make and understand their chances of success in court. Vanuatu needs to secure a majority of UN countries' support for its proposal to compel the court to issue an opinion.

"You can't just hide under the carpet," said Singh, of the Climate Action Network. "If they really want to avoid litigation and unlimited liability, they should come to the table and find ways of supporting communities who are facing this crisis. That's the only way."
Po Bhattacharyya assisted with translation.

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Climate reparations are on the agenda at COP27 - whether wealthy nations like it or not

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Sumi Akter was at a crossroads. She could either stay in her farming village in western Bangladesh where her husband couldn't find work or move five hours northeast to Dhaka, the country's capital. Moving meant leaving behind her extended family and the only place she'd known in her life.

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English

Spanish

French
Time zones: 9:00 am - 10:30 am ET / 15:00 pm - 16:30 pm CEST
COP27 is taking place in the midst of soaring energy and food prices and climate disasters - such as scorching heat waves, roaring wildfires and epic floods - which are imposing a terrible toll on people around the world. These interlinked crises underscore the urgent need for countries to work together at COP27 and help tackle the consequences from rising global temperatures that are falling disproportionately on developing countries and ensure affordable, clean energy for all.
WRI's experts are closely following the COP27 negotiations. Watch our Resource Hub for new articles, research, webinars and more.
On Thursday October 6, join the Allied for Climate Transformation (ACT2025) consortium for a high-level webinar where speakers from around the world will set clear expectations for a positive outcome at the UN climate summit in Egypt this November. During the event, ACT2025 partners will offer a united vision for success at COP27, including addressing loss and damage, scaling up support for adaptation action, strengthening climate targets and assuring climate finance promises will be met.
The event will be hosted in English with simultaneous interpretation in Spanish and French.
Speakers:

Carlos Lopes, Professor, Nelson Mandela School, University of Cape Town; African Union High Representative for Partnerships with Europe; Former Executive Secretary, Economic Commission for Africa

Hon. Bakoa Kaltongga, Minister of Agriculture, Vanuatu and Special Envoy on Climate Change for the Pacific

Sarah Pima, Climate Justice Youth Activist and Chief Executive Director, Human Dignity and Environment Care Foundation

Mark Bynoe, Assistant Executive Director, Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, Belize

Tony La Viña, Associate Director for Climate Policy and International Relations, Manila Observatory, Philippines

Maria Laura Rojas Vallejo, Executive Director, Transforma, Colombia

Preety Bhandari, Senior Advisor, Global Climate Program and the Finance Center, World Resources Institute

Saleemul Huq, Director, International Centre for Climate Change and Development, Bangladesh (moderator)

More to be announced Cover Image credit: Raphael Pouget / Climate Visuals

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How to Achieve a Just and Ambitious Outcome at COP27

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English Spanish French Time zones: 9:00 am - 10:30 am ET / 15:00 pm - 16:30 pm CEST COP27 is taking place in the midst of soaring energy and food prices and climate disasters - such as scorching heat waves, roaring wildfires and epic floods - which are imposing a terrible toll on people around the world.

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Chatham House - International Affairs Think Tank

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Egypt will host COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh this November under the banner of championing Africa's climate priorities.

Many developing countries will be looking to see if the summit finally delivers solutions to the long-standing issues that COP26 failed to resolve, such as the £100 billion-a-year climate finance promises never met by developed economies. The lack of attention given to how the world will adapt to a low-carbon future has also been criticized, especially when the limited capacity of developing nations to adapt is borne in mind, together with the developed world's responsibility for current and historic carbon emissions.

Of particular focus will be climate justice in the move to 'clean energy', specifically the right of some African nations to use their fossil fuel reserves. Egypt says it aims to deliver a 'COP for Africa', yet the contentious and complex nature of exploiting Africa's natural gas reserves may prevent a breakthrough - as might Egypt's summit strategy that appears to favour its own position while putting other African countries at a disadvantage.

Africa is home to approximately 9 per cent of the world's gas reserves and 6 per cent of global production - with countries such as Algeria, Nigeria and Egypt topping the list of gas producers. Yet 43 per cent of its population lacks access to electricity. The continent has the potential to increase the amount of gas it produces, but the required infrastructure could mean that carbon emissions are locked in for decades to come, in what some call 'carbon bombs'. These projects will remain a large source of carbon throughout their lifetime.

'Carbon bombs' and the African energy transition

The risks of locking-in emissions cannot be overestimated. According to the most optimistic calculations, if all current climate pledges were implemented on time, the world would
remain on track for 2C of warming by the end of the century, with far worse impacts than if warming was curbed at 1.5C.

Developing countries are expected to be most affected, with a recent World Bank study noting that Africa will be hardest hit. Given the urgent need for a global energy move away from fossil fuels, new gas infrastructure projects in Africa risk becoming stranded assets, not least because of the relatively high cost and carbon footprint of such investments compared with other regions.

As a result, banks and development agencies are steering away from financing most of these projects. Yet Africa's demand for energy is set to grow at almost three times the global rate by 2040 and its policymakers already view the lack of international finance for fossil fuel projects as a barrier to industrialization and development.

In May, these challenges prompted 10 African countries to issue the Kigali Communique calling for support 'in the deployment of gas as a transition fuel' and noting the continent's 'historically low emissions'. This demand for climate justice received a boost from the International Energy Agency (IEA) which estimated that Africa's share of historical global emissions would rise by only 0.5 per cent even if it used all of its known gas reserves.

Mary Robinson, the former UN climate envoy, lent further support to the use of gas as a transition fuel, pointing to the 900 million Africans who use biomass and oil stoves for cooking, and for whom gas is a less polluting alternative.

Europe accused of hypocrisy

This difficult debate became more vexed following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to IEA estimates, by 2030 African countries could supply a fifth of the natural gas Russia supplied to Europe in 2021. When some European countries rushed to secure natural gas sources to replace Russian imports, African officials accused them of hypocrisy, citing previous European demands for the Global South to leave their fossil fuel reserves in the ground.

In stark contrast to Europe, the developing world is being held to account for its emission reduction without support for its energy transition

Yemi Osinbajo, Vice-President of Nigeria

As Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria's vice president, recently tweeted, Europe has had plenty of help with its energy crisis: 'In stark contrast, the developing world is still being held to account for its emission reduction without adequate support for its energy transition.'

The ability of African nations to achieve results at COP27 is further hampered by the climate summit's agenda and priorities, and especially the role of Egypt. Holding this year's COP presidency, Egypt has already played an important role in shelving a number of demands by other African countries.

In August, the African Union proposed a common continental position on energy access to be tabled at COP27 that called on support for using renewable and non-renewable energy sources. Egypt blocked this on the basis that a pro-gas stance would be 'too controversial', despite Egypt itself being a major gas producer. Egypt also opposed a call to elevate the issue of loss-and-damage compensation for the effects of climate change at the summit.

Additionally, while Egypt's prioritization of implementing existing climate pledges appears to support the need of African countries for financial and technical support, its project-led approach to climate finance and its focus on signing project deals during the summit do not.

Egypt already has a string of green-energy and green-hydrogen projects that are ready to receive finance. Yet most of its sub-Saharan neighbours are lagging behind in developing green projects, and as a result are likely to miss out on the benefits from this approach.

If COP27 is to speak for Africa, its presidency must increase its engagement with African capitals and develop a common position at this summit that will provide the pressure needed to deliver benefits for the whole continent.

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Egypt will host COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh this November under the banner of championing Africa's climate priorities. Many developing countries will be looking to see if the summit finally delivers solutions to the long-standing issues that COP26 failed to resolve, such as the £100 billion-a-year climate finance promises never met by developed economies.

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Loss and damage

This article is part of a week-long special series on loss and damage.

This year has seen thousands of people killed in a run of unprecedented extreme weather events. Catastrophic flooding has caused at least 1,500 deaths in Pakistan in recent weeks, while record heat has blighted much of the globe - for example, killing 1,000 people in Portugal and Spain in July.

The loss of human lives in extreme weather events is the most visceral example of "loss and damage", a term used to describe how people - particularly the poor and vulnerable - are already reeling from the impacts of human-caused climate change, which is predominantly driven by the emissions of a wealthy minority.

From the loss of low-lying island territory to rising seas through to homes and businesses destroyed by cyclones, loss and damage from climate change is already vast and far-reaching.

At this year's UN General Assembly, UN chief António Guterres raised the alarm on loss and damage, describing it as a "fundamental question of climate justice, international solidarity and trust" - adding that "polluters must pay" because "vulnerable countries need meaningful action".

Though the issue of loss and damage has been discussed for more than 30 years, it is fast emerging as one of the most critical issues at the UN climate talks.

At the last UN climate summit in 2021, COP26 in Glasgow, a group of largely developing nations representing six out of every seven people in the world called for developed countries to commit to pledging funds for loss and damage. However, this call faced opposition from large economies such as the US and EU - and, ultimately, was rejected.

It is expected that loss and damage will be one of the dominant themes at COP27, the next round of UN climate negotiations taking place in Egypt in November.

Ahead of the conference, Carbon Brief has produced an interactive explainer on - according to experts - what loss and damage is, who is responsible and how it should be paid for. It is the first in a week-long series of articles examining the key aspects of loss and damage.

Loss and damage

This article is part of a week-long special series on loss and damage.

What is loss and damage?

"Loss and damage" is a term used to describe how climate change is already causing serious and, in many cases, irreversible impacts around the world - particularly in vulnerable communities.

Prof Saleemul Huq, the director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) and a pioneer of loss and damage research and advocacy, tells Carbon Brief:

"The term loss and damage means the impacts of human-induced climate change affecting people around the world. Damage refers to things that can be repaired, like damaged houses, and losses refer to things that have been lost completely and won't come back - like human lives."

Ineza Umuhoza Grace, a Rwandan activist and director of the Loss and Damage Youth Coalition (LDYC), adds:

"We are losing infrastructure, losing our agricultural land - and losing what we can call a hope of having sustainable economic growth and a future for everybody."

At UN climate talks, the term is used by nations and organisations arguing for developed, high-emitting nations to be held responsible for losses incurred in poorer regions, which are the least responsible for climate change. (Because of this, the term "loss and damage" is sometimes described as meaning "climate reparations".)

These groups have called for the creation of a "loss and damage finance facility" - a fund paid by large emitters to assist vulnerable people dealing with loss and damage caused by climate change.

They argue this is needed because money pledged towards tackling climate change is currently only directed towards either efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ("mitigation") or adaptation measures to protect against rising warming impacts.

Neither stream of funding is specifically designed to give aid to those who have experienced loss from climate change, such as the loss of a loved one in a heatwave, or damages, such as damage to property or agricultural land in a cyclone.

Harjeet Singh, a senior advisor and loss and damage expert at Climate Action Network, explains to Carbon Brief:

"This system [the UN] has money if you want to put up solar panels, it has money if you want to retrofit your home (of course, not enough), but it doesn't have money when people are losing their homes. It's a clear gap.

"Somebody who is drowning, we say: 'We can't help you now, but if you survive we may help you prepare for a future disaster.'"

The study of how climate change is affecting the likelihood and severity of extreme weather events is known as " attribution science". (See Carbon Brief's detailed explainer and interactive map.)

In its most recent report on the impacts of climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that "human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe".

It is "virtually certain" that heatwaves have become more frequent and more intense since the 1950s, the report says, with human-caused warming being "the main driver" of these increases.

Many heatwaves seen over the past decade would have been "extremely unlikely to occur" without human-caused climate change, according to the report.

Carbon Brief's own analysis of 504 extreme weather events and trends finds that 71% were made more likely or more severe by human-caused climate change.

The chart below shows the number of studies that have been conducted into different types of extreme weather events, including heatwaves, floods and extreme rainfall events, and droughts, among others.

On the chart, colour indicates the proportion of studies that found climate change made the event more severe or more likely to occur (red), less severe or less likely (blue), where climate change had no effect (peach) and where there was insufficient data to draw conclusions (grey).

Chart shows the number of studies for each type of extreme event that fall within each category of human influence: More severe/likely (red), less severe/likely (blue), no influence (peach) and inconclusive (grey). Credit: Carbon Brief.

In its ​most recent report on the ​ impacts of climate change, the IPCC concluded that the loss of ice from glaciers reached its highest level since records began over the past two decades.

Meanwhile, global mean sea level rise is currently at its highest rate in at least three million years, according to the IPCC.

According to the IPCC, loss and damage can broadly be split into two categories:

Economic losses involving "income and physical assets",

Non-economic losses, which include but are not limited to "mortality, mobility and mental wellbeing losses".

It says that the "overall adverse economic impacts" of extreme weather events and slow-onset events, such as sea level rise and glacier loss, have so far been detected in industries including agriculture, forestry, fishery, energy and tourism - and through the loss of outdoor labour during climate extremes.

A separate UN report from the World Meteorological Organization published in 2021 found that economic losses from climate and weather disasters have increased sevenfold over the past five decades.

(A climate or weather event is considered a disaster if it kills at least 10 people, affects at least 100 people, a declaration of a state of emergency is made, or a country makes a call for international assistance.)

Hurricanes and storms caused the highest amount of economic damages out of any kind of climate and weather disaster over the past 50 years, the report said.

Top 10 costliest climate and weather disasters from 1970 to 2019. Source: WMO, 2021. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

When compared to economic loss and damage, non-economic loss and damage is less well studied and reported on, according to the IPCC:

"Economic losses and damages from climate change are often assessed and reported after disasters or within crises. However, non-economic losses from climate change are often overlooked."

In many ways, intangible loss and damage has become a catch-all term for any type of loss that cannot be valued in monetary terms, says Prof Neil Adger, a researcher of environmental geography at the University of Exeter. He tells Carbon Brief:

"We've got a category of things that are economic - and then we've got a category of things that we should really care about. Economics looks pretty unimportant if there's a risk you're going to lose your life."

A scientific review published in 2019 was the first to comprehensively summarise all of the ways that climate change can lead to non-economic loss and damage.

It says that intangible loss and damage can result from climate-induced harm to:

Biodiversity and species

Culture, traditions and heritage

Human dignity

Ecosystem services or habitat

Human life

Human mobility

Human identity

Knowledge and ways of knowing

Mental and emotional wellbeing

Order in the world

Physical health

Productive land

Self-determination and influence

Sense of place

Social fabric

Sovereignty

Territory

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Who is most vulnerable to loss and damage?

Not all countries are affected equally by the impacts of climate change. The chart below shows the average number of people affected by extreme climate-related events per 1,000 in the 20 lowest (blue) and highest (red) income countries, over 1990-2019.

Average number of people affected by extreme climate-related events (drought, extreme temperature, flood, storm, wildfire) per 1,000 population in the 20 lowest (blue) and highest (red - does not include microstates) income countries, based on GDP per capita, for the period 1990-2019. This is based on EM-DAT's definition of "people affected", which includes all those who require immediate assistance during a period of emergency, including basic survival needs such as food, water, shelter, sanitation and immediate medical assistance. Source: Scown et al. (2022), EM-DAT, World Bank.

The most severe climate impacts are often faced by people in the least wealthy countries - who generally have the smallest contributions to global emissions. As such, loss and damage has become an important issue in discussions of climate justice.

Huq tells Carbon Brief that the " least developed countries " - as defined by the UN - are "victims of climate change". He adds:

"But their own emissions are less than 5% of global emissions. So they don't cause the problem. But [they are] the overwhelming populations in which countries are suffering already - not just going to suffer, but already suffering."

The economic impact of climate change is determined by both the severity of the impacts and the vulnerability of local communities, which can be exacerbated by unrelated factors such as poor governance and lack of investment.

As such, small island developing states are already suffering some of the greatest economic losses from climate change. The chart below shows the 20 countries with the highest economic losses from extreme climate-related events over 1990-2018, as a percentage of GDP. Small island developing states are shown in dark blue.

The 20 countries with the highest average annual damages as a fraction of GDP resulting from extreme climate-related events (drought, extreme temperature, flood, storm, wildfire) for the period 1990-2019. Small island developing states (SIDS) are indicated by dark blue bars and other nations are indicated by light blue bars. Source: Scown et al. (2022), EM-DAT.

The IPCC's latest assessment report has a chapter dedicated to small island nations, which states:

"It has long been recognised that greenhouse gas emissions from small islands are negligible in relation to global emissions, but that the threats of climate change and sea level rise to small islands are very real. Indeed, it has been suggested that the very existence of some atoll nations is threatened by rising sea levels associated with global warming."

The first call for action on loss and damage, shown below and issued in 1991, came from the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) - a group that today represents 39 small island and low-lying coastal developing nations in international climate negotiations.

Source: AOSIS

Since then, small island states have "consistently tried to highlight the issue of loss and damage", Yeb Saño, former Philippines negotiator and Greenpeace Southeast Asia executive director, tells Carbon Brief.

More recently Simon Kofe, the foreign minister of Tuvalu - a series of low-lying Pacific islands - addressed the COP26 conference in a video standing knee-deep in seawater to highlight the dangers of sea level rise for his nation.

The average land elevation in the archipelagic state is just two metres above mean sea level, and the water is rising at almost 0.5cm each year.

Simon Kofe, Tuvalu foreign minister, delivers speech to COP26 knee-deep in the sea in Tuvalu, 11 November 2021.

Meanwhile, small-island developing nations are calling for greater action on loss and damage at COP27.

Small island states are pushing to formally get loss & damage on the agenda at COP27

"it is imperative that govts show their leadership in the fight against the climate crisis by calling for the advancement of loss and damage response finance at...COP27" https://t.co/8n7bXUTnFT pic.twitter.com/f9JRz7K1QN
- Simon Evans (@DrSimEvans) September 15, 2022

Small island nations are not the only countries pushing for greater emphasis on loss and damage. For example, Africa and the Middle East - which contain some of the poorest nations in the world - have become increasingly vocal in recent years about the impacts of loss and damage in their countries, as well as the need for richer countries to assist with loss and damage finance.

While loss and damage is most notable in lower income countries, richer nations also face economic damages from the impacts of climate change.

For example, the US has sustained 332 weather and climate disasters since 1980 in which overall damages reached or exceeded $1bn - with a total cost of more than $2.28tn. Tropical cyclones are the most costly extreme weather events in the US - but floods, droughts and fires also impact the country.

In wealthy nations, poorer communities and minorities often experience the most severe climate impacts. For example, research suggests that climate change and population growth could drive a 26% rise in US flood risk by 2050 - disproportionately impacting black and low-income groups.

Meanwhile, Carbon Brief analysis shows that, in general, women are more likely to die or suffer injury in extreme weather events. And separate research shows that people with disabilities are also particularly at risk from the impacts of climate change.

Wealthier nations are often more able to pay for the impacts of climate change than developing nations. When floods hit western Germany in 2021, causing an estimated €40bn in damages, the government allocated €30bn for repairs. Another €8.2bn was paid by insurers.

Dr Elisa Calliari, a loss-and-damage researcher at University College London, tells Carbon Brief that loss and damage "is still largely framed as something concerning vulnerable developing countries". She adds:

"During negotiations I've heard some developed countries referring to the losses and damages experienced in their national context, in particular, by indigenous communities. My impression is that this felt to some developing countries as an undue 'appropriation' of the concept and a way to divert attention from developed countries' historical responsibility for loss and damage."

Global south

The "global south" is a term used to broadly describe lower-income countries in regions such as Africa, Asia and Latin America. It is often used to denote nations that are either in the process of industrialising or are newly industrialised, as well as those that are the former subjects of colonialism. It does not refer directly to the southern hemisphere and, indeed, many nations falling into this category are located north of the equator. As with overlapping terms such as "Third World" or "developing", it is not universally accepted and is an imperfect way of describing a large group of countries with very different histories, cultures and economies. The term is often used in discussions about climate justice.

However, other experts told Carbon Brief that, in their view, it is appropriate to expand the definition to richer nations, as long as global inequality is noted.

Global south

The "global south" is a term used to broadly describe lower-income countries in regions such as Africa, Asia and Latin America. It is often used to denote nations that are either in the process of industrialising or are newly industrialised, as well as those that are the former subjects of colonialism. It does not refer directly to the southern hemisphere and, indeed, many nations falling into this category are located north of the equator. As with overlapping terms such as "Third World" or "developing", it is not universally accepted and is an imperfect way of describing a large group of countries with very different histories, cultures and economies. The term is often used in discussions about climate justice.

Dr Chandni Singh, an expert in climate change and development in the global south at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, noted the global inequality in climate impacts and adaptive capacities, but told Carbon Brief:

"In principle, I don't think broadening the definition to the global north is a problem, especially because we need to recognise impacts on the most vulnerable within global north countries."
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Who is responsible for loss and damage?

Who bears responsibility for loss and damage is a question right at the heart of debates surrounding the issue.

If someone dies in a flood in Bangladesh, which was made more likely by human-caused climate change, who is to blame? Is it countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions? Wealthy nations that got rich by burning fossil fuels? Wealthy individuals? Or fossil fuel companies themselves?

It is a question with no easy answer. One way to address it is to compare how different groups have contributed to climate change.

This chart shows countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. It demonstrates that China, the US, India and Indonesia are currently the world's biggest emitters on an annual basis.

This chart shows which countries have contributed the most to climate change since the start of the industrial revolution in the 1800s. It demonstrates that, from the start of the industrial era to 2019, the US has caused the most emissions, with the UK also featuring in the top 10.

This chart shows countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, when they are divided per person living in that country. It demonstrates that the sparsely populated Solomon Islands has the highest "per-capita" emissions, with oil-producing Qatar and Kuwait also featuring in the top 10.

This chart shows the 20 private and state-owned fossil fuel companies that have contributed the most to global emissions between 1965 and 2018. These companies accounted for 35% of all energy-related greenhouse gas emissions in this time period, according to the data.

This chart shows countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. It demonstrates that China, the US, India and Indonesia are currently the world's biggest emitters on an annual basis.

Source: Climate Watch Data.

This chart shows which countries have contributed the most to climate change since the start of the industrial revolution in the 1800s. It demonstrates that, from the start of the industrial era to 2019, the US has caused the most emissions, with the UK also featuring in the top 10.

Credit: Carbon Brief.

This chart shows countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, when they are divided per person living in that country. It demonstrates that the sparsely populated Solomon Islands has the highest "per-capita" emissions, with oil-producing Qatar and Kuwait also featuring in the top 10.

Source: Climate Watch Data.

This chart shows the 20 private and state-owned fossil fuel companies that have contributed the most to global emissions between 1965 and 2018. These companies accounted for 35% of all energy-related greenhouse gas emissions in this time period, according to the data.

Source: Climate Accountability.

(It's also possible to look at historical responsibility in relation to current or historic populations, as shown in Carbon Brief's analysis of past emissions.)

For many of those calling for the world to establish a loss-and-damage fund at UN climate talks, it is developed nations - who are among the largest emitters since the start of the industrial era - that should be held responsible. Prof Saleemul Huq tells Carbon Brief:

"Loss and damage is directly attributable to the fact that we've raised global mean temperature by 1C because of the emissions of greenhouse gases that have taken place since the industrial revolution. The major emitters of those greenhouse gases have a responsibility to compensate the victims of the impacts of climate change."

These groups - including the "G77 plus China" coalition of 134 developing countries and China - argue that the idea of developed nations being responsible for loss and damage is in line with the principles of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change ( UNFCCC), the global treaty for tackling climate change established in 1994.

The convention specifically " puts the onus on developed countries to lead the way " on climate change, the UNFCCC website says, acknowledging that these countries are the "source of most past and current greenhouse gas emissions".

But, at past UN climate talks, wealthy parties such as the US and the EU have blocked moves that could have led to them being held responsible for loss and damage.

Speaking to Carbon Brief, Daniel Bodansky, a law professor at Arizona State University and a former climate change coordinator for the US State Department, says that the US view is that blaming countries for their past emissions could, ultimately, be unproductive. He says:

"The US view generally has been that the regime will be much more productive if it's forward looking. Because if the climate regime is backward looking - trying to assign blame for what's happened, which would then provide a basis for liability and compensation - countries aren't going to participate. The US will run away from the international climate regime. I think China is extremely unlikely to want to go there...It's just not going to be politically possible to do that."

He adds that assigning responsibility to large emitters raises "philosophical issues":

"It's very difficult to know how to assign blame - a lot of the emissions were before people were even aware of climate change as a problem. Should you be holding people responsible for that? What is the theory of responsibility for historical emissions?"

However, if wealthy nations do not accept responsibility for their past emissions, poorer nations may feel discouraged to contribute to climate action going forward, says Huq:

"In my view, loss and damage is by far the most important global climate goal. Because, for 30 years, we haven't taken the actions to prevent loss and damage, it's now happening and so on our shoulders to deal with it. That is by far the first thing that we have to do to tackle climate change, the other [goals] can come later."

Speaking to Carbon Brief in June while still in office, the former UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa said that loss and damage is an issue that all countries need to "discuss in the most open manner with the best intentions". She added:

"We need to overcome some mistrust among countries and really address the issue...Avoiding the discussion is not something that will resolve the issue...We need to sit together and find the right solutions and the right instruments in order to get those financial resources. And, yes, a part of those resources need to come from the governments of the developed countries."

Outside of UN climate negotiations, there is a growing movement of lawyers, activists and policymakers that are aiming to hold both wealthy countries and fossil-fuel companies accountable for their emissions in the courts.

According to a recent report on global climate litigation trends, the number of climate change-related cases has more than doubled since 2015.

So far, none of these cases have specifically centred on loss and damage, according to the report.

However, it notes a new legal effort from Antigua and Barbuda, and Tuvalu, who officially launched a Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law at COP26 in 2021.

The commission's mandate explicitly includes "the responsibility for injuries arising from internationally wrongful acts" that may result from states' breach of their obligations to protect the marine environment, which - according to the report - "could be considered commensurate with a mandate to explore legal recourse for loss and damage".

This, coupled with a separate legal effort from the small island Vanuatu, could see loss and damage featuring centrally in climate litigation cases within the next year, the report says:

"The new commission, coupled with Vanuatu's announcement...may suggest that this [loss and damage] debate may soon move beyond the largely theoretical realm in which it has existed to date."
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How is loss and damage being tackled at UN climate talks?

The term "loss and damage" emerged from UN climate negotiations, where diplomats from almost every nation meet regularly to discuss measures to tackle climate change.

It has a long, fraught history in the process that pre-dates the launch of the UNFCCC in 1992.

For years, developing countries have petitioned developed countries to provide them with more money to deal with loss and damage. Their efforts so far have been unsuccessful.

However, when years of negotiations culminated in the Paris Agreement in 2015, the landmark climate treaty included important references to loss and damage.

It separated loss and damage from adaptation in its own "article" of the treaty - Article 8 - making it clear that this was a distinct and important issue that required action, alongside cutting emissions and adapting to climate change.

Source: Paris Agreement.

The agreement established the importance of "averting, minimising and addressing" loss and damage. While the first two of these goals can be viewed as overlapping with climate adaptation actions, campaigners are increasingly focusing on the "address" part of this mandate, which is seen by many groups as justification for new loss-and-damage finance.

The Paris Agreement was also accompanied by a " decision text ", according to which the treaty would not provide the basis for liability and compensation claims on the basis of loss and damage.

Source: Paris Agreement decision text.

This was reportedly an important issue for the US and other developed countries that feared being held legally accountable for their own historical contributions to climate change. (See: How should loss and damage be paid for?)

UN talks have also established two key institutions that have helped to advance and popularise the concept of loss and damage at an international level.

These are the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts (WIM) and the Santiago Network on Loss and Damage - both named after the capital cities of the COP presidencies in the year of their origin.

The WIM was established in 2013 by a formal legal decision of the COP19 talks, following efforts by vulnerable countries to get loss and damage on the agenda at UN talks.

Source: Decision 2/CP.19.

The WIM has three core functions:

1. "Enhancing knowledge and understanding of comprehensive risk management approaches."

2. "Strengthening dialogue, coordination, coherence and synergies among relevant stakeholders."

3. "Enhancing action and support, including finance, technology and capacity building."

The first function refers to improving the collection of relevant data, something that is much less prevalent in low-income nations and communities. Enhancing knowledge involves identifying who needs help and what their requirements are.

The second function concerns the sharing of resources and collaboration between the various local groups, international charities, government agencies and other bodies that have responsibility for tackling loss and damage.

This slow progress has been attributed to developed country negotiators involved in the process wanting to avoid the risk of compensation payments.

The WIM's work is overseen by its executive committee (ExCom) which is made up of 20 national representatives from countries that participate in UN climate talks, including a mix of developed and developing nations.

After an initial two-year workplan to explore action areas, lasting from 2015 to 2017, the ExCom began a five-year workplan that is up for renewal in 2022.

This consists of five workstreams, each of which has had a group of experts assigned to it. Between them, they cover slow-onset events, non-economic losses, risk management, displacement and " action and support ".

Of these, the action and support group, which covers finance, was established last and - according to Harjeet Singh of Climate Action Network - only after a political fight in 2019.

He tells Carbon Brief that the WIM could have been responsible for mobilising loss-and-damage finance if the participating developed countries had allowed this to happen:

"There was no need for all the political drama that has happened over the last few years, [if] we had that body that...[had] actually acted in good faith."

The Santiago Network was established as part of the WIM at COP25 in 2019, following a review of the mechanism. Its stated aim is to help "catalyse" and connect developing countries with the technical assistance and expertise they need to tackle loss and damage.

Source: Decision 2/CMA.2.

In practice, its funding and governance arrangements are still up for debate, after discussions continued at COP26 and beyond. As it stands, climate NGOs say it is little more than a website, while noting that it has the potential to help developing countries deliver support on the ground.

As nations continue to clash over proposals for a loss-and-damage finance facility, the Glasgow dialogue, established at COP26 in 2021, is now providing a space for countries and experts to "discuss the arrangements for the funding of activities to avert, minimise and address loss and damage".

The dialogue, which began in June 2022, was viewed as a compromise after developing countries called for a new loss-and-damage finance facility at COP26. Small-island nations made it clear that they wanted the dialogue to culminate in such a facility being established.
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How should loss and damage be paid for?

Loss-and-damage discussions have always been tied up with money. This is because the costs associated with extreme weather and rising sea levels are enormous.

One widely cited study estimates that by 2030, developing countries are likely to face $290-580bn in annual "residual damages" - that is, damages from climate change that cannot be prevented with adaptation measures. (The range reflects low- and high-emission pathways RCP4.5 and RCP6). Other estimates have been within a similar range.

By 2050, the economic costs of loss and damage could exceed $1tn every year, as the impacts of climate change intensify.

(The IPCC notes that these estimates remain "highly speculative" given the lack of clarity about what constitutes "loss and damage". See: Why is there controversy around the term 'loss and damage'?)

For now, finance set aside specifically for loss and damage is essentially non-existent.

Developing countries have made it clear they want a loss-and-damage finance "facility" to get funds flowing. These nations and their climate-activist allies tend to emphasise the need for reliable, grant-based support drawn directly from the wealth of developed countries.

In contrast, an idea frequently backed by developed countries is to address the problem using insurance schemes - for example, insuring homes against hurricane damage. This could shift some of the costs into the private sector.

The first-ever - unsuccessful - request for loss-and-damage finance, made by small-island states in 1991, was described as an insurance facility. However, in practice, their concept was more of a compensation fund, paid into by industrialised countries.

However, large gaps in coverage make insurance an imperfect solution for loss and damage, with studies suggesting poorer countries benefit less.

Carbon Brief analysis of EM-DAT data suggests that, between 1990 and 2022, the economic damages from extreme weather events covered by insurance companies were 19 times higher in developed countries than developing countries.

Economic damages from extreme weather events covered by insurance companies, in $bn adjusted for inflation, for the period 1990-2022. Darker colours indicate developed countries and lighter colours indicate developing countries. Puerto Rico is a territory of the US but has been separated out here to show the scale of costs carried by it alone. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts. Source: EM-DAT.

However, contributions by developed countries to insurance schemes have been sporadic, meaning most costs are being borne by people in developing nations that can ill afford them. In its most recent NDC, for example, the Caribbean nation of St Lucia indicated that these kinds of schemes "may lead to a rise in costs beyond the capacity of the national budget".

Furthermore, climate impacts are not easy to insure against, Dr Linnéa Nordlander, a law researcher at the University of Copenhagen, tells Carbon Brief:

"Insurance is based on profit and the possibility to profit from the policy holders, and that's not going to be possible when there is a guaranteed outcome of loss, [for events] that we know are only going to increase in frequency and severity."

Further complications arise from attempts to insure against slow-onset events such as sea-level rise, although mechanisms have been proposed.

Aside from focusing on insurance, developed countries have made it clear that, in their view, loss-and-damage finance should remain rooted in existing finance streams, such as adaptation finance and humanitarian aid, rather than creating new pots of money.

Developing countries and climate-justice activists disagree, emphasising that funding must be " new and additional " - rather than rebranding existing funds.

Funding for adaptation and natural disasters is already insufficient and, therefore, would require an overhaul to meet the additional needs of loss and damage.

Developed countries pledged to mobilise $100bn in climate finance by 2020 and have failed to do so. They have been particularly unsuccessful at mobilising adaptation finance, which is meant to make up half of the total but as of 2020 was just one-third - $28.6bn.

Such funds may also be unsuitable for dealing with the immediate aftermath of extreme weather events. A quarter of the projects in the UN's flagship Green Climate Fund (GCF) explicitly refer to loss and damage, but there is generally a year-long wait to receive GCF funding.

Meanwhile, analysis by Oxfam found that, on average for the period 2019-2021, UN humanitarian appeals linked to extreme weather were also underfunded and received $10bn each year.

These figures can be compared with the already-mentioned projections of loss and damage costs in 2030 of $290-580bn for developing countries.

With existing finance looking inadequate against future cost estimates, researchers and civil society groups have proposed various innovative new funding streams over the years.

Taxes or levies applied to fossil fuel companies, flights and shipping fuels have all been proposed, as has a worldwide system of carbon pricing that channels funds into some kind of loss and damage facility.

A financial transaction tax - a small levy placed on monetary transactions or trades of financial instruments - has also been suggested, with the burden falling on banks and traders. A tax on the super-rich is another proposed measure, with Oxfam estimating a 99% one-off billionaire tax on the top 10 richest people could raise $812bn.

All of these measures are designed to target wealthy, high-emitting individuals and companies, rather than the poor and vulnerable people currently bearing many of the costs of loss and damage.

As the chart shows, rough estimates suggest that a combination of them could cover a significant chunk of estimated annual loss-and-damage costs.

However, they all come with considerable political, social and technical issues.

Establishing a global carbon pricing system or tax on fossil-fuel companies - and then ensuring the funds were channelled into financing loss and damage - would likely face strong resistance, including from the many developing countries that rely heavily on fossil fuels.

A levy on flights, while already proven to work in some circumstances and relatively easy to govern, could harm the populations it is trying to help, given the reliance of many small-island nations on tourism. The same is true of shipping, another major contributor to island economies.

Dr Stacy-ann Robinson, who researches adaptation and small-island states at Colby College in Maine, says that any one of these approaches would likely be just a "drop in the bucket":

"When you compare it to the potential needs of loss and damage...it kind of feels like none of those things in isolation would be enough. It would have to be lots of things all at once."

Moreover, as the costs of loss and damage are projected to continue increasing, the streams of finance would need to increase further as well.

Developed countries pledged to mobilise $100bn in climate finance by 2020 and have failed to do so. They have been particularly unsuccessful at mobilising adaptation finance, which is meant to make up half of the total but as of 2020 was just one-third - $28.6bn.

Meanwhile, analysis by Oxfam found that, on average for the period 2019-2021, UN humanitarian appeals linked to extreme weather were also underfunded and received $10bn each year.

These figures can be compared with the already-mentioned projections of loss and damage costs in 2030 of $290-580bn for developing countries.

With existing finance looking inadequate against future cost estimates, researchers and civil society groups have proposed various innovative new funding streams over the years.

Taxes or levies applied to fossil fuel companies, flights and shipping fuels have all been proposed, as has a worldwide system of carbon pricing that channels funds into some kind of loss and damage facility.

A financial transaction tax - a small levy placed on monetary transactions or trades of financial instruments - has also been suggested, with the burden falling on banks and traders. A tax on the super-rich is another proposed measure, with Oxfam estimating a 99% one-off billionaire tax on the top 10 richest people could raise $812bn.

All of these measures are designed to target wealthy, high-emitting individuals and companies, rather than the poor and vulnerable people currently bearing many of the costs of loss and damage.

As the chart shows, rough estimates suggest that a combination of them could cover a significant chunk of estimated annual loss-and-damage costs.

However, they all come with considerable political, social and technical issues.

Establishing a global carbon pricing system or tax on fossil-fuel companies - and then ensuring the funds were channelled into financing loss and damage - would likely face strong resistance, including from the many developing countries that rely heavily on fossil fuels.

A levy on flights, while already proven to work in some circumstances and relatively easy to govern, could harm the populations it is trying to help, given the reliance of many small-island nations on tourism. The same is true of shipping, another major contributor to island economies.

Dr Stacy-ann Robinson, who researches adaptation and small-island states at Colby College in Maine, says that any one of these approaches would likely be just a "drop in the bucket":

"When you compare it to the potential needs of loss and damage...it kind of feels like none of those things in isolation would be enough. It would have to be lots of things all at once."

Moreover, as the costs of loss and damage are projected to continue increasing, the streams of finance would need to increase further as well.

Raising loss-and-damage finance can be viewed as part of a wider push to increase climate finance from " billions to trillions ".

Loss-and-damage advocates point to the massive mobilisation of funds in response to the Covid-19 pandemic as an example of what can be achieved.

Besides increased public spending by wealthy countries, this included measures such as " special drawing rights" (SDRs). SDRs are issued by the International Monetary Fund as reserve assets that countries in need can swap for hard currencies when required.

Redirecting fossil fuel subsidies - which are estimated to cost billions or even trillions each year, depending on how they are defined - has also been suggested as a source of funding by NGOs. UN secretary-general António Guterres has proposed a windfall tax on the excess profits of oil-and-gas companies during the energy crisis as an additional source of money.

Amid devastating flooding in Pakistan in 2022, there have also been renewed calls for the cancellation of debts for developing countries. However, Lidy Nacpil of the Asian Peoples Movement on Debt & Development (APMDD) tells Carbon Brief such measures, while welcome, "should not be counted towards climate finance that is also urgently needed for loss and damage".

Historically, developed countries have resisted loss-and-damage finance because of its ties to liability and compensation, but when the Paris Agreement emerged in 2015, the US in particular ensured that the decision text stated clearly that these issues were not connected.

While legal scholars have suggested that compensation is still not entirely off the table, in practice, experts tell Carbon Brief that developing countries have largely begun calling for money on the basis of solidarity - as the impacts of climate change become more apparent.
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How should loss and damage finance be spent?

Just as each disaster is different, loss-and-damage impacts can be extremely localised. The needs of countries and communities are therefore varied, with the means to address these needs via climate finance complex and best determined with local knowledge.

Experts tell Carbon Brief that loss-and-damage spending needs to be divided roughly into three categories: relief and rehabilitation; recovery and reconstruction; and disaster risk reduction.

These broadly align with the categories set out by the UN's Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which groups aid spending into emergency response, reconstruction, and prevention and preparedness.

According to Ashfaq Khalfan, director of climate justice at Oxfam America, loss-and-damage finance needs to be spent on "effectively anything that is not about preventing climate harms, but rather about rebuilding".

This would, he says, cover technical assistance, as well as funds for emergency relief and rebuilding. It would offer support to restore or provide alternative livelihoods, emergency cash transfers and social support, restoring ecosystems, psychological support and capacity-building.

Loss-and-damage finance would also fund needs such as migration and relocation of the permanently displaced, social protection and other safety nets, as well as building alternative livelihoods - for example, when farming is no longer a viable option due to salinisation of soil. Khalfan adds:

"For non-economic losses, activities such as active remembrance of areas or things lost to climate change, counselling services and formal apologies are possible actions to address."

Some of the potential areas that could be addressed with loss-and-damage finance are outlined in Article 8 of the Paris Agreement, as potential "areas of cooperation and facilitation to enhance understanding, action and support".

These include early-warning systems, emergency preparedness, risk insurance facilities and measures that support the resilience of communities and ecosystems confronted with loss and damage.

Some countries and regional coalitions have spelled out their individual, collective and contextual needs in submissions to the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM), the oversight body on loss and damage under the UNFCCC.

These submissions are an opportunity for countries to say what specific measures and funding they need, in order to recover from loss and damage.

The island nation of Vanuatu, for instance, suggests finance for a range of different economic and non-economic losses in its submission to the WIM.

These include needs such as:

Relocation costs for coastal communities threatened by sea-level rise.

Rebuilding homes and infrastructure following extreme weather events.

Safety net programs for the most vulnerable members of society.

Emergency funds that can be tapped into when needed.

Comprehensive risk management programmes, particularly at the local level.

Technology cooperation and technology transfer, including tools to measure the extent of loss and damage.

Some of these issues are captured in Vanuatu's recently updated NDC, which has been welcomed due to its comprehensive breakdown of loss and damage needs. The majority of its stated needs would go towards improving its capacity to "assess and redress" climate impacts, as the chart below shows.

Breakdown of loss and damage spending needs identified by Vanuatu in its 2022 climate pledge, Source: Vanuatu NDC. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

Vanuatu is part of AOSIS, which has also made a collective submission to the WIM that identifies three action areas, "each of which requires a level of financial support that is currently well beyond the capacity of small-island developing states, either individually or collectively".

Means to address permanent loss - from which recovery or rehabilitation is not possible - and impacts from slow-onset events and their political, social and economic implications have not been analysed or prepared for enough, according to AOSIS nations.

They highlight "the need for SIDS and other particularly vulnerable countries to have effective legal, financial and institutional measures in place to protect people displaced by the impacts of climate change".

According to loss-and-damage expert Harjeet Singh of Climate Action Network (CAN), "relocation is going to be a massive part of loss and damage going forward", as well as post-disaster psycho-social care. He tells Carbon Brief:

"This is why we need to start looking at the impacts of slow-onset events that the traditional humanitarian community has not been aware of: sea level rise, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, glacier melt. The scale of relocation is going to be much more, because people are going to be displaced either because of excessive heat or desertification or rising seas or coastal erosion. Millions of people are going to lose their homes, but what do we do, because there is currently no policy to accommodate them? This is where the whole loss-and-damage mechanism or funding becomes really important."

Investment in early warning systems is also a high priority for many countries, according to their WIM submissions analysed by Carbon Brief. Early warning systems can broadly be described as integrated communication and forecasting systems to help policy-makers and communities plan and respond to climate-related extreme weather events.

An effective early-warning system has four components: tools to measure risks better; a monitoring and warning service that can make accurate predictions; communication systems to get the word out to governments and vulnerable communities; and their ability to respond to loss and damage.

While many of these needs have been spelled out in the Paris Agreement - and by affected countries - sufficient climate finance is still not forthcoming.

Flows of finance from developed to developing countries for loss and damage are currently limited to aid, either in the form of development or humanitarian finance or insurance.

Aid is governed by humanitarian considerations, some international obligations, and is mostly voluntary, although self-interest and " overt geopolitics " play a role in who gets what.

For the most part, countries that cause harm are not responsible for paying commensurate damages in an aid context. Humanitarian principles imply a degree of separation between those that cause harm and those that participate in the response.

This is a marked difference to how many developing countries and climate-justice campaigners have framed loss and damage, where high-polluting nations that historically and currently contribute to climate change must provide support to address its impacts.

According to a 2022 report by the World Resources Institute that looked at OECD data on official development assistance, $133bn - or 11% - of international aid was disaster-related from 2010-2019. This amount includes non-climate related events such as earthquakes.

Of this, 90.1% was earmarked for emergency response, 5.8% for reconstruction relief and rehabilitation, and 4.1% was earmarked for disaster prevention and preparedness. The report points to Official Development Assistance (ODA) being an important source of loss and damage finance.

Many small island states, for instance, are considered - or will soon qualify - as high-income, developed countries that are not eligible for ODA, even though they are considered eligible for international climate finance.

Many countries that have been battered by storms and seas alike are also in deep debt distress, having to cut spending on climate to qualify for more concessional financial support.

In a 2021 report, UN Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) observed that "overall disaster-related ODA for prevention and preparedness may not be tailored according to needs".

The report found that, while there is a clear association between mortality levels and international aid towards emergency response, countries with high death tolls, with a few exceptions, receive scant funding for prevention and preparedness.

According to the UNDRR, this type of funding is particularly important in the case of climate change, where events can grow in intensity and frequency, inflicting heavy economic damages on the same places repeatedly.

Investing in risk reduction "enhances the efficiency of development aid and national investments, as it prevents or mitigates future losses", the UNDRR says. It estimates "every $1 invested in risk reduction and prevention can save up to $15 in post-disaster recovery".

When it was established at COP25 in Madrid, the Santiago Network was pitched as a body that would "catalyse the technical assistance", bringing together organisations - including aid groups - and experts to help implement approaches to "avert, minimise and address" loss and damage in developing countries.

However, so far, the network is little more than a website.

Countries were invited to make submissions to the website portal by 15 March 2022, but these were to focus on discussing how the network would work, its structure and operations, not actual requests for technical assistance.

In August 2020, the network had asked developing countries to participate in a survey towards mapping "potential needs for relevant technical assistance".

While 14 countries submitted their needs statements - ranging from "establishing a baseline on non-economic and social loss and damage" through to "designing proposals and access to financing for climate information services and early warning systems" - what has happened since is still unclear.
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Why is there controversy around the term 'loss and damage'?

The term may appear self-explanatory, but the question of what constitutes "loss and damage" resulting from climate change has been highly politicised and contentious.

As one 2021 paper put it, "loss-and-damage debates have been mired by lack of definition", subject to different interpretations both in UN negotiating halls and the scientific literature.

Small-island states, developing countries and climate-justice groups have traditionally framed loss and damage as a way to hold big historical emitters to account for causing climate change. This often involves highlighting the existential threat posed by climate change and demanding compensation from nations in North America and Europe.

This has led to loss-and-damage finance being colloquially referred to by some activists and journalists as " climate reparations" - a politically charged term that recalls demands made by the descendents of African slaves in the US and the Caribbean.

Such a framing is untenable for many developed countries. Governments fear being held liable for trillions of dollars, even as they struggle to meet their existing climate-finance commitments and face various domestic pressures.

Instead, these nations - most prominently the US - have tried to keep loss and damage within discussions around adaptation. This approach often involves framing all climate impacts as "loss and damage", meaning the topic is already well covered by efforts to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts.

Even after years of discussions, negotiators from wealthy countries can still be seen pushing back against the notion of loss and damage as a distinct issue.

Scientific research has reflected the diversity of opinions about loss and damage. The most recent IPCC report identified a "coalescence" around a handful of relevant topics, including "risk management, limits to adaptation, existential risk, finance and support including liability, compensation and litigation".

The most widely accepted definition of loss and damage in the literature involves dealing with climate risks that remain despite efforts to cut emissions and adapt to the consequences. This definition supports the developing countries' "beyond adaptation" framing, without resting on the need for compensation from the rich.

Despite this apparent clarity, former EU and AOSIS negotiator Kaveh Guilanpour, of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, tells Carbon Brief that the continued confusion around loss and damage is understandable:

"It is very difficult, except at the extremes, to understand where adaptation ends and where loss and damage starts."

In a 2016 paper, Prof Lisa Vanhala of University College London (UCL) and Cecilie Hestbaek from humanitarian charity Elrha characterised the term itself as a political compromise.

They argue that since the Bali Action Plan in 2007, which included the term "loss and damage" for the first time in a negotiated UN text, it has entered common usage as a catch-all phrase that does not require parties to agree on a definition.

Carbon Brief's analysis of Earth Negotiations Bulletin reports, which track UN climate negotiations in detail, shows how references to "loss and damage" have shot up since 2007, far exceeding mentions of "insurance", "liability" and "compensation".

Mentions of loss and damage and related terms in "summary reports" produced after each UN Conference of the Parties (COP) by the Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB), a publication that provides comprehensive coverage of official UNFCCC negotiations. The number of mentions has been divided by the word count in each report and multiplied by 1,000 to give a comparable metric for frequency of use for each term. Source: ENB. Analysis by Josh Gabbatiss for Carbon Brief, based on research by Vanhala & Hestbaek (2016). Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

This could reflect the rising profile of loss and damage, as well as the successful effort by the US to exclude compensation for loss and damage from the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Negotiators tell Carbon Brief they feel constructive ambiguity has allowed considerable progress in discussions of loss and damage, including the formation of key institutions such as the WIM.

However, veteran Philippines climate negotiator and Greenpeace East Asia executive director Yeb Saño says that while this approach has "saved this [UN] process many times...ambiguity will not avert the climate crisis".

Vanhala tells Carbon Brief that she agrees there are limits to this approach:

"I'm beginning to understand the destructive potential of this idea and what it's doing, and the battles that need to continually be refought even after an agreement is reached at the global level."

One issue often raised by developed countries has been that developing countries have not been clear about what they need. Indeed, there is evidence that when loss and damage has been included in national policy-making it has been conflated with adaptation.

However, loss and damage is increasingly being accounted for in national climate strategies, making its parameters easier to define.

Analysis by Carbon Brief of national government policy documents available in English from the Climate Policy Radar database indicates a particular surge in the use of the term "loss and damage" since the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Mentions of the term "loss and damage" in national policy documents. Uses of the term in a non-climate context have been manually removed. Source: Climate Policy Radar. Analysis by Yaning Wu for Carbon Brief. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

Analysis ahead of COP26 showed that one-third of climate plans submitted under the Paris Agreement specifically referenced loss and damage, more than half of which came from small-island states. No developed country plans mentioned loss and damage.

Dr Elisa Calliari, one of the study authors and part of the Politics of Climate Change Loss and Damage (CCLAD) project at UCL, tells Carbon Brief:

"Some countries seem to be actively shaping the loss and damage concept by putting forward certain understandings which relate to specific challenges they face at the national level."

Finally, the politics of loss-and-damage language have also spilled over into the world of the IPCC.

While the IPCC has covered relevant issues, such as flood damage from sea level rise, since its first report in 1990, it has only begun using the term "loss and damage" over the past decade. The topic was analysed in depth for the first time in 2018 for the special report on 1.5C.

At the same time, there has also been a growing use of the term "losses and damages", a more politically neutral term for the damages caused by climate change.

While the IPCC reports themselves are scientific documents, the summaries for policymakers (SPMs) that accompany them must be agreed by governments.

"As the term 'loss and damage' carries political baggage, it has not made it into any approved SPM to date," Friederike Hartz, a geography PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge and research assistant at UCL's CCLAD project, tells Carbon Brief.

Mentions of "loss and damage" and "losses and damages" per page in IPCC reports, including assessment reports and selected special reports, since 2001. Source: IPCC. Analysis by Josh Gabbatiss for Carbon Brief. Charts by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

Finally, the politics of loss-and-damage language have also spilled over into the world of the IPCC.

While the IPCC has covered relevant issues, such as flood damage from sea level rise, since its first report in 1990, it has only begun using the term "loss and damage" over the past decade. The topic was analysed in depth for the first time in 2018 for the special report on 1.5C.

At the same time, there has also been a growing use of the term "losses and damages", a more politically neutral term for the damages caused by climate change.

While the IPCC reports themselves are scientific documents, the summaries for policymakers (SPMs) that accompany them must be agreed by governments.

"As the term 'loss and damage' carries political baggage, it has not made it into any approved SPM to date," Friederike Hartz, a geography PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge and research assistant at UCL's CCLAD project, tells Carbon Brief.

Source: IPCC AR6 WG2 glossary.

It is notable that, despite this, "losses and damages" was mentioned 15 times in the most recent SPM, published in early 2022.

Hartz says that, in her view, the latest IPCC glossary, which makes a distinction between the political (capitalised "Loss and Damage") and scientific ("losses and damages") approaches to the subject, allowed this progress to take place. She adds that the political implications of this development remain to be seen.
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Hero montage by Carbon Brief. Image credits: King tide: jeremy sutton-hibbert / Alamy Stock Photo, Sandbags: imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo, Coal plant: Martin Muránsky / Alamy Stock Photo, Smoke stacks: michal kodym / Alamy Stock Photo.

Published under a CC license. You are welcome to reproduce unadapted material in full for non-commercial use, credited 'Carbon Brief' with a link to the article. Please contact us for commercial use.

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Daisy Dunne, Josh Gabbatiss, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Ayesha Tandon, Tom Prater, Tom Pearson.

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Q&A: Should developed nations pay for 'loss and damage' from climate change?

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This article is part of a week-long special series on loss and damage. This year has seen thousands of people killed in a run of unprecedented extreme weather events. Catastrophic flooding has caused at least 1,500 deaths in Pakistan in recent weeks, while record heat has blighted much of the globe - for example, killing 1,000 people in Portugal and Spain in July.

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Last week, at the UN climate negotiations, the International Energy Agency announced that pledges made thus far could hold warming to 1.8 or 1.9°C. Yet an investigation published on Sunday by The Washington Post found that countries' pledges are based on faulty data. And a report released on Tuesday by Climate Action Tracker, a research group that monitors action on greenhouse gas emissions reductions, found that the targets will, at best, keep temperatures to 2.7°C (5°F). That same day, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) published its annual Emissions Gap report, which matched the Climate Action Tracker's findings: Current pledges will lead to 2.7°C.

The Climate Action Tracker based its conclusions on the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that each country released before the talks. The NDCs, which are publicly available on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) website, spell out how each country plans to cut emissions. The plans range from specific to vague, and from extremely short to hundreds of pages. Under the Paris Agreement, which was adopted at COP21 in Paris in 2015 and went into effect in 2016, each country needs to submit its NDC every five years.

Because of the sheer volume of countries involved, the Climate Action Tracker focused on the 40 countries that are responsible for 80 percent of the world's emissions and ranked their plans based on how likely they are to result in the necessary cuts.

Image courtesy of the Climate Action Tracker.
Only four negotiating parties-Chile, Costa Rica, the European Union, and the United Kingdom-had plans that CAT found acceptable for holding warming to the Glasgow talks' stated goal of holding to 1.5°C (or "1.5 to stay alive" as negotiators from island nations say).

The reason these countries have managed to delude themselves and others? Instead of laying out concrete plans to drastically cut emissions immediately, during the next crucial two decades, some countries plan to cut their emissions only minimally and balance what is left by doing things like buying carbon offsets, planting trees, and investing in carbon-capture technology. Instead of cutting their emissions to zero, they would reach something they call "net zero."
The simple phrase that begat a legion of creative accounting
When countries promise that they can reach net zero without making sharp cuts to emissions in the next decade, those claims should not be taken at face value. The commitments are too far into the future, and action is needed now. Reliable, quantifiable methods of carbon capture and sequestration do not exist yet at the scale necessary to help meet those targets. A country could embark on a massive reforestation project, only to see those forests decimated by wildfires or illegal logging. They could invest in carbon-capture technology that fails to pan out. They could restore wetlands, only to see them thrashed by climate-change-intensified hurricanes. A coal plant can be shut down in a day, while a forest takes decades to grow.

Furthermore, many net-zero schemes rely on carbon markets, offset schemes, and using lands in the Global South as carbon sinks-a tactic that might mean forced removal of the people currently living on them. The use of lands as carbon sinks is referred to as "nature-based solutions." Sara Shaw, climate justice and energy program coordinator at Friends of the Earth International said that it "rings alarm bells. Clearly, it's an intoxicating idea, that after decades of inaction nature can come to save us from climate breakdown. But 'nature-based solutions' will likely lead to land grabs, food insecurity, and rights violations for people already on the sharp edge of climate impacts."

There are simply not enough land and trees in the world to soak up the emissions of big polluters and northern governments. For these reasons, organizations ranging from Friends of the Earth to Indigenous Environmental Network, from Power Shift Africa to the Third World Network and many others, are calling for " Real Solutions Not 'Net Zero,'" and satirists like Australia's The Juice are directly mocking net zero as a fantasy.

Array

As Meena Raman, from the environmental group Friends of the Earth Malaysia, said at a press briefing last week, "Offsetting is no longer a solution. It has to be real zero. And it should have been real zero yesterday."
Promise now, deliver later
Another problem is how many countries are planning on reducing their emissions in the next decades, rather than this one. The cuts that nations have laid out in their NDCs fall into two categories: short-term (by 2030) and long-term (by 2050 for developed nations and by 2060 for developing nations).

What matters most is that these short-term emissions cuts are made this decade. But most of last week's good news was based on long-term commitments, which gives the nations making those pledges over a decade before they can be held accountable for failing to meet their emissions goals.

At a press briefing, Professor Niklas Höhne, of the NewClimate Institute, one of the two organizations who put out the Climate Action Tracker report, said, "We now have more than 140 governments announcing net-zero targets that cover more than 90 percent of global greenhouse emissions. And at first sight, that's positive news. If we then assume that all of these countries indeed meet their net-zero targets, then we calculate a temperature increase by the end of the century of 1.8 degrees."

That, said Höhne, is the optimistic scenario. But it is not a likely one. "It's not time to sit back and relax," he added. "Because not a single country has short-term policies in place to put itself on track toward its own net-zero targets. Right now, the net-zero targets are a good vision, but they have to be backed by short-term action; otherwise they are simply not credible. And that's also where this COP has moved only a small step forward. We still have a huge gap. Assuming all countries implement everything they have proposed here, we would still emit twice as much as we should in 2030 compared to if we want to be on a 1.5° pathway."

If one takes into account only the short-term targets that the nations participating in COP26 have made for 2030, temperatures would rise by 2.4°C. If one looks at their existing (not promised) policies and actions, temperatures will increase to 2.7°C. "All countries have to go back and rethink what they can do," Höhne said. "And the only way to do that is to go into emergency mode. Governments have to do something substantially different."

Given this urgency, developing nations are calling for NDCs to be reported every year instead of every five years, a demand that was included in the draft text published on Wednesday morning, and to develop even more ambitious short-term actions. "The key issue for us is not net-zero targets in 2050, particularly for the rich world," said Raman. "Net zero by 2050 is too little, too late, particularly for the rich world."

On Tuesday morning, at a press conference held by the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, expressed similar sentiments: "I think we need to see folks coming back on commitments in 2022. For these things to have impact and make sense, you have to start next year. The decade of action is now."
More than just a COP problem
This use of the term "net zero" to delay action is not unique to COP26. A report from Corporate Accountability published last month, The Big Con: How Polluters Are Advancing a "Net Zero" Climate Agenda to Delay, Deceive and Deny, found that Microsoft, for example, has based its plan to reach net zero by 2030 on a still-unproven carbon-capture technology.

But it is especially critical at the UN climate negotiations because of its capacity to block what nations in the developing world are calling for instead: ambitious short-term commitments backed by action and the phase-out of fossil fuels. Yesterday's draft of the COP26's final decision text mentioned fossil fuels for the first time with a demand to "accelerate the phase-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels."

Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, said, "What's very concerning here in Glasgow is that the first draft of the climate pact text is already exceptionally weak. Usually the text starts with some ambition, which then gets watered down. To keep 1.5° alive, four words must be added-'fossil fuels phase out'-and countries must come back next year to close the gap."

Stege, too, stated that concrete, near-term action was the only viable solution to the climate crisis. "We can't just have promises of what we're going to do; we actually have to have actions to back them up," Stege said. "As we laid out, on policies like phasing out coal, policies on methane, ending of fossil fuel subsidies, these are the concrete actions that need to happen now."

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Last week, at the UN climate negotiations, the International Energy Agency announced that pledges made thus far could hold warming to 1.8 or 1.9°C. Yet an investigation published on Sunday by The Washington Post found that countries' pledges are based on faulty data.

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From devastating floods in Pakistan and Africa to withering heat in India, rising temperatures are wreaking havoc on communities around the world. No one feels these impacts more acutely than the more than 3.3 billion people living in countries highly vulnerable to climate change.

At the same time, compounding crises are exacerbating growing climate threats. Russia's war on Ukraine threatens food and energy supply chains globally. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to claim lives and disrupt everyday life. The gap between the poor and the wealthy is large and growing. And nature is under siege, with the world losing more than 11 million hectares of tropical forest in 2021 alone.
COP27 offers an opportunity to shift onto a better path.
Decision-makers must stand in solidarity with the most vulnerable populations and put the world on track for a more prosperous future.
Learn more about the key issues to watch at COP27. WRI's experts are closely following the COP27 negotiations. In the run-up to and during the UN summit, we'll provide resources to help you stay informed, understand what's at stake and identify critical areas for progress. Watch our COP27 Resource Hub closely for new Cover Image by: WRI Brasil articles, research, webinars and more.

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WRI's experts are closely following the COP27 negotiations. In the run-up to and during the UN summit, we'll provide resources to help you stay informed, understand what's at stake and identify critical areas for progress. Watch our COP27 Resource Hub closely for new articles, research, webinars and more.

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Article 6 is one of the last reminding parts of the Paris Agreement to be negotiated at #COP26. What is it?

A 45-second explainer from ECIU's #Climate & Land lead @mattadamw 👇🏽

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Article 6 is one of the last reminding parts of the Paris Agreement to be negotiated at #COP26. What is it?

A 45-second explainer from ECIU's #Climate & Land lead @mattadamw 👇🏽 https://t.co/YSWVCJpaj9

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Article 6 is one of the last reminding parts of the Paris Agreement to be negotiated at #COP26. What is it?

A 45-second explainer from ECIU's #Climate & Land lead @mattadamw 👇🏽 pic.twitter.com/YSWVCJpaj9
— ECIU (@ECIU_UK) November 4, 2021

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Article 6 is one of the last reminding parts of the Paris Agreement to be negotiated at #COP26. What is it?

A 45-second explainer from ECIU's #Climate & Land lead @mattadamw 👇🏽 https://t.co/YSWVCJpaj9

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Article 6 is one of the last reminding parts of the Paris Agreement to be negotiated at #COP26. What is it?

A 45-second explainer from ECIU's #Climate & Land lead @mattadamw 👇🏽 https://t.co/YSWVCJpaj9

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Article 6 is one of the last reminding parts of the Paris Agreement to be negotiated at #COP26. What is it?

A 45-second explainer from ECIU's #Climate & Land lead @mattadamw 👇🏽

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What's important at this year's UN climate summit in Egypt and why it matters.

Whatever COP27 ends up being - the 'African COP', 'Adaptation COP' or 'Implementation COP' - one thing is clear: this year's UN climate summit has to deliver for developing nations.

COP History FI2

IPCC WGIII Options FI

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What's important at this year's UN climate summit in Egypt and why it matters. Whatever COP27 ends up being - the 'African COP', 'Adaptation COP' or 'Implementation COP' - one thing is clear: this year's UN climate summit has to deliver for developing nations.

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Drawing on OECD analysis and data, the pavilion showcases a range of events and resources on topics including: financing the net-zero transition, mitigating GHG in the agriculture and food sector, adapting to climate change, carbon prices, innovation, sustainable mobility and more.

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Citizens' Climate International is a nonprofit organization working to empower people to secure a livable climate future. CCI Momentum is a digital platform to connect participants in climate-related training and organizing efforts-including citizen volunteers, public officials, media, and partner organizations-to tackle policy and organizing challenges though creative collaboration.

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Citizens' Climate International is a nonprofit organization working to empower people to secure a livable climate future. CCI Momentum is a shared workspace for our coordinators, group leaders, key volunteers, and allies, to manage events and tackle specific policy and organizing challenges though creative collaboration.

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We will be launching the publication at COP27 on Wednesday, 16 November 2022 at 14:30-15:30 local time in Egypt (EET) at the PCCB Hub. If you are attending the climate negotiations we would love if you come! But don't worry, you will also be able to join the event online, as it is a hybrid event. If you want to join it online, then all you have to do is. https://www.youtube.com/c/pariscommitteeoncapacitybuilding/videos

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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While the Paris Agreement established three global goals - limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C and ideally 1.5°C, promote adaptation and resilience, and align financial flows with low-emissions, climate-resilient development - NDCs are the foundation. In its NDC, each of the Paris Agreement's 194 Parties must lay out its aims to reduce emissions. Many also include plans for adapting to climate impacts and the financial requirements needed for implementation. Almost seven years have passed since the first round of commitments to the Paris Agreement, and around 80% of NDCs have been updated.

This report takes stock of where we are now and paints a detailed picture of the contents of the latest NDCs, including their mitigation targets, adaptation elements, sector-specific measures, and associated financing requirements. It aims to serve as a reference document on NDC content, to inform the Global Stocktake and the Glasgow work programs on mitigation ambition and adaptation, and to shape subsequent NDCs. It captures key insights from the Climate Watch platform of the World Resources Institute and other data sources, and it raises questions stemming from these data that merit discussion by policymakers, donors, civil society, and researchers.

Key Findings:

By September 2022, countries have communicated 139 new or updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs), outlining the actions they intend to take to help mitigate climate change and achieve the Paris Agreement goals.

Drawing on newly available data from the open-source Climate Watch platform, this report captures a detailed snapshot of the NDCs following the latest updates and examines how they have evolved since the Paris Agreement entered into force.

The analysis suggests that the Paris Agreement is enhancing global climate ambition-but not at a pace or scale consistent with achieving its goals. The latest NDCs aim to reduce 2030 emissions by an estimated 5.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) more than the initial NDCs. This represents a 7 percent reduction from 2019 levels. According to the IPCC, however, emissions must decline by at least 43 percent from 2019 levels to keep the 1.5°C goal within reach.

Seventy-seven percent of NDCs include greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets, and 96 percent include sector-specific mitigation targets and other measures.

Eighty-six percent of NDCs include an adaptation component, many with improved detail and sectoral coverage. Linking these to instruments such as national adaptation plans is a critical next step.

Fifty-three percent of NDCs include estimates of climate finance requirements, and these numbers already amount to almost $4.3 trillion ($2.7 billion for mitigation, $1.1 billion for adaptation, and $475 billion unspecified), underscoring the need for developed countries to deliver the climate finance they have promised. Finance is a key enabler of climate action, and it must reach the scale of ambition needed.

Executive Summary:

Since the Paris Agreement took effect, the vast majority of its Parties have communicated a new or updated nationally determined contribution, or NDC. Relative to their predecessors, these new and updated NDCs aim to achieve deeper emissions reductions, tie more closely to planning and implementation processes, and document more thoroughly the finance required to support their implementation. Overshadowing this progress, however, is the massive gap that remains between the NDCs as they currently stand and what it will take to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The NDCs must be strengthened across all dimensions, at a much faster pace, to keep these goals within reach.

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The State of Nationally Determined Contributions: 2022

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While the Paris Agreement established three global goals - limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C and ideally 1.5°C, promote adaptation and resilience, and align financial flows with low-emissions, climate-resilient development - NDCs are the foundation. In its NDC, each of the Paris Agreement's 194 Parties must lay out its aims to reduce emissions.

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English

French

The COP27 climate summit this November will be held in Egypt on the African continent which is facing worsening economic conditions and consequences of the climate crisis - from deadly floods to crop-withering droughts - despite being responsible for only 3% of carbon emissions. Meanwhile, over 750 million Africans lack access to electricity, while food insecurity, rising fuel prices, and increasing loss and damages put lives at risk.

This climate summit has the potential to be a turning point in addressing Africa's climate, nature, food, and energy crises - but only if developed countries step forward with political will and much more funding for the action that is needed to prepare for more frequent and severe climate impacts, manage irreversible losses and damages, protect vital landscapes and transition to a low-carbon future.

Join us on October 18 to hear from WRI experts and youth leaders about what is at stake for Africa at COP27 and set expectations for a successful outcome. Speakers will reflect on a range of urgent topics, including how to restore forests, protect food supplies, build thriving and resilient cities, build resilience to climate change and support communities at speed and scale when impacts are so severe that adaptation is no longer feasible.

Moderator:

Rebekah Shirley, Director, Research, Data & Innovation, Africa

Speakers and Discussants:

Susan Chomba, Director, Vital Landscapes, Africa

Hellen Wanjohi, Resilient Cities Lead, Africa

Shehnaaz Moosa, SouthSouthNorth

Discussant:

Ineza Grace, Loss & Damage Youth Collaborative
More to be confirmed

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English French The COP27 climate summit this November will be held in Egypt on the African continent which is facing worsening economic conditions and consequences of the climate crisis - from deadly floods to crop-withering droughts - despite being responsible for only 3% of carbon emissions.

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The planet has already warmed by 1.1 degrees C (2 degrees F) due to human-induced climate change. Millions of people today are facing the real-life consequences of higher temperatures, rising seas, fiercer storms and unpredictable rainfall. Rapidly reducing emissions is essential to limit temperature rise and secure a safer future for us all, as is making major investments to protect communities from severe impacts that will continue to worsen.

Yet collective efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and adapt are currently not enough to tackle the speed and scale of climate impacts, meaning that some losses and damages from climate change are inevitable. How countries handle these losses and damages has been a key issue at UN climate negotiations and beyond.

Here, we provide an explainer on the concept of loss and damage and what's needed to address it:

1) What Is Loss and Damage?

"Loss and damage" is a general term used in UN climate negotiations to refer to the consequences of climate change that go beyond what people can adapt to, or when options exist but a community doesn't have the resources to access or utilize them. This could include the loss of coastal heritage sites due to rising sea levels, or the loss of homes and lives during extreme floods.

To date, there is no official definition of loss and damage under the UN.

Loss and damage is and will continue to harm vulnerable communities the most, making addressing the issue a matter of climate justice. Yet the subject has historically been fraught with contention both inside and outside UN climate negotiations. While developed countries agreed at the COP27 UN climate summit in 2022 to create a fund for addressing losses and damages in particularly vulnerable nations, many questions remain around how it will work and how much money wealthy nations will provide.

2) What Counts As Loss and Damage?

Loss and damage can result from both extreme weather events likes cyclones, droughts and heatwaves, as well as slow-onset changes such as sea level rise, desertification, glacial retreat, land degradation, ocean acidification and salinization. In some cases, damages may permanently alter places; for example, rising seas encroaching on low-lying islands, or drought shrinking freshwater resources and turning once-productive farmland into barren land.

Communities are particularly prone to experiencing loss and damage when they experience climate change impacts that go beyond what they can adapt to, whether due to lack of finance to implement adaptation or because there are no measures that are feasible to implement.

The damages from the effects of climate change can be divided into economic losses and non-economic losses, though there is overlap between the two.

Economic losses and damages are those affecting resources, goods and services that are commonly traded in markets, such as damage to critical infrastructure and property or supply chain disruptions. This can be on a national scale or a local scale, such as impacts on individual farmers or communities.

For example, in coastal Bangladesh, salt farming is a major source of employment. Yet in recent years, frequent cyclones, tidal surges and heavy rainfall have hampered salt production, eroding the country's self-sufficiency and forcing it to import salt to manage the market shortfall.
Non-economic losses can be the most devastating - such as the incalculable toll of losing family members, the disappearance of cultures and ways of living, or the trauma of being forced to migrate from ancestral homes.
Take the communities in Kosrae, Micronesia, who have lost burial grounds due to coastal erosion caused by sea level rise. Likewise, the loss of sea ice in the Arctic has affected the cultural identity and hunting practices among Inuit communities.

While harder to quantify and monetize, non-economic losses have severe and detrimental effects on communities' well-being.

3) What Is the Difference Between Mitigation, Adaptation and Addressing Loss and Damage?

Under the Paris Agreement on climate change, countries recognized the importance of "averting, minimizing and addressing" loss and damage. Loss and damage can be "averted" and "minimized" by curbing greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation) and taking preemptive action to protect communities from the consequences of climate change ( adaptation). Climate adaptation measures include protecting communities from sea level rise by helping them move to higher ground, preparing for extreme weather disasters by investing in early warning systems, protecting food supplies, switching to drought-resistant crops and much more.

"Addressing" loss and damage is the crucial third pillar of climate action: helping people after they have experienced climate-related impacts.

Loss and damage is linked to adaptation and mitigation because it happens when efforts to reduce emissions are not ambitious enough and when adaptation efforts are unsuccessful or impossible to implement. The second installment of the IPCC's 6th Assessment Report, published in February 2022, acknowledges that as the magnitude of climate change increases, so does the likelihood of exceeding adaptation limits. It differentiates between "soft" limits - when adaptation options exist, but communities don't have the financial resources needed to pursue them - and "hard" limits, where "there are no reasonable prospects for avoiding intolerable risks." These limits are particularly acute in vulnerable communities that lack the resources needed to implement effective adaptation options.

Coral reefs offer a good example of where adaptation is likely to reach its limits. The IPCC found that 70% to 90% of tropical coral reefs will die by mid-century even if temperature rise is limited to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), with nearly total loss under 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) of warming. This will lead to irreversible losses of biodiversity and have a major impact on coastal communities that eat and sell fish that live along reefs.

While further research is needed to fully understand the limits of climate adaptation, it's clear that losses and damages are already happening, and many communities lack the resources to deal with them. Climate plans and policies should account for loss and damage alongside mitigation and adaptation.

4) What's the History of Loss and Damage in UN Climate Negotiations?

The issue of loss and damage in UN climate negotiations has been a live - and contentious - one for over three decades.

When the UNFCCC was first being drafted in 1991, the island nation of Vanuatu (on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States) proposed creating an insurance scheme to provide financial resources to countries impacted by sea level rise. Under its proposal, each country would contribute funds based on their relative contribution to global emissions and their share of the global gross national product. However, the proposal was rejected, and the issue of loss and damage was not mentioned when the text of the Framework Convention was adopted in 1992.

Loss and damage first appeared in the negotiated outcome of the UN climate talks in 2007 as part of the Bali Action Plan. Yet it wasn't until 2013 that the issue gained real traction in UN climate negotiations, when parties formed the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage to avert, minimize and address loss and damage. The Warsaw Mechanism was mandated to share knowledge, strengthen dialogues among stakeholders, and mobilize expertise to enhance action and support for loss and damage. But neither the Warsaw Mechanism nor any other established mechanism delivers funding to help countries manage loss and damage.

In 2015, developing nations successfully pressed to include in the Paris Agreement a goal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) and an article on loss and damage. However, the latter, Article 8, faced limitations since the Agreement doesn't refer to finance related to loss and damage. In fact, developed countries secured language in the accompanying COP decision explicitly stating that loss and damage "does not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation."

At COP26, a large coalition of climate-vulnerable countries advocated for creating a new finance facility or fund dedicated to loss and damage. Their urgent plea was born out of frustration with the world's persistently inadequate response to the climate crisis. Yet once again, developed nations rejected the proposal.

Instead, at COP26 countries established a two-year Glasgow Dialogue to discuss possible arrangements for loss and damage funding. Governments also agreed to fund the Santiago Network on Loss and Damage (SNLD), which aims to provide developing countries with technical assistance to address loss and damage, but defining the finer details was pushed to COP27. At COP26, some EU member states also pledged more than €30 million towards the network.

The first session of the Glasgow Dialogue took place at the UN climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany in June 2022, where developing nations continued to express concerns that the dialogue was disconnected from the formal negotiations or any decision-making process, comparing it to a "talk-shop" without demonstrable progress.

Loss and damage again took center stage at COP27. The first test for loss and damage occurred on day one of the climate talks, where countries for the first time agreed to put loss and damage funding arrangements on the formal agenda.

Countries also resolved key questions around the SNLD's governance structures, paving the way for its full operationalization at COP28 in late 2023. Over the next year, a selection process will be carried out to identify a host organization and secretariat for the network, and members will be elected to an advisory board.

The ultimate litmus test for success at COP27 was whether negotiators would agree to create a funding stream to address loss and damage. After a tense two weeks of wrangling, countries finally reached an historic breakthrough and agreed to establish funding arrangements to address loss and damage, including a loss and damage fund. Governments also established a Transitional Committee to grapple with details for how to design the fund before it can become operational at COP28. The final outcome at COP27 also recognized existing channels and initiatives, including those outside the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement, that are part of the mosaic of solutions to address loss and damage. The Transitional Committee will play a role in determining how the loss and damage fund will align with and complement these other solutions.

5) Is Loss and Damage an Issue of Liability and Compensation?

One reason why loss and damage has been so contentious historically is due to developed countries' concerns that compensating for losses and damages caused by adverse climate impacts may be construed as an admission of legal liability, triggering litigation and compensation claims on a major scale. As such, developed countries fought to include language in the Paris Agreement to prevent them from being legally on the hook to provide compensation.

And at COP27, when loss and damage funding arrangements were added to the agenda, countries agreed that outcomes would be "based on cooperation and facilitation, and [would] not involve liability or compensation." This provided the assurances developed countries were looking for to allow the negotiations to proceed.

6) What Are Some Possible Sources of Funding for Addressing Loss and Damage?

Some developed countries point to humanitarian aid, disaster-risk management, and insurance as sources of finance for loss and damage, but they can't function separately. To address the scale and scope of the problem, these all need to be parts of the "mosaic of solutions."

For example, in the wake of devastating floods, Pakistan needed short-term humanitarian assistance as well as needs long-term support for rebuilding. Meanwhile, Palau is concerned that tuna are migrating out of its fishing areas as the ocean warms. Without the ability to fish for tuna, some Pacific island nations could lose income averaging 37% of government revenue. While humanitarian aid would not be poised nor mandated to address this problem, other forms of finance could.

That's why countries agreed at COP27 to establish funding arrangements, including a separate dedicated loss and damage fund under the UNFCCC, to help bring coordination and alignment of the various types of funding needed both within and outside the UNFCCC to adequately address loss and damage. The details and structure of these arrangements and the fund are yet to be determined, but will be on the docket at future UN climate summits. (Read more on the current state of play on financing loss and damage.)

Outside of the UNFCCC, there have been additional important developments for financing loss and damage, including the Climate Vulnerable Forum and the Vulnerable Twenty (V20) Group's crowd-sourced loss and damage fund and the G7 and V20's Global Shield Against Climate Risks initiative, which aims to enhance existing financial structures on climate risk and loss and damage finance.

7) What Activities Could Loss and Damage Funds Support?

Addressing loss and damage could span a range of activities and should be shaped by the communities experiencing them. Examples include weather-indexed crop insurance for farmers or proactively setting aside funds to rebuild critical infrastructure when disaster strikes.

It could also entail providing immediate humanitarian assistance after an extreme weather event, offering relief and rehabilitation to victims through provision of basic amenities, enabling social protection systems to provide emergency cash transfers to the poor, and enhancing microcredit institutions to provide financing for livelihood restoration.

Such funding could also help people rebuild when their homes are destroyed. For example, while early warning systems in Bangladesh have helped radically reduce fatalities from extreme weather events, people leave the storm shelters to find their homes and livelihoods destroyed, and have thus unquestionably experienced loss and damage.

Finally, when necessary, funding for loss and damage can assist with migration and relocation of people who are permanently displaced, and/or help diversify skills if their original livelihoods are no longer available.

8) What Needs to Happen Next to Address Loss and Damage?

Climate impacts are already causing widespread disruptions, and they're only poised to worsen. The need for loss and damage solutions - most notably, finance - is more urgent than ever before. With the groundbreaking outcome from COP27, the international community will have to work especially diligently on deciding the concrete details of loss and damage funding arrangements, including the newly established fund. Developing countries and communities on the front lines of climate impacts are counting on them.
This article was originally published April 6, 2022. It was last updated December 14, 2022.

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What Is "Loss and Damage" from Climate Change? 8 Key Questions, Answered

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The planet has already warmed by 1.1 degrees C (2 degrees F) due to human-induced climate change. Millions of people today are facing the real-life consequences of higher temperatures, rising seas, fiercer storms and unpredictable rainfall.

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Leaders left the climate summit in Glasgow (COP26) in November 2021 riding high on a wave of new commitments from governments, businesses and others to tackle the climate crisis. This included pledges to set new national emission-reductions targets, double adaptation finance, curb methane emissions, halt forest loss, accelerate the phase-out of coal, and end international financing for fossil fuels, just to name a few.

In the months since, things are less rosy. Russia's war on Ukraine and rapid inflation have caused global energy and food prices to soar, distracting leaders from climate action. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and tensions between China and the United States over Taiwan haven't helped. "Climate action is being put on the back burner - despite overwhelming public support around the world," stated UN Secretary-General António Guterres on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meetings in September 2022.

As the world prepares for the next UN climate summit in November 2022 (COP27), where do we stand on the flurry of climate commitments made just one year ago?

Here, we track the progress:
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National Climate Commitments

What was promised?

At COP26, countries agreed to revisit and strengthen their 2030 emissions-reduction targets "as necessary" to align with the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). Sticking to this level of temperature rise is essential for averting some of the worst impacts of climate change.

Where we stand

Since Glasgow, 24 of 194 countries that are party to the Paris Agreement have come forward with new or updated emissions-reduction targets (known as "nationally determined contributions," or NDCs).

The good news: Under a new administration, Australia bumped its pledge into credible territory after its woefully inadequate 2015 target to slash emissions 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2030. The country now aims to cut emissions by 43% by 2030. Vanuatu submitted a particularly inspiring plan that aims to phase out fossil fuels, invest in electric vehicles, and undertake a number of detailed measures to address loss and damage. Ahead of COP26, the United Kingdom put forward an ambitious target to cut emissions 68% below 2010 levels by 2030. The U.K.'s latest revision offers greater clarity on the policies to get there, such as investing in clean energy and ending the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030. However, in September 2022, the UK government had a change of leadership and some of its climate policies are currently under review.

Indonesiaslightly improved its top-line goal to cut emissions from 29%- to 31.89% by 2030 compared to business as usual. The nation will increase this target to 43.2% on the condition it receives enough financial assistance. India's plan includes a target to reduce the emissions intensity of its GDP by 45% and achieve 50% renewable energy capacity by 2030; it also reiterated the country's pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2070.

Most disappointingly, Brazil'srevised plan failed to strengthen its emissions cuts compared to what it put forward in 2016.

Chile, Mexico, Turkey and Vietnam are expected to submit stronger plans ahead of COP27. European Union officials hope to strengthen its emissions-reduction target, too, but not in time for COP27. The United States hasn't indicated whether it will put forward an updated plan ahead of COP27, but recently passed the historic Inflation Reduction Act, which contains major climate and clean energy provisions that will put its 2030 emission-reductions target within reach.

China, the world's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, hasn't hinted whether it will strengthen its targets.
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Ramping Up Renewables and Phasing Out Fossil Fuels

What was promised?

The final COP26 agreement emphasized urgency in scaling up clean power, phasing down coal and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies. A group of 46 countries - including the U.K., Canada, Poland and Vietnam - committed to phase out unabated domestic coal, while an additional 39 countries committed to end new overseas finance of fossil fuels by the end of 2022 and redirect this investment to clean energy.

Where we stand

Renewable energy installations reached new heights in 2021 - totaling 295 gigawatts (GW) of green generating capacity - and the International Energy Agency expects these to rise 8% further by the end of this year, even though raw materials costs recently increased 15-25%. China still leads the pack in clean energy installations, but the United States may soon pick up its pace thanks to incentives for wind and solar in the Inflation Reduction Act. Europe's renewable electricity continued to expand, with average annual growth of 44 TWh in the last two years. And in September 2022, Denmark and trade associations launched a new effort to boost offshore wind capacity by 670%, from 57 GW today to 380 GW by 2030.

At the same time, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has made some countries focus more on shoring up fossil-based energy supplies as they grapple with near-term energy shortages and rising costs. Due to the sudden stop in Russian gas supply and energy demand in the winter, numerous European countries have reopened or extended coal-fired power plants and are ramping up natural gas deliveries from Norway, the U.S., and countries in North Africa, Middle East and Asia - even as they insist this shift is temporary and that the bloc's 2030 climate targets will be met. One estimate finds European governments will spend tens of billions of dollars this winter on expanding fossil fuel infrastructure and supplies while simultaneously taking unprecedented steps in reducing energy consumption and speeding up renewables.

Additionally, China approved new coal mines and Australia is poised to do the same, while Vietnam and Indonesia seek to boost coal production and the United Kingdom announced new North Sea oil and gas licenses.

A recent report by the OECD found that global subsidies for fossil fuels almost doubled in 2021 from 2020 levels and are estimated to increase even further due to mounting fuel prices. While G7 leaders recently reaffirmed their commitment to end international finance for fossil fuels, they made an exception for natural gas finance during the current energy crisis.
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Climate Finance

What was promised?

In 2009, rich nations committed to mobilize $100 billion a year from 2020-2025 to support climate action in developing countries. At COP26, it became clear that developed countries failed to meet that goal in 2020, though they are still on the hook to deliver it.

Countries also agreed to at least double funding for adaptation by 2025 from 2019 levels, to around $40 billion per year. Meanwhile, more than 70 organizations, including eight countries, endorsed a set of principles to ensure local communities have equitable access to climate adaptation finance and decision-making, and $450 million was committed to locally led adaptation programs.

South Africa announced with France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union an historic Just Energy Transition Partnership. The developed countries participating said that they would mobilize $8.5 billion over the next 3-5 years to support a just transition toward a low-emissions, climate-resilient economy in South Africa.

Where we stand

An OECD report published in July 2022 reveals that in 2020, developed countries were still $17 billion short of the $100 billion annual finance goal. While most climate finance in 2020 was directed to curbing emissions (as in previous years), finance for adaptation accounted for a third of the total, or $28.6 billion. More funding is needed to fulfill the $100 billion commitment now, as well as the pledge to reach $40 billion of adaptation finance in future years.

By September 2022, the number of organizations endorsing the "Principles for Locally Led Adaptation" had swelled to 80, and some are integrating these commitments into their policies. For example, USAID is expanding investments to organizations prioritizing locally led approaches and aims to up its target from directing 25% of its funding to projects that " place local communities in the lead" to 50%.

Since COP26, the South African government has worked to define priority interventions for its Just Energy Transition Partnership and engage with relevant domestic stakeholders and donor countries. South African government officials are currently developing an investment plan to support workers that will be most impacted in the clean energy transition ahead, with a specific focus on the power, electric vehicles and green hydrogen sectors. The investment plan is anticipated to be released at COP27, following approval by South Africa's Cabinet and the donor countries.

Following the G7 summit earlier this year, G7 leaders also announced they would work on new just energy transition partnerships with India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Senegal to help phase out coal and fund their transition toward clean energy. No details, including the amount of support for each country, have been announced yet.
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Reaching Net-zero Emissions

What was promised

By the end of COP26, 74 countries promised to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century. More than 600 companies also set net-zero emissions targets in the run-up to COP26. The Science Based Targets initiative launched a Net-zero Standard to ensure these targets were rigorous and aligned with the latest climate science.

Where we stand

Since COP26, seven additional countries committed to reach net-zero emissions, including Indonesia and South Africa, which intend to reach net-zero by midcentury. All G20 countries, except Mexico, now have a net-zero target.

Countries such as Australia and Chile have also backed up their previous net-zero targets by passing national legislation that mandates they net-zero emissions by 2050.

With so many net-zero targets now set, nations must start taking near-term actions that will make reaching their net-zero ambitions possible. Some countries are doing just that. For example, Canada released its Emissions Reduction Plan, Nigeria launched its Energy Transition Plan, and the EU is revising its climate, energy and transport-related legislation under the "Fit for 55 package" in order to align current laws with its 2050 carbon neutrality goal.

On the corporate side, nearly 1,400 companies had committed to net-zero emissions as of September 2022, including 780 of the 2,000 largest publicly traded companies. Relatedly, Norway's sovereign wealth fund now requires net-zero targets from the companies in which it invests.
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Greening the Financial Sector

What was promised?

The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) was formed in April 2021 to push the financial sector to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century. By COP26, the initiative included more than 450 financial firms with $130 trillion in assets under management. As the Taskforce on Climate-related Disclosures (TCFD) Framework increasingly becomes the financial industry's norm for climate-related disclosures, GFANZ has pushed the sector to set actionable net-zero transition plans, including interim science-based targets and transparency on progress.

Where we stand:

GFANZ has since grown to more than 500 members. In 2022, it launched regional networks to support financial institutions' shift to net-zero and issued guidance on crafting credible net-zero transition plans and measuring net-zero portfolio alignment. In September 2022, GFANZ leadership issued a statement urging for deforestation to be incorporated into institutions' net-zero planning.

Since COP26, some financial institutions have acted on their net-zero commitments, such as HSBC and Bank of America, which published their first net-zero targets. Because of the varying quality and ambition of these targets, it remains to be seen if they will translate into real-world emissions reductions and transition away from fossil fuel financing. Increasing numbers of financial institutions have had their net-zero targets validated through initiatives like the Science-Based Targets initiative, lending credibility to their commitments.

Despite that progress, GFANZ has faced headwinds. In September 2022, it came to light that two pension funds, Bundespensionskasse AG of Austria and CBUS of Australia, exited the alliance because they felt new requirements were too stringent. Several of the largest U.S. banks have also reportedly threatened to withdraw from GFANZ over concerns the standards open them up to legal risk in the United States. These developments, in addition to growing political attacks on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG), raise alarms that financial institutions may backtrack on their net-zero commitments.
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Curbing Methane

What was promised?

At COP26, 103 countries signed up to the Global Methane Pledge to collectively reduce methane emissions 30% below 2020 levels by 2030. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, with a global warming potential 86 times that of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. The U.S. and China also signed a joint declaration in Glasgow to enhance methane emissions controls, including by developing methane action plans.

Where we stand

Since COP26, 19 additional countries formally endorsed the Global Methane Pledge. Signatories now collectively represent over three-quarters of the global economy and half of global methane emissions.

In June 2022 at the Major Economies Forum, the U.S. and E.U. launched the Global Methane Pledge Energy pathway - a joint initiative to reduce methane emissions from the energy sector - as a critical step in implementing the Global Methane Pledge. This effort includes $59 million in funds and in-kind assistance from the U.S., E.U., Germany, Norway, Canada, UNEP and other philanthropic organizations to support additional R&D, policy development, and enforcement and implementation to cut methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.

Curbing methane emissions was one of the bright spots for U.S.-China collaboration at COP26, but since then, tensions between the two countries over Taiwan led China to suspend climate cooperation. U.S. and Chinese top diplomats did shake hands on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in September 2022, renewing hope that the world's two largest emitters may rekindle their joint efforts to tackle climate change.
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Halting Deforestation

What was promised?

Under the Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forests and Land Use, more than 140 countries pledged at COP26 to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by 2030. A group of the largest agricultural commodity companies agreed to release at COP27 a shared roadmap for enhanced supply chain action consistent with a pathway to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). Group of 12 governments pledged to provide $12 billion for forest-related climate finance between 2021-2025, and a coalition of public sector donors and private philanthropies pledged an additional $1.7 billion to support Indigenous Peoples and local communities. And more than 30 financial institutions committed to create individual organizational plans, milestones and incentives for commitments on deforestation-free agricultural commodity portfolios.

Where we stand:

Since COP26, four new countries joined the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forests and Land Use: The Holy See, Nicaragua, Singapore and Turkmenistan. This brings the total signatories to 145. G20 countries notably absent include India, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

The Forests and Climate Leaders' Partnership (FCLP) will launch at COP27 to accelerate implementation of the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration through country-led commitments, increased ambition over time and annual meetings to take stock of progress. The FCLP will build on existing commitments focusing on sustainable land use enterprises, supporting Indigenous Peoples and local communities and mobilizing public and private finance.

The agricultural commodity traders' Roadmap of Action has been developed throughout 2022 and is expected to be released ahead of COP27. The 12 governments that pledged $12 billion at COP26 are expected to report on their progress at COP27. By the end of 2022, the 30 financial institutions are expected to assess their exposure to deforestation risk through financing or investment in clients/holdings, as well as establish policies and engagement strategies to address this exposure. In September 2022, the group published a document outlining investor expectations of companies.
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Greening Cities

What was promised?

At COP26, more than 1,000 cities and local governments, representing a quarter of global emissions, joined the Cities Race to Zero, pledging to reach net-zero emissions in the 2040s or sooner.

Where we stand:

As of September 2022, 1,136 cities had signed up to Cities Race to Zero. This is a significant milestone that should serve as a catalyst for further pledges across multiple sectors.

The recently published Race to Zero report, however, provides little data on progress. It notes that only one-third of cities that have been members of the initiative for more than one year are reporting on progress; of those, 84% are taking action. Furthermore, data on targets and, critically, actual emissions reductions is unfortunately lacking.

Increased accountability is critical to the success of Cities Race to Zero, as is the ability of city leaders to persuade national governments to help advance their ambitions via funding; linking city, regional and national strategies; and creating enabling fiscal and regulatory environments. This needs to be a stronger focus of the Race to Zero campaign going forward, alongside ensuring that resource-constrained cities - particularly those in the Global South - can access to the necessary data, capacity-building and technical assistance to translate pledges into action.
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Electric Vehicles

What was promised?

More than 100 countries, cities, states and major businesses signed a declaration to end the sale of internal combustion engines in leading markets by 2035 and worldwide by 2040.

Where we stand:

According to the International Council on Clean Transportation, as of June 2022, 18 countries and states had committed to phase out internal combustion light-duty vehicles between 2030 and 2050; nine committed to some level of phase-out for internal combustion trucks; and 11 committed to zero-emission buses. Other cities, states and countries have memorandums of understanding in the works.

Some manufacturers have announced electric vehicle sales percentage targets, particularly in Europe, where more than a dozen car companies say they will be selling 100% battery electric vehicles within the next 10 years.

The United States, the single-largest contributor to global transport emissions, recently passed major legislation that created the biggest federal commitment to zero-emission vehicles and infrastructure yet. The Inflation Reduction Act offers Americans tax credits to purchase new and used electric vehicles as well as $1 billion to electrify medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. In addition, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provides $7.5 billion to create an electric vehicle charging network and $5 billion each for zero- and low-emission school buses and low- and no-emission transit buses.
WRI's experts are closely following the COP27 negotiations. Watch our Resource Hub for new articles, research, webinars and more.
What's Needed at COP27 and Beyond?

Progress made on COP26 commitments since Glasgow is mixed at best. But to be fair, countries and others often save up their exciting announcements for major international moments. Hopefully we are in for some nice surprises when world leaders gather in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt for COP27. The world will be watching carefully to see if countries, companies and cities back up their commitments with real action.
Jamal Srouji, Hayden Higgins, Catherine Luo, Amanda Carter, Natalia Alayza, Clea Schumer, Katie Ross, Klara Nilsson, Sophie Mongalvy, Paige Langer, Rebecca Carter, Ginette Walls, Dani Gent and Elizabeth Petykowski also contributed to this article.

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Where Do We Stand on COP26 Climate Promises? A Progress Report

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The 2021 UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland saw a flurry of new climate action commitments - everything from stronger emissions-reduction targets to financial pledges to corporate promises to halt deforestation. One year later, have pledges turned into progress? WRI experts take stock.

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For this year's UN climate summit (COP27), taking place in Egypt in November 2022, the stakes could not be higher or the need more urgent for vulnerable countries - particularly as COP26 failed to deliver sufficient results to meet their needs.

A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reveals that the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) is still on " life support," leaving almost 3.6 billion people worldwide dangerously exposed and vulnerable to climate impacts - with things set to worsen. The report makes clear that these impacts will not be felt equally. Vulnerable countries, despite their limited contribution to climate change and ambitious climate commitments, are and will continue to shoulder the bulk of this burden.
WRI's experts are closely following the COP27 negotiations. Watch our Resource Hub for new articles, research, webinars and more.
These findings come amid tumultuous times - rising fuel prices, high inflation rates, the world's slow emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic and the changing structure of international politics - which demonstrate every excuse to disrupt and delay climate action. But the IPCC carries an important message: It's now or never to hold warming to 1.5 degrees C.

The Allied for Climate Transformation by 2025 (ACT2025) consortium has fired the starting gun ahead of the COP27 climate summit to enhance implementation of the Paris Agreement and to profile the needs of vulnerable countries. Developed by organizations from the Global South, ACT2025's new Call for Enhanced Implementation lays out where concrete action is needed in the lead-up to and at the conference.

Here are five areas where action is needed:

1) Bridge the mitigation gap to help limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C.

During COP26, scientists delivered a sobering assessment of countries' 2030 emissions--reduction targets: those plans point the planet towards at least 2.5 degrees C of warming by the end of this century - a catastrophic pathway for vulnerable countries in particular. When looking at countries' commitments to reach net-zero emissions by around mid-century, temperature rise could be kept to around 1.9 degrees C. However, some major emitters' 2030 targets are so weak that they don't offer credible pathways to achieve their net-zero targets, indicating a major "credibility gap."

Recognizing the urgency of the challenge, the Glasgow Climate Pact - the formal outcome of COP26 - calls on countries to "revisit and strengthen" their commitments under the Paris Agreement (known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCs) by COP27, to align them with these global temperature goals.

To keep the 1.5 degrees C goal within reach, it's necessary for all countries at COP27 to heed the science of the IPCC report and respond accordingly. All countries - especially G20 countries - that have submitted "updated" NDCs that were no more ambitious than their previous commitments, and countries that have not yet communicated new or updated NDCs at all, should update their NDCs and long-term strategies in a credible, ambitious manner. These NDCs must be in line with the Glasgow Climate Pact and the scientific evidence provided by the IPCC Working Group III report.

At the Egypt summit, under the Work Programme on Mitigation Ambition and Implementation established at COP26, developed countries must lead on climate ambition - they are the laggards in living up to their climate promises despite their overwhelming contribution to the climate crisis. They must also accelerate energy transitions, phase out fossil fuels, and undertake ambitious sectoral actions while making good on all their financial commitments.

2) Deliver high-quality and scaled-up finance flows, especially to the most vulnerable.

After COP26, it was noted " with deep regret " the failure of developed countries to meet the $100 billion goal they originally promised to achieve by 2020, feeding into the credibility gap and hamstringing the ability of developing countries to plan further climate action.

What's now needed at COP27 are clear finance targets for mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage finance and for developed countries, especially the G7 (which is to provide the bulk of this finance), to reach a total of $600 billion in climate finance from 2020-2025 - the amount of funding that would have been available in this period had developed countries met their $100 billion annual goal. This must be complemented by a delivery plan and a roadmap for increasing transparent, accessible and grant-based finance, especially for adaptation. It must also result in balanced adaptation and mitigation finance by 2025.

Finally, as countries prepare to outline a new collective finance goal to go into effect after 2025, clear finance targets should be set for mobilizing the private sector and other non-state actors, while recognizing the indispensable role of public finance from developed countries.

3) Enhance efforts to implement adaptation measures.

COP26 offered some bright spots and a foundation to build on, including progress on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), a key component of the Paris Agreement that aims to strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate impacts. The conference also established the Glasgow-Sharm el-Sheikh Work Programme on the Global Goal on Adaptation to assess progress toward the adaptation goal and enable its implementation. Now, concrete progress under the Programme is needed, specifically on the scope of the goal, data and metrics, and reporting methodologies.

The urgency for enhanced adaptation action is underscored by the IPCC Working Group II report, mentioned previously, which finds that every tenth of a degree of additional warming will escalate threats to people, species and ecosystems. Yet many communities still lack the resources required to manage today's climate change impacts, let alone worse impacts in the future.

To advance national action and provide a clearer estimate for adaptation finance needs, countries must also prepare their National Adaptation Plans and Adaptation Communications, two tools set up under the auspices of the Paris Agreement. And developed countries need to provide grant-based funding to finance adaptation plans, especially through the Adaptation Fund and other entities of the Financial Mechanism established under the UNFCCC. While the promise made at COP26 in Glasgow to double adaptation financing is a great start, it is still a far cry from the amount actually needed by vulnerable countries.

4) Secure finance for loss and damage.

Momentum for confronting the issue of loss and damage finally gained steam leading up to and during the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. However, despite an urgent plea from climate-vulnerable countries, the proposal for a new loss and damage financing facility was rejected by developed nations. Instead, at COP26, countries established the Glasgow Dialogue to discuss possible arrangements for loss and damage funding, with the first discussion to be held in June 2022.

The IPCC report laid bare that even the most effective adaptation measures cannot prevent all losses and damages, which are a present-day reality for vulnerable people in certain regions. It will be critical that the Glasgow Dialogue process makes demonstrable progress and leads to tangible results based on the needs of vulnerable countries, rather than becoming a talk shop. At COP27, countries will have another chance to finally establish a mechanism to address this critical need and ensure a process to secure adequate, accessible, additional and fit-for-purpose financing - at the latest by COP28 in 2023. This cannot be delayed.

Countries also made progress at COP26 on the operationalization and funding of the Santiago Network on Loss and Damage (SNLD), which aims to provide developing countries with technical assistance on how to address loss and damage in a robust and effective manner. Sufficient financing for the SNLD is crucial to ensure technical support for developing countries and to create a new method in encouraging technical assistance that is country-owned and emphasizes local expertise.

At COP27, nations will need to agree on arrangements to finally and officially launch the SNLD. Additionally, if substantive, productive conversations on loss and damage are to continue in earnest, loss and damage must be established as a permanent agenda item at each of the yearly UN climate conferences.

5) Implement the Paris Rulebook to hold countries and non-state actors accountable.

Implementing the Paris Rulebook, the rules underpinning the Paris Agreement, is crucial to ensure transparency and accountability for action. Without implementation, accountability cannot be achieved and climate promises - especially those from developed countries - will remain unfulfilled. As COP27's vital role is to serve as a forcing point to drive implementation, advancing processes such as the Global Stocktake, a formal process to drive ambition by assessing countries' collective progress towards the Paris Agreement's goals, will be key.

The first Global Stocktake process must be done in a way that is inclusive, raises awareness, ensures the meaningful participation of Global South organizations, and paves the way for a comprehensive outcome that promotes increased NDC ambition and is centered around equity. Additionally, the UN Secretary General should hold countries and non-state actors accountable to develop a robust accountability system for commitments made outside of the UNFCCC process.

COP27: A Time for Climate Action

Vulnerable countries across the world cannot be made to wait for multi-year dialogues when the needs are so imminent and urgent. COP27 needs to ensure that no one is left behind.

Shortly after COP27, we will be more than a quarter of the way through the decisive decade - what will the world have to show for it? Now is the time for solidarity and ambitious, real, on-the-ground action and support that will deliver justice for vulnerable countries and communities. While realizing countries' differentiated responsibilities and capacities, the world needs to be all in, all together on climate.
ACT2025 will further elaborate these five key elements of a COP27 enhanced implementation package in the coming months for consideration by governments and stakeholders. Some key moments l eading up to COP will be the UN climate negotiations in June in Bonn, Germany, the UN General Assembly in September, and the meetings of the G7 and G20 in June and October respectively.

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5 Things COP27 Must Achieve for Vulnerable Countries

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For this year's UN climate summit (COP27), taking place in Egypt in November 2022, the stakes could not be higher or the need more urgent for vulnerable countries - particularly as COP26 failed to deliver sufficient results to meet their needs.

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COP27 - UN Climate Change Conference 2022 - Climate Justice Alliance

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Each year, a country representing a different region of the world takes over the presidency of the Conference of the Parties (COP). Egypt was selected for 2022 and will host the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 27) from November 7-18 in Sharm el-Sheikh, a remote resort town between the desert of the Sinai Peninsula and the Red Sea.

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U.S. Center COP27 Schedule

Egypt will host the 27th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, from November 6 to November 18, 2022. Learn more about the venue as well as the Egypt presidency program on their website.

All U.S. Center events will be live-streamed on the U.S Center at COP27 homepage and the U.S. Center YouTube channel . All times listed are local time to Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

Week 1 (November 7-12)

Week 2 (November 14-18)

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Schedule and Events - United States Department of State

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U.S. Center COP27 Schedule Egypt will host the 27th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, from November 6 to November 18, 2022. Learn more about the venue as well as the Egypt presidency program on their website. All U.S.

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As rich countries resist creating a 'funding facility' to address damages caused by climate change, island states are refining their demands
Small island states will present a proposal for a "response fund" to help climate victims recover from snowballing impacts at next month's Cop27 climate summit.
It is more than 30 years since vulnerable nations first demanded support to address the losses and damages caused by fossil-fueled storms, floods and sea-level rise. Rich countries, wary of endless liabilities, pushed back. But with costs of extreme weather mounting, the issue has become unavoidable. It is set to dominate negotiations in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

The Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) has drawn up plans for a Loss and Damage Response Fund. This is an evolution of the "facility" proposed by developing countries and opposed by wealthy ones at the Cop26 Glasgow summit last year.

Michai Robertson, of Antigua and Barbuda, lead climate finance negotiator for Aosis, told Climate Home the fund could centralise and disperse public and private sources of finance to help developing countries rebuild after climate disasters.

The negotiating bloc is hoping to get broader backing from the group of 134 developing countries known as the G77.

Category 5 Tropical Cyclone Harold devastated Northern Vanuatu, resulting in over US$500 million #LossAndDamage. Development aid to Vanuatu for recovery was < US$100 million. Recovering from #climatecrisis should not detract from our development.#WeNeedLDFinance #COP27 pic.twitter.com/SNGIU3gR8u

- AOSIS (@AOSISChair) October 17, 2022

Discussions on how to provide financial support to developing countries hammered by worsening climate impacts remains one of the most contested issues in the talks.

Disastrous flooding in Pakistan, which left the government with a reconstruction bill of more than $30 billion, has sharpened calls for an urgent solution to the deadlock.

Wealthy countries argue that existing financial instruments can be enhanced to meet some of the needs. The EU is working on a package of alternative funding options. This includes Germany's Global Shield initiative, backed by the G7, to strengthen disaster risk finance and insurance.

But Robertson said the gaps in the existing financial architecture are too great. A dedicated funding structure would help disburse funding from different propositions, including the Global Shield, and avoid a piecemeal approach, he explained.

"This fund is not a panacea. It's not going to solve everything," said Robertson. But it can be "catalytic and begin to pilot approaches in areas where other funds are not set up to deal with loss and damage response".

Funding model

Aosis tested the idea last month at a seminar hosted by the European Capacity Building Initiative in Oxford, UK. It would follow a similar model to the UN's flagship Green Climate Fund, with regular - voluntary - fundraising rounds. Government donors should deliver support mostly as grants, on top of existing climate finance commitments, the bloc envisions.

Other potential sources of revenue include - as UN chief António Guterres advocates - a windfall tax on oil and gas companies' profits.

Robertson said the response fund wouldn't replace humanitarian aid, but focus on the reconstruction phases that follow extreme weather events.

Governments and communities would apply for budgetary support to rebuild their economies and critical infrastructure. This could include activities such as cleaning up ecosystems, rehabilitating cultural sites and restoring education and health services.

Money could also go to communities threatened by slow-onset events such as sea level rise or desertification, for example to help them relocate with dignity.

"What we are discussing is purpose-driven financing. We are trying to make sure that we can get money that is going to get us the results and the effectiveness that we need," said Robertson.

While recognising the proposal is unlikely to win universal acceptance at Cop27, Robertson hopes it will bring solutions within reach over the next 12 months.

"We've been burnt so many times trying to be as pragmatic as possible and as reasonable as possible but I really want to be optimistic," he said.

Aosis hopes an agreement to operationalise the fund could be reached by Cop28 in 2023.

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Island states propose a loss and damage response fund at Cop27

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As rich countries resist creating a 'funding facility' to address damages caused by climate change, island states are refining their demands Small island states will present a proposal for a "response fund" to help climate victims recover from snowballing impacts at next month's Cop27 climate summit.

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This year's UN climate conference (COP27) will take place against a backdrop of global crises.

The ripple effects of COVID-19 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine have sent food and energy prices soaring to record highs, while unprecedented climate disasters are fueling widespread and devastating disruptions with historic levels of rain, heat, drought, fires and storms impacting almost every corner of the world.

A climate catastrophe in Pakistan claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people and displaced tens of millions. Floods and storms in southern Africa during the first half of 2022 killed hundreds of people and severely disrupted economic activity. Millions in the Horn of Africa are starving due to an epic drought. A severe drought battered China's food and energy production, causing rolling blackouts and water and power rationing. And Europe is facing its worst drought in 500 years, along with scorching heatwaves.

These compounding crises underscore the urgent need for countries to work together at COP27 to accelerate climate action and rebuild confidence that global, collective action can solve humanity's greatest challenges.

COP27 takes place in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt from November 6-18, 2022. It's essential that decision-makers make progress across six key tasks to advance future international climate action and support:
WRI's experts are closely following the COP27 negotiations. Watch our Resource Hub for new articles, research, webinars and more.
1) Create a financing mechanism for addressing loss and damage.

At the closing of COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, one of the headline questions centered on how countries would address the need for finance to address loss and damage, those impacts from climate change that are so severe communities are simply unable to adapt to them. Developing countries argued for establishing a loss and damage finance "facility," which could mean a dedicated arrangement through which finance could be channeled.

Yet due to pushback by developed nations such as the United States and European Union, countries instead agreed to establish the Glasgow Dialogue on Loss and Damage, dedicated to discussing possible funding arrangements and set to run through 2024. The first session of the dialogue kicked off at the UN climate negotiations in Bonn in June 2022, where several developing countries made their view clear that talks must lead to a finance facility and that such a facility cannot wait until 2024. Many developed countries, meanwhile, argued that there are already mechanisms to channel funding to avert, minimize, and address loss and damage, such as through Green Climate Fund (GCF) (although it does not have loss and damage in its current mandate), the Global Shield, InsuResilience and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. Their argument is that the global community should strengthen these channels rather than establish a new institution.

Developing countries and civil society experts counter that existing finance is grossly inadequate, and that loss and damage finance needs are distinct and additional to finance for adaptation, humanitarian assistance or development assistance.

At a bare minimum, COP 27 should kickstart a process to formalize funding arrangements to respond to loss and damage under the UNFCCC. At the same time, initiatives beyond the formal UN negotiations must also play a role to meet scale of what is needed.

Countries were not originally scheduled to formally discuss funding arrangements for loss and damage at COP27, but the Group of 77 and China (which essentially includes all developing nations) has requested it be added to the agenda. This will require consensus across all countries, both developed and developing, on the first day of the talks. If countries fail to agree to this agenda item, proceedings at the climate summit could derail right from the start.

In some good news, building on commitments made by Scotland and Wallonia (Belgium) and a group of philanthropies during COP26, Denmark announced in September 2022 a pledge of 100 million Danish Krone (approximately $13 million) for loss and damage. The Climate Vulnerable Forum and the Vulnerable Twenty (V20) Group will also launch a crowd-sourcing loss and damage funding campaign in early October 2022. These are positive developments that underscore the need to elevate loss and damage at COP27.

In addition to possible discussions about creating funding arrangements to address loss and damage, at COP27, negotiators are on the hook to operationalize the Santiago Network on Loss and Damage. This network was created in 2019 to provide countries with knowledge and technical assistance to address loss and damage. Whether negotiators fully operationalize the Santiago Network is another measure of success for COP27.

2) Scale up support for adaptation.

As an increasing number of countries finalize their national adaptation plan documents (NAPs) and make more detailed, ambitious commitments in the adaptation components of their NDCs, the global focus is shifting from planning to implementation - and not a moment too soon. The recent IPCC report noted that intensifying climate change impacts require that adaptation action be sped up and scaled up to adequately address the needs of vulnerable countries and communities.

Finance must scale significantly to support adaptation needs. At COP26, developed countries agreed to at least double finance for adaptation from 2019 levels by 2025, which equates to roughly $40 billion. Many stakeholders are calling for much greater levels of adaptation funding, and for adaptation finance to match that dedicated to curbing emissions (the latest available figures show that adaptation finance only amounts to approximately a third of total climate finance). A recent report from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) shows an increase in adaptation finance from 2019 to 2020 (the most recent year for which data is available) from $20.3 billion to $28.6 billion, but such increases will have to continue if the $40 billion target is to be met and exceeded.

At COP27, developed countries must also specify how they will ensure this finance reaches those who need it most. This will mean committing more finance for locally led adaptation, ensuring local people and organizations who are often disproportionately vulnerable to climate impacts have a say in investment decisions and can access the funding and other resources they need to build resilience.

Countries will also be pressed to make progress on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) in Egypt. Established under Article 7.1 of the Paris Agreement in 2015, this goal aims to provide a framework to define the process, action and support needed to enhance adaptative capacity, strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability, while contributing to sustainable development. To help define the goal and how it should be measured and assessed, countries established the Glasgow-Sharm el-Sheikh work program (GlaSS) on the Global Goal on Adaptation at COP26, to run from 2022 through 2023. COP27 will host another of the year's four workshops under the work program. During the upcoming GlaSS workshops, countries must focus on making tangible, substantive progress; leaders must ensure that setting an ambitious goal with robust tracking mechanisms is a high priority politically.

The GlaSS discussions also provide an opportunity to help advance equitable, locally led adaptation. The GGA could include metrics for tracking progress on locally led adaptation, including to account for quantity and quality of finance reaching local communities. The GlaSS program could also establish common definitions of "local" and "locally led," formally recognize the Principles for Locally Led Adaptation, and ensure local communities and organizations can participate in discussions around the global goal.

Strengthening monitoring and evaluating of adaptation is also vital as more countries turn to implementing their recently completed NAP documents and more ambitious NDCs. Many countries are grappling with how to establish national metrics and monitoring systems. At COP27, progress on the GGA should include consideration of how to link the global adaptation goal to countries' own efforts to monitor implementation of their NAPs and NDCs.

3) Strengthen national emissions-reduction targets.

As part of the Glasgow Climate Pact at COP26, countries were requested to "revisit and strengthen" their 2030 emissions-reduction targets - known as "nationally determined contributions," or NDCs - by the end of 2022 to better align with the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). So far, only 23 countries have come forward with new or updated NDCs since COP26.

Major emitters that have submitted more ambitious climate plans include India, Australia, Indonesia and Egypt. Several others, including Mexico, Turkey, Vietnam and Chile, are expected to release updated or enhanced NDCs later this year, though they already missed a deadline for inclusion in the UN synthesis report to be published ahead of COP27. By COP27, all countries, especially major emitters, should strengthen their 2030 emissions targets. These targets also need to be backed by policies - and crucially, investment - to turn them into action.

And while there is no room for backsliding on climate commitments, in 2022, some stakeholders have expressed concern that major emitting countries seem to be doing just that in response to the energy crisis generated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Faced with natural gas shortages, several E.U. nations are reopening coal plants and appealing to countries in Africa and elsewhere for new gas supplies. The think tank Ember Climate estimates that European governments will spend more than $48 billion this winter on new or expanded fossil fuel infrastructure and supplies.

Time will tell if these investments are a temporary blip or will undermine national climate targets. At the same time, we recognize that Europe is taking unprecedented steps to scale up renewable energy, increase energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption.

The UN Climate Change secretariat will publish a report in late October 2022 synthesizing the commitments made by countries in NDCs and long-term strategies. Given the lack of progress thus far, the UN report is certain to show a gap between countries' current emissions targets and trends and the emissions levels needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C.

The Glasgow Climate Pact established a work program to "urgently scale up mitigation ambition and implementation in this critical decade." Earlier this year, countries began negotiations on how this work program will operate, including its objectives, scope, outcomes, arrangements and timeline. For instance, the work program could aim to set goals in critical sectors for 2030. In Egypt, however, countries will start these negotiations from scratch and are expected to finalize a decision on a work program as one important outcome at COP27.

4) Assure that the $100 billion climate finance promise will be met and move forward on new commitments.

Climate finance will again be a key topic at COP27, with a significant number of scheduled discussions and linkages with most agenda items. Developed countries will be pressed to reassure sufficient and adequate financial support to developing countries - in particular, to those most vulnerable to climate impacts.

In 2009, developed countries committed to mobilize $100 billion per year to developing countries to support their climate action. Official UNFCCC and independent reports consistently show that developed countries are missing the $100-billion-per-year target. For example, a recent assessment from the OECD found that developed countries only mobilized $83.3 billion of climate finance in 2020.

Ahead of COP26, ministers from Germany and Canada presented a Climate Finance Delivery Plan, which detailed the failure of developed countries to meet their commitment and expressed confidence that the $100 billion would be met in 2023. An update of the Delivery Plan is expected to be released ahead of COP27 and is set to also shed light on progress on the commitment to double adaptation financing by 2025. The delivery of finance is crucial because it is a symbol of global solidarity and an important element to continue building trust in the multilateral system and accelerate climate action in the developing world.

Multilateral development banks (MDBs) could also do more with their current capital structure, as called for in the Glasgow Pact, and, more recently, through the Independent Review of the Multilateral Development Banks' Capital Adequacy Frameworks (initiated by the G20). MDBs continue to be an integral part of the climate finance architecture and must scale up their climate action even further, particularly for adaptation. MDB financing goes beyond "climate finance," so all types of financing they provide must align with global temperature goals and help build climate resilience.

COP27 needs to provide certainty around delivery of the $100 billion by 2023, including by meeting the pledges made in Glasgow to the Adaptation Fund, communicating new and additional pledges to multilateral funds and in bilateral support. COP27 also needs to signal that adaptation grant-based finance will substantially increase since finance for adaptation remains far underfunded in comparison to mitigation. Further provision of public finance, private sector mobilization, improved access to finance, and debt sustainability will all be key elements of the COP27 discussions aiming to shift the trillions of dollars to close the investment gaps necessary to meet the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement.

Countries are also preparing to outline a new collective finance goal to go into effect after 2025, with a series of expert dialogues underway. An agreement on the new finance goal is expected in 2024, based upon technical and political dialogues over the next two years, including high-level ministerial discussions. The lessons learned on the provision and mobilization of the $100 billion target are an important marker for issues pertaining to scale, scope, quality and accountability for the new goal, with the potential addition of loss and damage finance as a thematic area.

Additionally, in 2021, South Africa announced a new partnership with France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union to mobilize $8.5 billion to support a just transition to a low-emissions, climate-resilient economy. Turning this announcement into tangible progress requires donor countries to ensure the funding arrangements meet South Africa's fiscal needs, and for South Africa to articulate an investment plan, which is expected to be unveiled by COP27.

In June 2022, the G7+ noted interest in moving forward with similar just energy transition partnerships with India, Indonesia, Senegal and Vietnam. Whether these partnerships successfully deliver finance and support communities and workers in the transition will be closely watched at COP27.

5) Advance the Global Stocktake to set the pace for climate action.

The Paris Agreement established a Global Stocktake, a process conducted every five years to assess collective progress toward the Agreement's long-term goals. The first Global Stocktake kicked off in 2021 at COP26 and will conclude in 2023 at COP28, to be held in the United Arab Emirates. COP26 opened the first Global Stocktake by calling on countries and non-state actors to submit information that can feed into the process; technical dialogues will continue at COP27 to consider the information collected.

This year, new and innovative formats of the Global Stocktake - including a world café set of discussions - allowed for interesting conversations amongst countries, experts and non-state actors. Yet the Global Stocktake will need to spend the next year advancing the technical assessment of collective progress toward the Paris Agreement's goals before concluding at COP28 with a political package that will drive forward action. It needs to do so while considering synergies with several of the other dialogues and processes launched at COP26 - including discussions on the Global Goal for Adaptation, loss and damage, mitigation and the new finance goal - to ensure a cohesive and ambitious response for climate action and support in this critical decade.

Ultimately, it is essential that the outcome from the Global Stocktake is politically relevant and not just an information-sharing exercise coupled with vague, unactionable recommendations. COP27 can help in shaping the Stocktake's direction by offering the space for countries, experts and non-state actors to develop a common vision.

6) Convert the treasure trove of Glasgow climate commitments into action.

In Glasgow, governments, businesses and other stakeholders made a number of exciting pledges - to curb methane emissions, halt and reverse forest loss, align the finance sector with net-zero by 2050, accelerate the phase-out of coal, double 2019 levels of adaptation finance by 2025, scale locally led adaptation, and end international financing for fossil fuels, to name just a few. But these pledges must translate into concrete action; evidence of progress toward lofty targets must become visible. Discussions around accountability are increasingly important as additional pledges are made.

At COP27, those who have previously announced ambitious pledges or joined initiatives should address progress to date and disclose any barriers. Governments, especially, must demonstrate where they have and have not made progress.

Earlier this year, the UN Secretary-General appointed a High-Level Expert Group on Net-zero Emissions from non-state actors to identify strong, clear standards for the growing number of pledges to reach net-zero emissions. This group has been consulting with a wide range of stakeholders, including on how to define net-zero, governance of targets, alignment with shorter-term targets, and just transition plans, among other topics. The group will deliver recommendations to the UN Secretary General later this year, but can and should also elevate conversations of accountability at COP27.

Success at COP27

COP27 may take place against a backdrop of an unsettled world, but it also offers the possibility to foster greater cooperation at a time when the world needs it most. That's the potential that leaders, governments and businesses should seize.

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This year's UN climate conference (COP27) will take place against a backdrop of global crises. The ripple effects of COVID-19 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine have sent food and energy prices soaring to record highs, while unprecedented climate disasters are fueling widespread and devastating disruptions with historic levels of rain, heat, drought, fires and storms impacting almost every corner of the world.

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Just Transition and Equitable Climate Action Resource Center

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Addressing climate change and achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement requires transitioning to a net-zero economy. While this is an essential task that can provide significant economic and social benefits, it can also pose significant challenges for countries and communities that are still depen…

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COST OF DELAY: Why finance to address Loss and Damage must be agreed at COP27

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Despite 31 years of pressure, 26 COPs and multiple workshops and dialogues, no dedicated finance to help people deal with the aftermath of climate impacts – also known as ‘finance to address Loss and Damage’ – has been delivered under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC…

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For the first time in 27 years of United Nations-led negotiations on climate change, the world's largest historic greenhouse gas polluter will come to the table next month with a national law in place for reducing its outsize emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

President Joe Biden's success in gaining passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which will invest $370 billion in curbing emissions and making a transition to clean energy in the United States, is seeding cautious hope for greater global action after years of frustrating impasses at the talks.

But the long-sought U.S. legislative achievement is likely to be overshadowed at the conference, which begins Nov. 6 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Instead, the unfulfilled promises of the United States and other wealthy countries seem certain to dominate COP27, the 27th Conference of the Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. For one thing, the developed world has fallen behind on a 2009 pledge to mobilize at least $100 billion annually to help poorer nations shift to clean energy and gird themselves against climate change. And nations have yet to agree on a systematic way to address the losses and damages that already have unfolded.

The delegates will convene in Africa toward the end of a year in which climate-driven suffering in the developing world has become all too evident. Floods from record monsoons in Pakistan took 1,500 lives this summer and uprooted 33 million people, wreaking destruction that will take years to mend. Drought has choked off the food supply for 22 million people in the Horn of Africa, and months-long downpours and mudslides have inundated villages in Central America, killing dozens and displacing 560,000.

For many, the devastation dictates an urgent agenda in this round of negotiations. "After decades of insufficient action from big, powerful and wealthy nations," the "unfortunate reality of today is that loss and damage have become the paramount issue for climate policy," said Saleemul Huq, an expert adviser to the 55-nation Climate Vulnerable Forum. "Loss and damage punishes above all the poor, the vulnerable and those least responsible for-and least equipped to handle-the severe and mounting catastrophes brought about through the climate crisis."

It is not lost on advocates for developing nations that the attention of wealthy nations has been consumed by other crises this year, particularly the war in Ukraine being waged by the fourth-largest greenhouse gas emitter, Russia, and mounting tensions between the two largest, China and the United States. Many observers believe it is possible that the developing countries will make a dramatic stand at the talks over how their plight has perpetually been placed on the back burner by their more powerful treaty partners. COP27 could even end in no agreement, they warn, because of the rift between rich and poor nations.

Yet those who have been engaged in the process also see the current logjam as a milestone of sorts, a signal that the international community has moved to a crucial stage in grappling with the climate crisis.

Jonathan Pershing, a longtime U.S. climate negotiator who recently returned to his role as director of the environmental program at the Hewlett Foundation, suggests that pressure is finally building to take concrete steps. "We're not any longer doing a negotiation around an agreement," he said. "We're now in a negotiation about how do you implement the agreement? What are the pieces that countries have committed to try to do? And are they succeeding? And if they are not succeeding, what is it that this global community acting collectively can do to facilitate more action?"

How US Leadership Can Make a Difference

Indeed, Egypt's foreign minister, Sameh Shokry, who will preside at the conference, has declared its goal to be " implementation. " By the end of two weeks of meetings, the parties hope to adopt a "mitigation work program," a plan for accelerating the reduction of greenhouse gases in this decade rather than wait for the next round of commitments that countries are required to set for 2035 under the COP climate accord negotiated in Paris in 2015.

The focus on putting commitments into force has increased pressure on the United States, which has produced 20 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution, to come to the meeting with a genuine climate policy in place.

Laurence Tubiana, a French diplomat who was an architect of the legally binding agreement reached in Paris, told Le Mondethat it was "essential" for the U.S. both to act and press other nations to act under the treaty.

"If, despite Joe Biden's promises when he came to power," no major climate law had been passed, "it is hard to see how the United States, the second largest emitter in the world, could have retained credibility," Tubiana said.

In an interview, Elina Bardram, the European Commission's director for climate action services, said that hopes were pinned on the possibility that the passage of U.S. legislation will spur others to enact stronger climate policies. "This allows the U.S. to come with new confidence to the table and really talk with clear evidence about their resolve and determination," Bardram said. "Like the EU's legislative efforts and action over the years, that will be a strong signal for all other countries to really be transparent and open about what progress they have been making at the national level, in view of delivering the ambition that was agreed in Paris."

Soon after Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in August, Biden's special climate envoy, former Secretary of State John Kerry, traveled to Bali and then had follow-up talks in New York with negotiators for Indonesia, which is one of the world's Top 10 greenhouse gas polluters and heavily reliant on coal as its biggest export product. At a New York Times forum on climate in September, Kerry said the deal being discussed for the country was to set a higher renewable energy target and shutter some of its coal plants, with the United States providing technology and financing.

"We're this close to getting an agreement," Kerry said, holding up his thumb and forefinger. "This is the challenge. How do we bring countries to the table?"

The U.S. and Indonesia have agreed on a framework for cooperation but are still working on a final agreement. Other major diplomatic deals have faltered. One of Kerry's most ambitious and potentially consequential efforts was derailed, at least temporarily, this summer: In August, China's president, Xi Jinping, suspended climate negotiations with the United States in response to a controversial visit to Taiwan by the U.S. House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

Early on in the Biden administration, Kerry expressed confidence that the United States and China, which together account for 40 percent of current greenhouse gas emissions, could work together on climate as a " standalone issue" separate from their disputes over trade and human rights. But this year it became more obvious how other points of contention can get in the way when the Biden administration banned imports of solar panels from a Chinese company accused of using forced labor in Xinjiang province.

"It's never possible to fully separate things," said Deborah Seligsohn, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University and former State Department official who served in Beijing. She said circumstances were different when Kerry, then the secretary of state in the Obama administration, helped broker an agreement with China in 2014 that is now widely seen as having paved the way for the Paris accord and that he hoped to enhance in bilateral talks that continued this year.

"When both countries want to reduce the heat, they tend to look for areas where there's more agreement to try to keep the relationship pretty good," Seligsohn said. "Climate was seen as a good area for cooperation. The problem is at this point, the Chinese do not believe that the U.S. wants a good relationship."

And although Kerry has voiced hope for a restart in climate talks with China, Seligsohn considers that unlikely after the Biden administration's move on Oct. 7 to enact sweeping new restrictions on China's access to U.S. semiconductor technology.

The conflict with China illuminates the limits of the goodwill the U.S. can expect to sow with its new climate law. "The Inflation Reduction Act will be a helpful dose of credibility for the U.S. in its relations with other countries with which the U.S. already has good relations," said David Victor, professor of innovation and public policy at the University of California, San Diego.

Like many other experts, Victor believes the biggest challenge at COP27 will be how the United States and other wealthy nations engage with developing countries.

Patience Wears Thin in Developing World

In a report in June, analysts for the Climate Vulnerable Forum calculated that climate change had wiped out $525 billion, or one-fifth, of the wealth of the 55 countries in its coalition over the last two decades. In other words, those vulnerable nations would have been 20 percent wealthier today if not for the losses incurred from climate change.

The group launched a #PaymentOverdue social media campaign to draw attention to the failure of wealthy nations to meet a pledge made at the 2009 COP talks in Copenhagen to mobilize $100 billion in annual financing for the clean energy transition and adaptation in the developing world. Analysts do say the developed world will meet the target by next year, but it is widely accepted that a more ambitious goal must be set.

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The breakdown of the financing has been a source of contention. Government funding is vastly inadequate, and the private sector in particular has been much more willing to invest in "mitigation" efforts like clean energy projects, on which they can reap a return, than on the much-needed "adaptation" projects that help poor nations protect themselves against drought, the rise in sea levels and more.

Last year, at COP26 in Scotland, delegates agreed on a goal of nearly doubling adaptation funding to 40 percent of the total. Adaptation made up only 24 percent of overall climate financing from 2016 to 2020, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which represents developed nations.

At the New York Times forum in September, Kerry stressed the danger of allocating too much of limited resources to helping nations cope with future climate change and not enough money to keeping catastrophe at bay.

"I have news for people who are putting all their hopes in adaptation," Kerry said at the forum. "If we don't mitigate enough, if we don't cut emissions, it will be beyond the capacity of any country to be able to adapt to what is coming at us."

There is even more disagreement about addressing "loss and damage," which parties to the 2015 Paris climate accord recognized as a third category of needed climate action after mitigation and adaptation. Developing nations have coalesced around the idea of a new program to pay for the losses already sustained by vulnerable nations.

"While the world fiddles, climate change marches on unabated, and the hits keep on coming," said Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, which has been a leader in the drive for addressing damages. "We must redouble our efforts and ensure the third pillar of the Paris agreement is finally given its due in Sharm El-Sheikh."

But donor nations have argued that the establishment of a new fund for loss and damage could slow efforts to aid those in need as nations debate the structure, representation and method for funding. "We really need to work first and foremost within the structures that we have, and we have quite a lot in terms of humanitarian relief, early warning mechanisms, and faster access to finance for those in need," Bardram said. "We are also looking into doing more in terms of insurance."

One proposal advanced by Germany in its current role as president of the G7 group of advanced economies is Global Shield, a climate risk insurance program for developing nations. Last week, it reached an agreement with a group of 20 vulnerable countries to launch the program, with details to be unveiled at COP27.

But some climate justice activists have voiced skepticism about the German initiative, the potential rising costs of insurance premiums and whether an insurance-style program will address the needs of the poorest of the poor.

Victor, the policy expert at the University of California, San Diego, echoed concerns that COP27 will end without a formal agreement, just as climate talks sputtered in 2009 in Copenhagen when developing nations felt they were cut out of negotiations.

"I think that there's a kind of seething disappointment and anger," Victor said. "Countries feel like they were promised a bunch of stuff that they're not getting. Those irredentist promises can create a real toxicity that is hard to overcome."

A preview of how bitter the dispute has become surfaced in an exchange between Kerry and the British lawyer and environmentalist Fahrana Yamin at the Times forum. Yamin was an adviser to the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, Tony de Brum, who died in 2017 and was one of the architects of the Paris accord's loss and damage language.

"I think he would be turning in his grave at the lack of action, including by the U.S., on that article, which was negotiated in extreme good faith," Yamin said. Referring to the new U.S. climate law, she added: "You're bringing a lot to the table, and we really applaud that. But the most important thing that the U.S. can bring right now is honesty to COP27."

Kerry responded, "Well, in all honesty, the most important thing that we can do is mitigate enough that we prevent loss and damage. And the next most important thing we can do is help people adapt to the damage that's already there." As for losses and damages, he said, "You tell me a government in the world that has trillions of dollars, because that's what it costs.

"How do you measure it? How do you allocate? Where's the money coming from?" Kerry said.

Biden has requested $11 billion in funds to address global climate change in his budget proposal for fiscal year 2023, a sum that would allow him to meet his pledge of quadrupling such financing a year ahead of schedule. But it's not clear how much of that package he can get through Congress; his request of $2.5 billion in the previous year's budget was whittled back to $1 billion.

Talk about the arduous U.S. budget process is not likely to satisfy countries that are reeling from the effects of climate change, especially after seeing how quickly wealthy nations poured money into their own economies during the Covid-19 pandemic or funneled arms and other assistance into Ukraine to help defend it against Russia's invasion.

"Over time, yes, we are talking about money in the trillions," said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at the climate-oriented think tank E3G and a longtime participant in the COP talks on behalf of the environmental community. "The island states would say, 'You are already raising it for other purposes, like military spending, stabilizing your economy, helping Ukraine and other things. They say it's not a question of the money not being there. It's a question of political will and priorities."

It just so happens that Pakistan, still grappling with the multibillion-dollar impact of this year's floods, holds the current chair of the U.N.'s G77 coalition of developing nations and will speak for those countries at Sharm El-Sheikh.

"This just adds real passion to the demand for climate justice-the demand for the countries that caused this problem to just step up and help those countries who had very little to do with causing the problem and are suffering disproportionately," Meyer said.

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The US May Have Scored a Climate Victory in Congress, but It Will Be in the Hot Seat With Other Major Emitters at UN Climate Talks - Inside Climate News

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For the first time in 27 years of United Nations-led negotiations on climate change, the world's largest historic greenhouse gas polluter will come to the table next month with a national law in place for reducing its outsize emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

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Transformative pathways: climate and gender-just alternatives to intersecting crises

Development as we know it today has been shaped by the historical and ongoing exploitation of territories. As well as outsourcing of labour, impacting gender roles and our geopolitical landscape. Consequently affecting our modes of production. The goal? Infinite economic growth.

Decades of excessive natural resource extraction have caused permanent and irreversible loss and damage to various communities around the world. Additionally, this process has not only altered physical infrastructures, but also threatened traditional ways of life that used to coexist in harmony with the environment.

This publication analyses the 2030 Agenda and Paris Agreement. Moreover, it outlines recommendations for policy benchmarks needed for a transformation to a sustainable present and future. Through proposing specific economic, environmental, and gendered targets for the Sustainable Development Goals. By systematising experiences, this publication gathers evidence on concrete alternatives to current development models. Highlighting especially community and context-based alternatives existing on the ground, where gender-just solutions are used to mitigate climate change. These solutions recognise women in all their diversity as vital agents of change. Through building people-powered democracies instead of individualistic or profit-oriented climate solutions.

The purpose of this publication is to contribute to a systemic transformation by collecting evidence that demonstrates that another world is possible. Moreover, it aims to broaden the recognition of how local and gender-just solutions contributes to tackling intersecting crises, particularly the climate crisis.

The grassroots initiatives in this publication demonstrate possible transformative pathways for decolonising the work done to tackle our world's intersecting crises.
Authors & editor

Gina Cortés Valderrama (WECF), Valeria Peláez Cardona (WECF), Agnes Mirembe (ARUWE), Fatou Ndoye (Enda Graf Sahel), Maria Victoria Bojacá (Enda Colombia), Sevidzem Ernestine Leikeki (CAMGEW), Sarah Fisher Davis, Stony Brook University.
Design and illustrations
Puntoaparte Editores, Colombia www.puntoaparte.com.co

Donors

This publication was supported by Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the authors and shall therefore in no way be taken to reflect the views of the GIZ or BMZ.

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Transformative pathways: Climate and gender-just alternatives to intersecting crises - WECF

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Development as we know it today has been shaped by the historical and ongoing exploitation of territories. As well as outsourcing of labour, impacting gender roles and our geopolitical landscape. Consequently affecting our modes of production. The goal? Infinite economic growth.

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This is the official YouTube account of the Paris Committee on Capacity-building. The Paris Committee on Capacity-building (PCCB) was established at COP 21, in 2015, to address current and emerging gaps and needs in implementing capacity-building in developing countries, and in further enhancing capacity-building efforts, including with regard to coherence and coordination in capacity-building activities under the Convention.

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The Innovation Zone runs parallel to COP27 and offers a bold design that focuses on the future.

Open from Monday 7 to Friday 18 November and located 300m from the Blue Zone, the Innovation Zone is free to attend and offers a space dedicated to action at COP27. This innovation ecosystem is where dynamic solutions come to life, new ideas are born, climate leaders step up and cross-sector partnerships begin.

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The Innovation Zone runs parallel to COP27 and offers a bold design that focuses on the future. Open from Monday 7 to Friday 18 November and located 300m from the Blue Zone, the Innovation Zone is free to attend and offers a space dedicated to action at COP27.

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The world is watching. Against the backdrop of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Bloomberg will convene the foremost leaders in business, finance, policy, academia and NGOs for candid conversations focused on creating solutions to support the goals set forth at COP27. Bloomberg…

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Reparations for climate damage, international climate finance, and the geopolitical snarls caused by Russia's war in Ukraine are taking their place as central issues as the clock winds down to the launch of this year's United Nations climate summit, COP 27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

In the last few days:

* The United States has declared its support for formal talks-but not necessarily new dollars-to address the loss and damage caused by climate disasters.

* Russia and Ukraine are vying to take responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions in Crimea and other Ukrainian territory under Russian occupation.

* The Egyptian government is under fire for assigning PR for the conference to a global firm with a "shameful track record of spreading disinformation" and greenwashing fossil fuels.

* And Egyptian intelligence services are believed to be using the COP as an opportunity to widen their control of the country's media outlets.

U.S. Talks Loss and Damage

Senior officials in the Biden administration revealed last week that the world's biggest historical carbon polluter had "decided to support formal UN negotiations over possible compensation and assistance to countries that suffer devastation from storms, floods, and droughts made far worse by climate change," Bloomberg writes. That decision closes some of the negotiating gap between at least one major emitter and the call from small island states for a "response fund" for vulnerable nations.

"But while the U.S. is supporting dialogue on the issue," Bloomberg reports, the country's negotiators at the COP "are discouraging any explicit push for new aid or funding in an agenda item framing the talks. That would put the U.S. at odds with a large group of vulnerable nations which will be led at the talks by Pakistan, where floods have left more than 1,700 dead and caused some $30 billion in losses."

While Bloomberg says the devastation in Pakistan "has given the politics of loss and damage a new urgency," the discussion has been going on for decades, with painfully little progress.

"After decades of insufficient action from big, powerful, and wealthy nations," the "unfortunate reality of today is that loss and damage have become the paramount issue for climate policy," said Saleemul Huq, an advisor to the 55-nation Climate Vulnerable Forum. "Loss and damage punishes above all the poor, the vulnerable, and those least responsible for-and least equipped to handle-the severe and mounting catastrophes brought about through the climate crisis."

"It is more than 30 years since vulnerable nations first demanded support to address the losses and damages caused by fossil-fuelled storms, floods, and sea level rise," Climate Home News writes. "Rich countries, wary of endless liabilities, pushed back. But with costs of extreme weather mounting, the issue has become unavoidable. It is set to dominate negotiations in Sharm el-Sheikh."

The plan put forward by the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) for a Loss and Damage Response Fund "is an evolution of the 'facility' proposed by developing countries and opposed by wealthy ones at the COP 26 Glasgow summit last year," Climate Home says. But "discussions on how to provide financial support to developing countries hammered by worsening climate impacts remain one of the most contested issues in the talks."

Leading into the conference, the V20 bloc, representing the countries most vulnerable to climate impacts, is demanding a plan to fund the response to extreme weather, the Guardian reports. "The reason we are talking about loss and damage is that we have failed on adaptation finance for years," said Maldives Environment Minister Shauna Aminath.

Funding Shows What Matters

Aminath put the world's richest countries' slow uptake on the climate emergency in stark contrast to their response to the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's war in Ukraine.

"It's very obvious that it's not a lack of money, or a lack of technology, that is the problem," she said. "The issue is the lack of political will and the refusal to see the climate crisis as an emergency."

With that contrast front and centre at the third COP ever held on African soil, "many observers believe it is possible that the developing countries will make a dramatic stand at the talks over how their plight has perpetually been placed on the back burner by their more powerful treaty partners," Inside Climate News writes. "COP 27 could even end in no agreement, they warn, because of the rift between rich and poor nations."

Aminath added that international financing must go beyond the immediate physical damage from a hurricane, flood, or heat wave to include impacts on health and education, particularly as climate response erodes vulnerable countries' fiscal base and their ability to fund human services.

"These are the social issues that are left behind after the donors leave [in the aftermath of disaster]," she told the Guardian. "There is also internal displacement, and the resulting problems with social integration, which are very important."

India will also be emphasizing climate finance during COP 27 negotiations, the Hindustan Times reports, beginning with the US$100 billion in international climate finance that wealthy countries promised in 2009 and have consistently failed to deliver. Last week, Germany increased its annual commitment to €5.3 billion, Clean Energy Wire writes.

A 'Geopolitical Hurricane'

Quite apart from the urgent issues on the COP 27 table, delegates in Sharm el-Sheikh will have a "geopolitical hurricane" to navigate, Bloomberg Green reports.

"The last time world leaders got together for a climate summit, the backdrop was thoroughly menacing," the news agency recalls. ". A pandemic had decimated national budgets. Poor countries were up in arms over the hoarding of COVID-19 vaccines by the same wealthy nations whose fossil fuel consumption did most to warm the planet. Relations between the two largest emitters, the U.S. and China, had devolved into zero-sum skirmishes over everything from trade to Taiwan."

And "those were the good old days," write reporters Marc Champion and Salma El Wardany.

In the last year, "the geopolitical context that shapes all international diplomacy has gone from tense to precarious," they explain. "The war in Ukraine has divided nations over what some saw as a fight between Russian and Western interests, and supercharged an energy crisis that risks shredding COP 26's most concrete achievement: a global consensus to cut down on coal."

A coal phasedown and an end to economically "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies were two of the main takeaways from last year's climate negotiations, Bloomberg recalls. But now, "COP 27 is to be convened while the international community is facing a financial and debt crisis, an energy prices crisis, a food crisis, and on top of them the climate crises," said Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister and COP 27 President Sameh Shoukry.

"In light of the current geopolitical situation, it seems that transition will take longer than anticipated."

COP 27 will also see the bizarre spectacle of Ukraine and Russia each trying to claim responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions-from a chemical plant in Armyansk, to diesel fuel burned during Russian military operations-in Crimea and other Ukrainian territory that Moscow currently occupies, the Washington Post reports.

"Ukrainian policy-makers say their goal is not to look as good they can on climate rankings," the Post says. "Instead, they want UN discussions to reflect their legal claims over what the vast majority of the world continues to recognize as Ukrainian land, even if Russia is in possession of the territory."

"It's not about the climate arguments-it's about our territory. Russia is trying to use all venues to legitimize the illegal annexation," said Ukraine's former deputy energy minister Alex Riabchyn, a member of the country's COP negotiating team since 2015. "Every single document that doesn't have footnotes, that doesn't say Crimea is Ukrainian, is a hybrid diplomacy strategy of Russia to legitimize this."

Egypt's Presidency Under Scrutiny

The Egyptian COP Presidency is also taking heat for key aspects of its communications strategy for the COP, after months of concern about tortuous conference registration rules, exorbitant hotel costs for cash-strapped delegates, and hostility toward civil society participation. On Friday, openDemocracy reported that Egypt has hired Hill+Knowlton, a PR giant whose clients include colossal fossils ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, and Saudi Aramco, to manage communications.

"The COP presidency should use a PR firm committed to achieving the goals of the Paris agreement," said Kathy Mulvey, accountability campaign director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "All bad actors involved in climate deception-including the PR industry-must be held accountable."

Hill+Knowlton, she added, has a "shameful track record of spreading disinformation" on behalf of oil companies.

Last week, as well, Megatrends Afrika published a heavily-annotated exposé on the role of Egypt's General Intelligence Service (GIS) in orchestrating the COP.

"Officially, the GIS will not play a role in the climate conference," the news story states. "Behind the scenes, however, the GIS is pulling the strings. This is suggested by reports from various non-governmental organizations, which criticize the Egyptian government's considerable harassment of their peers. Voices critical of the government were deliberately excluded from the conference," and the conference centre where the COP will take place apparently belongs to the GIS.

Megatrends Afrika connects its concerns to recent media trends under the "authoritarian leadership" of President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.

"In recent years, the GIS has successively taken control over various private media companies in the country and merged them under the holding company United Media Services (UMS)," Megatrends writes. "Through these outlets, the foreign intelligence service exerts significant influence over domestic reporting, also in the context of the climate conference. For example, in such media, human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch are denigrated as the mouthpieces of terrorists."

The COP represents "a welcome opportunity for the GIS to further expand its media activities," with financial support from Saudi Arabia, Megatrends states.

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Loss and Damage, 'Geopolitical Hurricane' to Dominate at COP 27

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Reparations for climate damage, international climate finance, and the geopolitical snarls caused by Russia's war in Ukraine are taking their place as central issues as the clock winds down to the launch of this year's United Nations climate summit, COP 27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

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Background

In November 2022, the Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt will host the 27th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP 27), with a view to building on previous successes and paving the way for future ambition to effectively tackle the global challenge of climate change.

For detailed information, please refer to the Government of Egypt Presidency and Goals.

The meeting comprises the twenty-seventh session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 27), the seventeenth session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 17), and the fourth session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA 4).

Logistical information for participants
Note: Updated information will be posted here as it becomes available. Please check back regularly. Conference dates

Sunday, 6 Novemberto Friday, 18 November 2022
Location

Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Centre (SHICC), El Salam Road, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt

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Information for COP 27 participants (A-Z) | UNFCCC

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In November 2022, the Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt will host the 27th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP 27), with a view to building on previous successes and paving the way for future ambition to effectively tackle the global challenge of climate change.

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The annual Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP 27) will take place from 06 November 2022 to 18 November 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

UN CC:Learn organizes and supports the following activities:

Climate Classroom

The Climate Classroom @COP27 is an innovative learning experience designed to help those attending get quickly up-to-speed on key climate issues. Throughout COP27, our team of experts will deliver free online and in-person 45-minute classes that expose and introduce learners to a range of climate change topics - allowing delegates, professionals, and other interested parties to follow and contribute to climate discussions.

Register for the classes that will be delivered during COP27 below:

COP27 Library of UN Ressources

UN CC:Learn hosts the library of documents produced by UN partners which are relevant for COP 27.

Events Supported by UN CC:Learn

Accelerating the circular economy agenda to tackle climate change and foster economic transformation
Wednesday, 09 November 2022, 11:30-13:00 - Hatshepsut (300)
There is an urgency to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. The side event will discuss how to accelerate the global circular economy agenda and the shift to a green economy through ambitious mitigation and adaptation actions.

Speakers: Mr. Gerd Müller, Director General, United Nations Industrial Development Organization Ms. Olga Algayerova, Exacutive Secretary, UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Representatives of governments, private sector, think tanks and youth.

Scaling up innovative finance and solutions for accelerated adaptation in LDCs, SIDS and Africa
Friday, 11 November 2022, 13:15 - 14:45 - Hatshepsut (300)
Building on the collaboration between UN organizations, the session shares experiences and good practices on comprehensive risk management, innovative financing and space-based solutions to accelerate adaptation action, and to take climate talks from policy to action and results.

Speakers: High level official/Minister from a SIDS and one from an annex 1, local government representative from a LDC, private sector financier and representatives from UN led initiatives.

Your Climate Story
Everyone has a climate story so... what is yours?
Your climate story tells your personal experience with climate change. Sharing it with others will help them understand how climate change is happening and what can be done to tackle it. Furthermore, you will inspire people across the world to take the lead and contribute to a positive transformation toward a more climate-resilient society.

Our participants on Climate Classroom at @COP27 are invited to share their climate stories. This can be something you've already done in the past, or a pledge to take action in the future. Check out your e-mail and join us!

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The annual Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP 27) will take place from 06 November 2022 to 18 November 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. UN CC:Learn organizes and supports the following activities: The Climate Classroom @COP27 is an innovative learning experience designed to help those attending get quickly up-to-speed on key climate issues.

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In the lead up to COP27 in Egypt, the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) is releasing a new report which finds that G20 countries, who are responsible for almost 80% of global carbon dioxide emissions, lack gender-responsive national climate change policies.

The report analyzes the level of gender integration - or lack thereof - in the national climate policies and nationally determined contributions (NDCs) of the world's largest economies, the G20 group. The report finds that despite the increasing acknowledgement that the impacts of climate change vary depending on gender- and the crucial role of women as drivers of climate solutions - gender has yet to be comprehensively or meaningfully integrated into G20 countries' climate policies.

​

For further inquiries contact katherine@wecaninternational.org .

In this report, we analyze the level of gender integration - or lack thereof - in the national climate policies and nationally determined contributions (NDCs) of the G20 countries to the Paris Agreement. We recognize that the G20 is not a uniform block and Common But Differentiated Responsibilities need to be acknowledged. Rather this report addresses the cross-cutting issue of gender-responsive climate policy and action across the G20. It is crucial that G20 countries develop and implement gender-responsive climate policies in order to move forward both climate action and gender equality agendas at both the national and international level.

Women and gender diverse leaders are providing critical leadership and solutions to addressing the climate crisis. Consequently, it is essential to recognize, understand and transform unjust dominant social constructs, including systemic patriarchy, colonization and racism, which continue to impede building equitable and successful climate policy and action led by women and marginalized groups.

The report calls for governments to seriously ramp up efforts to effectively and coherently integrate gender considerations into climate relevant policies, ensuring active participation of women and frontline communities. A growing body of research has firmly established that greater gender equity leads to better climate outcomes. For example, a one unit increase in a country's score on the Women's Political Empowerment Index demonstrates an 11.5% decrease in the country's carbon emissions . Yet overall, the majority of G20 countries have not yet integrated gender in their climate policies, and when gender is mentioned by the G20 countries, it is often superficial and unactionable. More details are available in the press release here .

Osprey Orielle Lake, Executive Director of WECAN and co-author of the report states: "Integrating gender into climate policy isn't just beneficial for women-it leads to critically improved outcomes for our communities, the Earth, and emission targets. If G20 countries want to achieve their climate targets, they need to ensure that women and the leadership of frontline communities are included in climate policies, solution projects, and decision-making."

​

The report is endorsed by over 80 organizations from 29 countries representing groups and movements worldwide, please see the full list below:​

Accelerate Neighborhood Climate Action
Adéquations
African Women's Development and Communications Network - FEMNET
AG Communications Ltd
AJVC
ARTconnects
Association des Femmes de l'Europe Méridionale (AFEM)

Businesses for a Livable Climate

CAEDHU

Call to Action Colorado
CatholicNetwork US
Centre for Ecological Governance and Gender Initiatives (CEGGI)
Checktheweather.net
Church Women United in New York State
Citizen's Alliance for a Sustainable Englewood
Climate 2025
Climate Watch Thailand
CO Businesses for a Livable Climate
Coherence Lab
Collectif Sénégalais des Africaines pour la Promotion de l'Éducation Relative à l'Environnement (COSAPERE)
Collective Future Fund
Community for Sustainable Energy

DevCon Pvt. Ltd

Divest Invest Protect
DUKINGIRE ISI YACU

Element Four

Empathy for Life Integrated Development Association (ELiDA)
Environmental Conflict Mediation and Women Development Initiative
Extinction Rebellion San Francisco Bay Area

Fondo Lunaria Mujer

Inclusive Climate Change Adaptation for a Sustainable Africa (ICCASA)

Institut Filsafat dan Teknologi Kreatif Ledalero

Kaiāulu
Kikandwa Environmental Association

NDEO

New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light
North Range Concerned Citizens

Participatory Research & Action Network- PRAAN

Pathways for Women's Empowerment and Development (PaWED)

SFBSP-BURUNDI

SHE Changes Climate
Small Business Alliance
Southwest Organization for Sustainability
Spirit of the Sun, Inc.
Sukaar Welfare Organization Pakistan
Support for Women in Agriculture and Environment (SWAGEN)
System Change Not Climate Change

The Green House Connection Center

The Movements Trust
Transformative and integrative buildout for All (TIBA)

United Women in Faith

Wall of Women

Western Slope Businesses for a Livable Climate
WOCAN (Women Organizing for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management)
Women Network for Energy and Environment (WoNEE)
Women On Top
Women's Climate Congress
Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO)
Women's Environmental Leadership Australia (WELA)
Womxn from the Mountain
Working for Racial Equity

Zenab for Women Development

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G20 Report on Gender and Climate | WECAN International

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In the lead up to COP27 in Egypt, the Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) is releasing a new report which finds that G20 countries, who are responsible for almost 80% of global carbon dioxide emissions, lack gender-responsive national climate change policies.

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Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: The State of Climate Action in 2022. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

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Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C requires rapid transformations in the ways in which we power our economy, build our cities, feed a growing population, manage our forests, and produce and transport goods and services. Luckily, we've never had more information about what needs to be done.

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America Is All In Action Center At COP27

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As in years past, America Is All In will organize a shared platform for representatives and leadership of non-federal actors to amplify their efforts and connect with one another at COP27. We will be hosting the America Is All In Action Center, formerly known as the U.S. Climate Action Center. It wi…

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UN Climate Summit | 6 -18 November 2022

We're nearly there folks. And from Saturday evening, the first of the ECIU team will be there, ready for day one on Sunday 6th November. From then, your Road to Sharm El-Sheikh becomes a daily update from Egypt. We'll aim to keep you up to speed with what's happening, and what's coming up, connecting you to experts and expert content to keep you briefed.

Who's going from the UK?
Until Wednesday, it was unclear whether Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would attend COP27 on behalf of the UK. It had been said he would be busy with domestic economic issues ; the ' Friends of COP26' group of experts wrote to Sunak to encourage him to attend and continue UK leadership. But in a tweet on Wednesday, Sunak confirmed that he would attend , after all.

Meanwhile, Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed she will attend , and it is expected that new BEIS Secretary of State, Grant Shapps, and his climate Minister, Graham Stuart, will attend for the UK. In Sunak's reshuffle, on taking office, he also confirmed that Alok Sharma would remain COP President for the duration of his term and, despite ceasing to be a Minister in Sunak's government, would lead the UK delegation in negotiations . It remains to be seen whether the absence of a Ministerial role constrains Sharma or liberates him, but perhaps his public comments on a windfall tax , a possible Cumbria coal mine , and whether the and should attend COP27 might give some clues. Although referring to the COP as 'just a gathering of people in Egypt ', it is also expected that Environment Secretary Therese Coffey will attend.

Indicators at red...
After the relatively few updates to nationally-determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement since COP26, the UNFCCC published their synthesis of what delivery of all NDCs would mean in terms of projected global heating. The conclusion is that targets are still too little, too slow, leaving us on track for anything from 2.1°C to 2.9°C - and that even that is reliant on developing nations' 'conditional targets' that can only be delivered if they receive the climate finance they have been promised. At the same time, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) published their emissions 'gap report' which underlined this, saying that national plans as they currently stand show 'no credible pathway to 1.5°C'.

...but some starting to show green
The International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook came out ahead of COP27 too and shows that Vladimir Putin is not having the effect he might have hoped on Russia's fossil fuel business. In fact, he is hastening the transition to net zero as, for the first time, each of the fossil fuels shows a peak or a plateau across all of their scenarios. What is more, the IEA is clear that not only is the drive to net zero in no way to blame for the global energy price crisis, but that "in the most affected regions, higher shares of renewables were correlated with lower electricity prices - and more efficient homes and electrified heat have provided an important buffer for some consumers". In further good news, Brazil has elected Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as President, on a platform that includes ending deforestation in the Amazon. Lula will attend COP27 , it has been reported this week.

Shape of the summit
Repeating info from the last newsletter, but for the benefit of new subscribers, here's the basic shape of the summit. Proceedings begin on Sunday 6th, to finalise agreement to the COP agenda. Then heads of government attend on Monday and Tuesday for the world leaders' summit. In communications from the UNFCCC to delegates in recent days, there are over 100 leaders listed to speak over those first couple of days.

After the leaders summit, the presidency has then designated themes for each of the days. For the remainder of week one, that will be:

finance on Wednesday;

science, youth and future generations on Thursday;

decarbonisation on Friday;

agriculture and adaptation on Saturday.

After a pause on Sunday, week two's themes are:

water, and gender on Monday;

energy, and civil society on Tuesday;

biodiversity on Wednesday;

Thursday has been designated 'solution day'.

Alongside these themes, detailed negotiations will be happening on issues like (on carbon accounting), the global goal on adaptation, and looking ahead to the next stage of the climate finance commitment, on what developed countries will give to support developing countries after 2025. Week two is traditionally when the outputs of technical negotiations are submitted upwards to Ministers as the COP begins to synthesise progress into the closing declaration as to what has been agreed.

Sign up
Just a reminder you're receiving this either because you signed up last year to the Road to Glasgow, or because you've subsequently signed up to receive updates in the run-in to COP27 in Egypt. After this update, we will be on the ground in Egypt, providing daily updates and content to keep you informed on progress at the climate summit, and all related news.

Please share with others you think would like to sign up; they can do so here .

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>, your briefing on the road to Sharm El-Sheikh

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UN Climate Summit | 6 -18 November 2022 We're nearly there folks. And from Saturday evening, the first of the ECIU team will be there, ready for day one on Sunday 6th November. From then, your Road to Sharm El-Sheikh becomes a daily update from Egypt.

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COP27: Human Rights Advocates Urge Parties to Increase Recognition and Protection of Environmental and Land Defenders

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2 November 2022, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt: Environmental and land defenders play a critical role in mitigating the effects of climate change, yet they're often subjected to violence, harassment, intimidation, and criminalization for speaking out against land dispossession and climate abuses. Today, the climate justice and human rights organizations EarthRights International, Global Witness, Natural Justice, Sociedad ...

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Climate finance will be center stage during November’s 27th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Egypt.

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Poor countries facing climate hazards want the United States and other industrialized nations to compensate them for the harm caused by greenhouse gases.

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Flooding in Singh Province, Pakistan, in September. A third of the country was inundated by extreme rainfall Credit... Fareed Khan/Associated Press

In Egypt, olive crops are shriveling under relentless heat waves. In Fiji, entire villages are retreating inland to escape rising seas. In Pakistan, flooding this summer killed 1,700 people and left one-third of the country underwater.

They are among scores of developing countries that face irreversible damage from climate change but have done little to cause the crisis. And they are demanding compensation from the parties they see as responsible: wealthier nations that have burned oil, gas and coal for decades and created pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.

Across cultures and centuries, the idea that if you harm your neighbor's property, you owe restitution is a commonly held notion, found even in the Bible.

But as a legal and practical matter, it has been extraordinarily difficult to apply that principle to climate change. Rich nations like the United States and European Union have opposed the idea of explicitly compensating poorer countries for climate disasters already underway, fearing it could open them to unlimited liability.

As United Nations climate talks open Sunday in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, the debate over loss and damage will be front and center. Egypt, the host country and Pakistan, which is leading a group of 77 developing nations, want it placed on the formal agenda for the first time.

The issue is unavoidable this year, with leaders from nearly 200 nations gathering on the African continent, where millions are at risk of famine because of drought intensified by climate change. And developments in science have allowed researchers to quantify the role global warming plays in disasters, bolstering the argument that rich nations, which have emitted half of all heat-trapping gases since 1850, bear heavy responsibility.

"What we seek is not charity, not alms, not aid - but justice," Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Pakistan's foreign minister, said in September, discussing the country's devastating floods that scientists say were worsened by global warming. "Thirty three million Pakistanis today are paying in the form of their lives and their livelihoods for the industrialization of bigger countries."

Last year, wealthy nations vowed to provide $40 billion per year by 2025 to help poorer countries with climate adaptation measures such as building flood defenses. But a United Nations report estimates this is less than one-fifth of what developing nations need. That has fueled calls for separate loss and damage funding to deal with the aftermath of climate disasters that nations can't protect themselves against.

Facing growing pressure, John Kerry, President Biden's climate envoy, has agreed to discuss the idea of financing for loss and damage - a move to help avoid a bitter fight over the summit's agenda.

But that's a far cry from agreeing to a new fund. The United States is already behind on previous promises to help poorer countries shift to cleaner energy or adapt to climate threats by building sea walls, for example. Last year, Senate Democrats sought $3.1 billion in climate finance for 2022 but secured just $1 billion. With Republicans, who largely oppose climate aid, poised to make gains in Tuesday's midterm elections, the prospects of new funds appear dim.

"The political foundation is simply not there," said Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, adding that he believes the United States has a "moral responsibility" to address loss and damage.

Europeans, meanwhile, worry that if they agree to a fund, they could be left holding the bag if the next U.S. president repudiates the idea.

In Turkana, a semiarid region in northwest Kenya that is among the nation's poorest, loss and damage is far from abstract.

The region is now suffering its fourth straight year of extreme drought, and some scientists see a long-term drying trend. Most of Turkana's 900,000 people are pastoralists who make a living raising livestock, and they have watched herds perish for lack of water. Half the population faces starvation. Some herders have crossed into Uganda or South Sudan in search of greener pastures, triggering violent conflicts.

Local officials have drawn up urgent plans to adapt: drill more wells to tap aquifers, build dams to store water when rain does come and help people shift to more resilient forms of agriculture. But money is a hurdle. The full plan could cost roughly $200 million per year, double the county's annual budget, said Clement Nadio, Turkana County's director for climate change.

That has left Turkana acutely vulnerable in the current crisis. Officials are struggling to provide emergency food aid this year, leaving fewer resources to adapt to future droughts.

"Right now we need to focus on saving lives, dealing with malnutrition," Mr. Nadio said. "But we also need to focus on making people resilient to future climate shocks. We are trying our best. But we can't do it all with the funding we have available."

While the United Nations hasn't formally defined loss and damage, it could include destruction caused by extreme weather exacerbated by global warming. In 2019, Hurricane Dorian overwhelmed the Bahamas, bringing winds up to 185 miles per hour and 23-foot storm surges that destroyed homes, roads and an airport. The damage: $3.4 billion, one-quarter of the nation's economy.

It might also include slower-moving losses that are harder to quantify, as in the case of salt farmers in Bangladesh who lose their jobs because tidal surges and heavy rainfall have hindered production, or communities in Micronesia that have watched ancient burial grounds tumble into the encroaching oceans.

"If we had cut emissions early enough, we wouldn't have to adapt, and if we had adapted early enough, we wouldn't have loss and damage," said Avinash Persaud, an adviser to the prime minister of Barbados. "But we didn't act early enough, so now we have to do all three."

Because the definitions are broad, it's hard to calculate exactly how much money loss and damage would entail. One frequently cited study estimated that developing countries could suffer between $290 billion to $580 billion in annual climate damages by 2030, even after efforts to adapt. That could rise to $1.7 trillion by 2050.

In the past, wealthy countries have suggested that such disasters could be alleviated by existing humanitarian aid or insurance.

Developing countries say that's unacceptable. By some estimates, over half of U.N. appeals for donations after weather disasters already go unfilled. And insurance doesn't work for homes that will soon be swallowed by rising seas. Instead, poorer nations have been forced to take on debt to rebuild.

Without dedicated loss and damage funding, said Lia Nicholson, a senior adviser for the Alliance of Small Island States, climate impacts will force island nations "into unsustainable debt, arresting development and holding us hostage to random acts of charity."

With so much money at stake, discussions of loss and damage in Egypt are certain to prove contentious.

Behind the scenes, U.S. officials say they're concerned a new fund could be poorly defined and unwieldy.

Some wealthy countries also say China, currently the world's largest emitter, as well as fossil fuel exporters like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, should contribute. That could spur a major fight, since those countries have not traditionally been held responsible for climate aid.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is that each side is dug in: Developing countries and activists view loss and damage as a matter of justice while wealthy nations blanch at the idea of accepting blame.

Mr. Kerry acknowledged the United States, which has burned coal for electricity since the 1880s and is the biggest historical emitter, bears responsibility for climate change. But he also argued that by the 1980s, when governments widely agreed that carbon dioxide emissions from oil, gas and coal were warming the planet, emerging nations were burning fossil fuels, too.

"If you want to measure from there, at the rate we're going, a couple of countries have the ability to eclipse our historical emissions," Mr. Kerry said. "So yeah, we burned coal and we did this. But guess who else burned coal? Every single one of those other countries. Are they absolved?"

If nations agree, at least in principle, to create a loss and damage fund, they will have to wade through difficult issues: Who deserves help and how much? How to guarantee money is spent in ways to benefit people who most need it?

David Michael Terungwa is the president of Global Initiative for Food Security and Ecosystem Preservation in Nigeria. He recently learned a friend's home had been submerged in Benue state in floods that displaced more than 100,000 people and destroyed 140,000 hectares of farmland.

"I spoke with a young man who lost all his chickens in the floods," Mr. Terungwa said. "If there was something, climate insurance, it could be recovered and he could start life again or start a business. When we discuss loss and damage, this is what I think of, the local farmers."

But he also said he worries that governments will use the money to simply rebuild in vulnerable areas that will be washed away in future disasters.

Developing countries say questions like these are no reason for inaction. The first step is agreeing that loss and damage funding should exist; details can be resolved later.

For now, the losses continue.

Hassan Abou Bakr, an agriculture professor at Cairo University who owns an olive grove outside the city, said he has sunk into depression as repeated heat waves have ravaged his crops by depriving them of the winter "chilling hours" they need to flourish. This year, his olives were smaller than ever, and most were rejected in the market.

"Climate change is not something that will happen in the future," he said. "It is here and now and it is hitting us."

Restitution would help, but Mr. Abou Bakr's worries extend beyond that.

"You can give money, but what about the olive trees?" he said. "We need to save the trees."

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Developing Nations Have a Message at Global Climate Talks: Polluters, Pay Up

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Poor countries facing climate hazards want the United States and other industrialized nations to compensate them for the harm caused by greenhouse gases. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

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Delegation offices and pavilion spaces are available on a commercial basis.

The booking portal for accredited delegations to book offices and pavilion space at COP 27 closed on 15 July 2022.

For further information, please email: delegations.cop27@gl-events.com.

Operating hours for the pavilions for the duration of the conference
From Sunday, 6 November to Friday, 18 November: 08:00 - 22:00 (Sunday, 13 November COP 27 venue is closed)

Information about the pavilions set-up at the Sharm El Sheikh Climate Change Conference are available below as received.

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Information about the Pavilions set-up at the Glasgow Climate Change Conference available below as received.

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Climate Generation sends a delegation to COP27 to bring the international climate negotiations to life through our Window into COP program.

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Shape the roadmap for green jobs, civic participation, and equitable climate solutions.

Join us in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt from November 7-18 at the first ever Climate Education Hub, COP27's premier center of thought leadership and dialogue on climate education.

What is Climate Education?

Climate education is the foundation for building the green economy and solving the climate crises. From educating students, investors, and regulators, to creating a generation of entrepreneurs and inventors, to building a global green consumer movement, climate literacy is the key to fast forwarding solutions to climate change.

We are creating the first-ever Climate Education Hub with opportunities for educators, business, governments, and others to educate, share, negotiate, debate ideas and double down on commitments.

Agenda

Scheduled events in local Sharm El-Sheikh Time (GMT +2)

Opportunities at the Hub

We invite business and government leaders, UN officials, NGOs, youth leaders, union officials and other partners to join us in discussion around climate education and its role in our planet's future. The Climate Education hub at COP27 is a platform to share progress on your climate commitments - announce new ones - and to participate in meaningful agenda-setting conversations toward the Paris Agreement and UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Climate Education Hub Design

Stay informed of the latest news from the Climate Education Hub. Sign up for updates by sending an email to [email protected]

For any further questions please email: [email protected]

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Javascript must be enabled for the correct page display Skip to Content Join us in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt from November 7-18 at the first ever Climate Education Hub, COP27's premier center of thought leadership and dialogue on climate education. Climate education is the foundation for building the green economy and solving the climate crises.

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Credit... Alanah Sarginson

With the world still struggling to get global warming under control, diplomats will gather in Egypt for United Nations climate talks. Here are some key facts.

Credit... Alanah Sarginson

Send any friend a story
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World leaders will meet in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, on Nov. 6 for two weeks of climate negotiations as nations struggle to cut greenhouse gas emissions amid a global energy crisis, war in Europe and rising inflation.

The conference is convened annually by the United Nations. At last year's summit in Scotland, countries agreed they must immediately do more to prevent a dangerous rise in global temperatures. But fast action has not materialized and the consequences of climate change - including deadly floods in Pakistan, drought in the United States, famine in Africa and heat waves across Europe - are painfully clear.

Tensions between rich polluting countries and poor nations bearing the brunt of climate impacts over the question of who should pay the costs of global warming are expected to mark this conference, known as COP27.

Here's what you need to know:

The conference officially runs from Nov. 6 through Nov. 18. But climate negotiations are famously contentious, so expect it to go into overtime.

The meetings are being held at the Sharm el Sheikh, an Egyptian resort town on the Red Sea coast.

There are two main sites for the event: the Blue Zone and the Green Zone. The Blue Zone, based at the Sharm el Sheikh International Convention Center just south of the town center, is where the official negotiations will be held. That space will be managed by the United Nations, and is subject to international law.

Across the road in the Peace Park Botanical Garden will be the Green Zone. That area will be run by the Egyptian government and will be open to the public.

COP stands for Conference of the Parties, with "parties" referring to the 197 nations that agreed to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992.

The 197 parties, including the United States, ratified the treaty to address "dangerous human interference with the climate system" and stabilize levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. The U.N. climate body convenes those governments once a year to discuss how to jointly address climate change.

This is the 27th time countries have gathered under the convention - hence, COP27.

The ultimate goal of this year's conference is in dispute. Wealthy countries want to focus on ways to help developing nations phase out fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy.

Developing countries want a commitment on money they need to address the climate-fueled disasters they are already experiencing. Specifically, poor countries want to see a new fund to pay for things like relocating vulnerable villages or simply making up the economic growth lost to worsening floods, storms and heat waves. Industrialized nations, including the United States, have opposed a new fund in part because they fear being held legally liable for the skyrocketing damages caused by climate change.

This is the first climate summit in Africa since 2016. Many diplomats said they hope it will be an 'African COP' in focus as well as location, given that African nations face some of the worst impacts of climate change.

More than 35,000 delegates are expected to attend the event, including President Biden and more than 100 heads of state, according to the U.N. climate body. That's smaller than last year's summit in Glasgow, which brought together 120 world leaders and over 40,000 registered participants. But for a year in which no major decisions are officially expected, it's still a substantial gathering.

Climate protests are part of the heart and soul of the annual negotiations. In previous years activists have held marches, hunger strikes, sit-ins and other forms of civil disobedience to stress the urgency of the climate crisis.

This year a growing number of Egyptians are calling for protests while world leaders are in Sharm el Sheikh to highlight Egypt's abysmal human rights record. But given that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's government has essentially banned all demonstrations and criminalized free assembly, those demonstrations appear unlikely.

In May, Egypt's foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry did say that Egypt would allow some demonstrations at COP27, albeit in an "a facility adjacent to the conference center" and not in the negotiating halls or out in the streets of Sharm el Sheikh. Environmental activists said they remain fearful of crackdowns.

The first COP took place in Berlin in 1995, after a critical mass of nations ratified the climate convention. It was a milestone and set the stage two years later for the Kyoto Protocol, which at the time was a landmark global climate agreement.

But the Kyoto Protocol required only wealthy, industrialized nations to curb emissions while developing countries - including major emerging economies like China, India and Brazil - would reduce emissions voluntarily.

The United States Senate unanimously opposed it and so did President George W. Bush, setting in motion nearly two decades of wrangling over which nations bear the most responsibility for tackling climate change. In 2015, the Obama administration broke the impasse by leading nearly 200 countries to sign the groundbreaking Paris climate agreement. For the first time, rich and poor countries agreed to act, albeit at different paces, to tackle climate change.

The United States withdrew from the Paris accord under President Donald J. Trump but rejoined under President Biden.

Although leaders made big promises in Paris, countries have not taken enough actions to stave off the worst effects of climate change. In Glasgow last year, nations pledged to be more ambitious, and some have been. But a recent report from the United Nations found only about two dozen countries have followed through and pledged stronger action.

Scientists, activists and many world leaders agree that more ambition is needed even as countries start to make good on their plans to cut emissions.

COP26 produced the Glasgow Pact, an agreement among nearly 200 nations. It "requests" countries to "revisit and strengthen" their emissions targets by the end of 2022 in order to bring them into line with the goal of constraining global temperature rise to under 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with levels before the Industrial Revolution.

It also noted that rich countries have failed to meet a now decade-old promise to help deliver $100 billion annually by 2020, and urged them to "at least double" finance for adaptation by 2025.

On the sidelines of the formal negotiations dozens of agreements were struck by countries and corporations. More than 100 countries agreed to cut emissions of methane, a potent planet-warming gas, by 30 percent this decade. Another 130 countries vowed to halt deforestation by 2030 and commit billions of dollars toward the effort. Dozens of other countries vowed to phase out their coal plants and sales of gasoline-powered vehicles over the next few decades.

No. But some have begun to do so. The United States, for example, passed a law this year to invest $370 billion to pivot the country away from fossil fuels and toward emissions-free energy like wind, solar and nuclear power. It is expected to get the U.S. close - though not all the way - to its target of cutting emissions at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

It's the threshold beyond which scientists say the likelihood of catastrophic climate impacts - such as deadly heat waves, water shortages, crop failures and ecosystem collapse - significantly increases. The planet has already warmed by about 1.1 degrees Celsius.

Constraining warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius requires all countries to cut emissions faster and deeper than they already are doing.

Loss and damage refers to the climate impacts that countries are experiencing right now but to which they cannot adapt - particularly poor, developing nations that have contributed the least to global warming. It's finding shelter for the more than 30 million people in Pakistan displaced by floods. Or relocating communities in Fiji away from coastlines that are underwater because of rising seas.

Who should pay for those and other costs, and how? Those questions could spark intense debate at COP27.

This conference will test whether the international community can respond to the increasing urgency of the crisis.

Alden Meyer, an environmental activist and policy analyst who has attended 25 of the past 26 COPs said the global negotiations must evolve from haggling over verbiage in legal treaties to helping countries meet their emissions pledges in time to avoid more climate catastrophes and protect the most vulnerable nations.

"The COPs have a culture which is zero-sum, hostage-taking, bargaining, negotiating games," Mr. Meyer said. "It's not yet clear that the people who are coming to the COPs are even the ones that can deliver the transformation of the culture and the rolling up the sleeves and making things happen in an accelerated way for the transformation that needs to occur."

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What Is COP27? And Other Questions About the Big U.N. Climate Summit

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With the world still struggling to get global warming under control, diplomats will gather in Egypt for United Nations climate talks. Here are some key facts. Credit... Alanah Sarginson Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

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The Climate and Development Lab at Brown University, USA, teamed up with the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh to develop a typology of 14 ways developed nations have resisted efforts by the developing world to create funding mechanisms under the UNFCCC to pay for losses and damages resulting from climate change. Developed nations bear most of the responsibility for the planet-warming gases that are in the atmosphere currently, but have resisted any formal mechanisms under the climate treaty. This new "field guide" to obstruction tactics may be of use to negotiators, campaigners, academics, and journalists in understanding how this thirty-year struggle has unfolded, and to understand what they are seeing and hearing in upcoming negotiations, including in Egypt at COP27.​
To read the brief, click here.

After a year defined by wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, and many dire climate projections, and an underwhelming global COP 26 summit that left many wondering what it will take to increase our ambition and urgency around a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society has released a new analysis that provides insights about who is influencing action and inaction on climate and clean energy legislation in the Connecticut State House.

After wading through thousands of pieces of testimony and analyzing lobbying expenditures from both fossil fuel and clean energy advocates, a picture begins to emerge of how the fossil fuel industry has built beachheads that give it a strategic advantage and can slow down strong climate policy and the potential for transformational change.

Here are five key takeaways from our report:

1. Climate and renewable energy solutions face a major lobbying disadvantage. The analysis showed that electric and gas utilities spent $24 million on lobbying between 2013-2020, amounting to four times that of renewable energy firms ($6 million) and more than eight times that of environmental organizations ($2.7 million).

2. A small group of anti-climate interests create the loudest opposition to climate legislation. The majority of positions taken in written testimony given by the electric/gas utility, heating oil, business association, auto, fossil fuel, and real estate sectors opposed priority climate legislation. Specific opposition to priority climate legislation most often came from AVANGRID/UIL, the CT Business and Industry Association, the Connecticut Petroleum Council, and Eversource.

3. Despite the lobbying money mismatch, supportive testimony dominates. The report is based on systematic collection and analysis of 2,940 pieces of public testimony on climate legislation, and found that despite being far outspent by anti-climate policy lobbyists, over 91 percent of testimony was supportive of climate legislation. Large numbers of testifiers supported legislation to ban fracking waste in Connecticut, facilitate shared solar energy, encourage electric vehicles, institute carbon pricing, create a Green New Deal and limit new natural gas infrastructure. Individuals speaking on their own behalf made up the largest segment of testimony, submitting over 3,000 positions on these bills - almost all in support of climate solutions legislation.

4. The messaging of opposition to climate policy is evolving. The report underscores a strategic shift in anti-climate messaging, veering away from attacks on climate science, and towards unsubstantiated arguments attacking the cost and reliability of renewable energy, as well as perceived interference in the market giving renewables an unfair advantage and projecting an image that Connecticut is "anti-business".

5. There are things we can do right now to help level the playing field. In light of our findings, the report includes a number of recommendations for the legislature and proponents of climate legislation to consider going forward, including:

Evaluating and addressing the oversized political influence of utilities

Identifying opportunities to broaden climate coalitions to help advance policy and blunt pro-fossil fuel business attacks

Confronting anti-climate solution messaging on cost, reliability, and business atmosphere

Improving transparency, accountability, and opportunities for public voice in the legislature and its committee process

To read the full report, click here.

By Cartie Werthman & Emily Rockwell, with support from Kian Kafaie and Maya Jackson
A new CDL report examines the role of public relations firms in shaping public and political opinion on climate change, finding that their campaigns for fossil fuel industry clients have shaped the federal and state response to climate change. Through profiles of over 21 public relations (PR) campaigns on behalf of clients in the oil, gas and coal industries, this report finds that these campaigns employed similar tactics to shape opinion and achieve favorable legislative outcomes.

Common tactics:

1. Distorting climate science to promote uncertainty in the severity of climate change

2. Greenwashing fossil fuel clients to make them seem more environmentally friendly than they really are

3. Mobilizing front groups to act as a mouthpiece for fossil fuel clients and create the appearance of grassroots support for opposition to environmental legislation

4. Attacking opponents

The report also found that the leading PR firms in the country often played both sides of the battle for public opinion on climate change by representing both fossil fuel and environmental clients, sometimes at the same time.
These findings illustrate how PR campaigns have adapted over time to embrace more effective strategies -undermining climate science gave way to front group mobilization and greenwashing the fossil fuel industry. This report reveals how influential PR firms are in the fight to act on climate change: almost every campaign profiled in this report sought a legislative outcome at the federal or state level - and most achieved these political wins.
Full Report Available Here

The findings suggest a range of implications for public policy, which include emphasizing the importance of legislative direction for spurring climate action at PUCs, recommending intervenor compensation programs as a means of improving public participation in PUC issues, improving utility accountability by strengthening campaign spending and lobbying rules, and more. ​Can State PUCs Lead in the Clean Energy Transition? Lessons From Six States
By Cole Triedman, Eve Lukens-Day, Amanda Hinh, and Noah Ball-Burack, with support from Prof. Timmons Roberts

"We learned a lot from this research: utility commissions are heavy influenced by the very companies they are tasked to regulate," said Prof. Timmons Roberts. "But we also learned that some states do a far more serious job of balancing that power with solid laws and oversight systems than others. We need to do better in advancing the transition off of fossil fuels, and PUCs are a crucial piece of that puzzle."
​
A new CDL report examines the challenges and opportunities that Public Utility Commissions (PUCs) are navigating as potential stewards of a clean energy transition in six diverse states: Alabama, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Washington. Each of the report's profiles investigate how the nuances of a state's political, economic, and cultural contexts, structural and procedural norms, and stakeholder dynamics explain how its PUC frames and acts on climate, as well as its overall success as a regulatory body.

Key findings:

1. Utilities often exert significant influence over commissioner appointments and elections.

2. Significant resource and structural advantages allow utilities to dominate PUC processes.

3. There is great variety on how PUCs frame and act on climate change.

4. PUCs pose significant technical and legal barriers to entry for many advocates, activists, the public, and journalists.

5. Rapidly changing renewable energy markets are influencing utility planning and commission regulation across the board.

6. 'The players' involved with PUC issues are relatively consistent across states.

7. Commission staffs vary greatly in size, expertise, and reputation.

8. Commissions fall on a spectrum from political to technocratic.

9. A revolving door between utility and commission officials is not uncommon.

FULL REPORT AVAILABLE HERE

Chamber of Obstruction: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Shifting Discourses on Climate Change, 1989-2009
By Cole Triedman, with support from Profs. Rachel Wetts & Timmons Roberts

A new CDL report examines key patterns of climate affirmation, uncertainty, denial and delay from several dozen historical U.S. Chamber of Commerce documents spanning the 1989-2009 period. The report finds that:

The findings suggest that, while the U.S. Chamber in 2019 adopted an "inaction is not an option" climate message and support for market-based climate policies, the shifts should be viewed with a heightened level of scrutiny.

After acknowledging potential adverse climate impacts predicted by climate science in 1989, the Chamber shifted to discourses of climate uncertainty and denial.

After a decade of articulating a fundamental conflict between climate action and economic prosperity, the Chamber began suggesting that a long- term, non-transformative strategy for climate progress could combine formerly competing objectives.

After delaying addressing whether or not climate change was a solvable challenge, the Chamber introduced 'surrender' discourses that discredited the possibility of remedying climate change.

The Chamber framed non-transformative visions for climate governance when significant opportunities for climate progress were absent, while directly discrediting those policies and regulatory action when opportunities were present.

Bill Kovacs pushed the Chamber to more extreme and dramatic positions on climate change.

Contact the lead author: cole_triedman@brown.edu
FULL REPORT AVAILABLE HERE ​

A new report from a CDL research team, in conjunction with the Climate Social Science Network (CSSN) and the Institute at Brown for Environment & Society (IBES), analyzes climate and energy lobbying records details the actors working against climate action in Massachusetts.

A CSSN research team at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society collected 1,187 pieces of testimony and 4,072 lobbying records from Massachusetts climate and clean energy legislation. The study reveals four lobbying coalitions against climate action, and that utilities are uniquely powerful on Beacon Hill. The study provides insights for state level climate action and a new set of tools to research them.
"If you went to the hearings, you got one picture," said Timmons Roberts, a co-author of the report and director of the climate and development lab at Brown University's Institute for Environment and Society. "But if you look at the lobbying records, it's quite the opposite picture."

Key findings

1. Four distinct industry coalitions lobby against environmentalists

2. Testimony in legislative committees is nine to one in support of climate action

3. On lobbying, clean energy advocates are outspent 3.5 to one

4. Renewable energy interest groups stick to narrow industrial interests

5. Utilities lobby against solar energy, but support large hydro & wind power

6. Utility companies are uniquely successful throughout the legislative process

7. AIM (Associated Industries of Mass.) lobbies and speaks against rapid climate action

8. The fossil fuel industry lobbies heavily against pipeline rules, divestment, and carbon pricing

9. The real estate industry resists residential energy efficiency bills

10. Power generators fight hydro and wind supply

11. Opponents no longer deny the reality of climate change, but focus on cost and reliability

12. Climate action is tightly controlled by State House committees and leadership

FULL REPORT AVAILABLE HERE

American Utilities and the Climate Change Countermovement: An Industry In Flux. A report by Cole Triedman, Andrew Javens, Jessie Sugarman, & David Wingate.

A team of four researchers at the Brown University Climate and Development Lab has released a 73-page report investigating ten large investor-owned utility companies. These companies were identified as historically central to the climate change countermovement, a complex network dedicated to opposing climate action and undermining science for the last three decades.

An elite cohort of coal, rail, and the utility companies have long nurtured close business relationships, and have coordinated closely in anti-climate action political organizations.

All major utility companies have future plans on climate change that initially appear ambitious. In reality, most demonstrate intensive future investment in natural gas and reliance on not-yet-marketable technologies.

The report profiles Southern Company, American Electric Power, Duke Energy, Dominion Energy, FirstEnergy, Ameren, DTE Energy, Entergy, Consumers Energy, and Xcel Energy. It investigates each company's business and political networks, political activity and spending, and future climate plans.

"This team at Brown has taken the most comprehensive dive to date into how the coal industrial complex has worked for decades to delay and derail government policy aimed at solving global warming." - Kert Davies, Climate Investigations Center Key Findings:
FULL REPORT AVAILABLE HERE

The CDL Shifts: Climate and Energy Influence Networks in the United States
By Timmons Roberts, Director, and the Climate and Development Lab

While at the United Nations climate change negotiations in Bonn, Germany in November 2017, the Brown University Climate and Development Lab realized that the struggle for climate change action would have to be addressed at home first. President Trump had announced earlier in the year that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, a climate diplomacy milestone whose painstaking negotiation we had witnessed two years prior. It was time to head back home, time to entirely revise the lab's research agenda and strategy and focus on getting the United States moving on this problem that threatens our society's very existence.

The lab's new research focus is on the actors and networks who have successfully blocked our nation from taking adequate action on climate change. Popular understanding of who those actors are is limited: most people jump to the Koch Brothers and Exxon-Mobil as the leaders. The story is far more complex, as our Fall 2018 report titled Countermovement Coalitions showed-- and which our current work mapping the climate change countermovement, investigating the public relations and electric utility industries, and tracking state-level lobbying expenditures confirm. The goal of our current approach is to provide a roadmap to the public and policy-makers, parsing out the money flows, organizations, personnel, and strategies being mobilized to block action on climate change at the national and state levels.

In late October this year, we travelled to Washington, DC to learn from senators, congresspeople, and their staffs, as well as journalists, activists, and other experts in the trenches of climate action, about how public policy machinery in our country really works. In the process, we had the opportunity to brief our research findings to figures at the frontlines of shaping policy and discourse around climate change. What follows are brief summaries of the four projects we put in the hands of key actors, and which we are developing into briefings and articles for the peer-reviewed literature.

Networks of Opposition: A Structural Analysis of Climate Change Countermovement Coalitions
Visiting Research Professor Bob Brulle

To expand the map of key actors involved in stopping climate action beyond just the Koch Brothers and ExxonMobil, Visiting Professor Robert Brulle examined a sample of twelve major anti-climate action coalitions from 1989 to 2015. While these coalitions involved over 2,000 organizations, a large majority of the organizations only belonged to one coalition. The 179 organizations which belonged to two or more coalitions form the core of the anti-climate action movement. This group of 179 organizations largely fell into three groups: coal, railroads, and electric utilities, the oil and gas industry, and the conservative movement. These coalitions have mobilized when efforts to act on climate change have gained political traction. There was a large effort to stop climate action surrounding the Kyoto treaty in 1997, around Senators McCain and Lieberman's Climate Stewardship Acts of 2003-2004, and then again in 2007 and 2008 to oppose climate action leading up to the 2008 election. When the Republicans took control of the House in 2010, many of the coalitions disbanded due to a lack of threat of climate action.

What this analysis ultimately shows is that opposition to climate action is not just based on ExxonMobil or the Koch Brothers network. Rather, there are three communities, each working to shape climate policy in its own interests and to oppose mandatory carbon reductions. These are the major oil companies, working primarily through API, the conservative movement, centered on the Koch network and conservative think tanks, and coal, rail, and electric utilities, operating through large coalitions. To address this multifaceted effort requires a strategy that recognizes the complexity and diversity of anti-climate action efforts.

The Public Relations Industry's Role in Shaping Countermovement Messaging
Cartie Werthman '21 (leader), Olivia Williams, Eve Lukens-Day, and Kimberly Collins
The coalitions identified above direct an enormous percentage of their spending towards public relations campaigns. Behind the scenes, leading public relations firms have largely reframed the discourse around climate action to benefit the climate change countermovement. In order to understand these long overlooked actors in the countermovement, this research team profiled twelve of the public relations firms most implicated in climate change denial and the delay of climate action.

The amount of money involved in these highly coordinated public relations campaigns was staggering. The American Petroleum Institute, which was identified in Brulle's research as a key player in the countermovement, spent more than $50 million per year on public relations over the last decade. An analysis of energy trade groups' 990 tax forms revealed that fossil fuel trade groups spent fifteen times more on public relations than the four largest renewable energy trade groups combined.

The highly lucrative contracts between the countermovement and public relations firms often last multiple years and entail a variety of tactics: astroturf front groups, greenwashing, and personal attacks against their opposition. In fact, several of the astroturf front groups profiled in the CDL's Countermovement Coalitions report were run largely by large public relations firms. They can be effective opposition to climate legislation: on behalf of the American Petroleum Institute, the PR firm Edelman created the front group Energy Citizens, which presented itself as a citizens group when it organized 20 rallies around the country to protest the 2009 American Clean Energy and Security Act during the August congressional recess. When some of these public relations firms faced scrutiny for these climate denial campaigns, they quickly transferred the fossil fuel accounts to subsidiary firms in order to avoid public backlash. Without the work of these leading public relations firms, the climate change countermovement would not have been able to frame the climate action discourse around denial and delay to the extent it has.

Countermovement Utilities: An American Industry in Flux
Cole Triedman '21 (leader), Jessie Sugarman, Andrew Javens, David Wingate

The coal-rail-utility cohort identified in Professor Brulle's research is not necessarily surprising: they represent three carbon-intensive industries that have driven the extraction, transportation, generation and distribution of America's primary historical source of energy. This project focuses on this cohort, profiling ten electric and natural gas utility companies historically active in the climate change countermovement. It investigates business and political relationships with coal and rail companies and interrogating their future energy generation plans. Our research found that many of the same coal companies (Peabody Energy, Murray Energy, and Alliance Resource Partners, among others), and almost exclusively the same four rail companies (BNSF, CSX, Union Pacific, and Norfolk Southern), were doing business with the profiled utilities-- again and again. Furthermore, through the membership, leadership, and funding of the same business associations, think tanks, and climate denial coalitions, this elite cohort of companies have coordinated on anti-climate efforts for decades. Several of the country's most formidable climate denial groups, including active denial juggernaut America's Power, are in fact dominated by this industry trio.

In 2019, ignoring the threats of climate change is no longer economically viable for even the most carbon-intensive industries. To that end, each of the ten utility companies profiled have recently published seemingly ambitious emissions reductions plans, many planning to reduce emissions by 80% or more by 2050. Our analysis of these documents find: 1) Each company plans for reduced coal use, 2) Each plans for aggressive investment in natural gas infrastructure, 3) Most plan for greater shares of natural gas-fired electricity generation compared to renewable energy, and 4) Most cite not-yet-marketable technological innovations in their emissions reductions plans. While the utility industry's departure from coal may point towards a fracturing of the historically well-coordinated coal-rail-utilities cohort, its demonstrated future reliance on natural gas infrastructure and innovation calls their decarbonization commitments into question.

Discourses of Delay In Massachusetts Climate Lobbying and Testimony
Professor Timmons Roberts and Galen Hall '20 (leaders), Trevor Culhane, Dana Kurniawan, Derek Russell
Research on climate and energy politics in Massachusetts revealed a microcosm of the same dynamics that play out at the national level. Massachusetts once led the pack of states addressing climate change through legislation with its passage of the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, but progress has stagnated in recent years. This delay comes at a critical time for climate action, and despite multiple popular campaigns for more ambitious clean energy legislation from citizens' groups. In that context, this group's study asked: Who are the actors pushing for and against more ambitious climate policy in Massachusetts? How do they make their case in public? And what tactics do they employ privately?

This group analyzed the public testimony that environmental groups and others gave at hearings for climate and energy legislation over the past six years, as well as testimony given by opposition groups. This testimony was categorized into different discourses, such as appeals to social justice or economic efficiency, which we used to qualitatively describe the way different coalitions advocated in public. Using a public database of lobbying activity in the state, the group compared the prominent actors who submitted public testimony to those who engage in the most lobbying. While environmental groups publicly testify far more than utilities and energy companies, the latter vastly overshadow environmental groups in terms of lobbying. The three largest utilities in the state each spend over $50,000 per year at the State House, for instance. These findings, combined with information from multiple expert interviews, paint a picture of political stagnation caused by entrenched utility and energy companies operating behind closed doors.

ExxonMobil Charitable Giving Practices
Visiting Research Professor Bob Brulle (leader), Brett Cotler, Celia Hack, Finn Lowden
While Robert Brulle's work has found that the climate change countermovement involves far more actors than just the Koch network and ExxonMobil, it is undeniable that ExxonMobil has been a leader of the countermovement. Since the 1980s, one of the primary mechanisms that the multinational oil giant has used to push climate denial is charitable giving. This research group is working to build a comprehensive database of Exxon, Mobil, and ExxonMobil's charitable contributions from 1980 to the present, and plans to examine the charitable giving practices of other major fossil fuel corporations in the future. The preliminary report specifically analyzed Exxon and Mobil contributions to institutions of higher education from 1980 to 1988, the year when James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, gave his public testimony to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on the dangers of climate change-- the first such testimony to draw national attention.

Although fossil fuel corporations' efforts to sow seeds of doubt extend far beyond university campuses, their efforts to build relationships with the nation's premier institutions of higher education have profound consequences. Some instances of the consequences of ExxonMobil's donations include the ability to influence what topics and technologies are researched at universities. If universities attempt to advance unfavorable research, ExxonMobil can withhold decades-long donations that departments depend on to function. In addition, funding for research programs on marine or atmospheric sciences in the 1980s indicate that fossil fuel producing corporations may have been aware of anthropogenic climate change prior to Dr. Hansen's testimony in 1988. Their donations also could have been used to influence department heads, scholars, and utilize school resources to conduct potentially-biased advanced research in the climate and atmospheric sciences, geology, policy, and Middle East studies departments.

October's trip was stunningly successful, especially for just our second year traveling to Washington. Our highlights were briefing members of Congress, watching a Congressional hearing titled "Examining the Oil Industry's Efforts to Suppress the Truth about Climate Change" in person, and cooking feasts each night for experts and advocates that quickly became friends. We were effective in raising some awareness of the complex network perpetrating climate denial and delay, but our work has only begun. We will continue with these projects, polishing results, preparing policy briefings, building up our outreach capacity, and distributing our work. The bigger project remains to be done, but it has begun.

Timmons Roberts,
Director, Robert Brulle, Visiting Research Professor, Cartie Werthman, Undergraduate TA, Cole Triedman, Undergraduate TA, Kim Collins, Brett Cotler, Celia Hack, Galen Hall, Andrew Javens, Dana Kurniawan, Finn Lowden, Eve Lukens-Day, Derek Russell, Jessie Sugarman, Olivia Williams, David Wingate.

​By Professor Timmons Roberts and the Climate and Development Lab

​For years, Brown University students in my "Engaged Climate Policy" course watched firsthand the negotiations to design the Paris Agreement, eventually adopted by 196 countries in 2015. Taking 15 students to the United Nations climate change negotiations across the globe since 2010, the course was unique in the U.S. The class was the center of my Climate and Development Lab, consisting of a dozen Brown undergraduates, a couple of grad students, research fellows, postdocs and myself, who conducted original policy research and spent a week at the negotiations "embedded" with top research institutes, environmental and international organizations from around the world.

Then in June, 2017, President Trump announced that he'd be withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. With a record delegation of 18 Brown students at the UN talks in Germany in 2017, we heard U.S. dignitaries like Michael Bloomberg and Jerry Brown proclaim that "We Are Still In!"-- that states, cities and corporations would pick up the slack and meet the pledge to reduce emissions our nation made in Paris. As the country most responsible for the greenhouse gases disrupting our planet's climate, the rest of the world has always looked to us to do the heavy lifting. These local efforts are therefore crucial. To keep the effort by the international community to solve this wicked problem moving forward, national efforts matter most. We needed to get back in.

Therefore, it was time for us to change course.

​Five years ago this week we reported from Doha, Qatar, on the creation of AILAC at COP18. The group made important contributions to the creation of the Paris Agreement alongside the Small Island States, Least Development Countries, the EU and others. AILAC's Peru also hosted COP20 in 2014, which helped to tee up a successful outcome in Paris.

Now at COP24 in Katowice, AILAC is pushing for countries to agree a process to increase ambition in 2020 guided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 1.5 degree Celsius report. To complement this process and to demonstrate their commitment to advancing domestic climate action, three of its members - Chile, Costa Rica and Guatemala - communicated their interest in hosting COP25 in 2019.

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The Climate and Development Lab at Brown University, USA, teamed up with the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh to develop a typology of 14 ways developed nations have resisted efforts by the developing world to create funding mechanisms under the UNFCCC to pay for losses and damages resulting from climate change.

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MECCE/SEPN Special Edition: COP27 E-News

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If you are going to actively participate remotely in meetings (i.e. Join), you will need to have the latest version of Microsoft Teams and also the Zoom software installed on your computer or mobile device.

MS Teams is the default software being used for most virtual meetings. Zoom is required for meetings that have interpretation.

Please take note of the hardware requirements for MS Teams on the Microsoft website, and for Zoom on the Zoom website.

To simply watch meetings in the platform, no additional software is required.

Click to download MS Teams/ Zoom

Essential connectivity tips

Use a hard-wired Internet connection to your computer. This is more stable than using WIFI.

Check your internet bandwidth. It should be at least 15-20 Mbps for downloads and 5 Mbps for uploads.

Ensure only one device is using your Internet bandwidth during the time you are presenting. This will result in better quality connection to the video call software.

Sound and video

Use an external headset with microphone incorporated (wired-in is best, NO Bluetooth).

If you want to test your device and set-up, please take the time to join a test meeting inside the COP 27 platform.

To access the Platform the preferred browser is Google Chrome. An alternative is Microsoft Edge. Same browsers apply for Apple Mac devices. Please note that Internet Explorer, Safari, or Firefox are not fully supported.

Click to download Google Chrome

Setting up the stage for your video call

Find a quiet space with a plain background and place your computer on a flat surface.

Make sure your face is well lit. Use a light ring or natural light from a window.

Camera should be at eye level so you are looking directly at the camera.

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Join the COP 27 virtual platform | UNFCCC

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If you are going to actively participate remotely in meetings (i.e. Join), you will need to have the latest version of Microsoft Teams and also the Zoom software installed on your computer or mobile device. MS Teams is the default software being used for most virtual meetings.

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Your browser was unable to load all of Trello's resources. They may have been blocked by your firewall, proxy or browser configuration.Press Ctrl+F5 or Ctrl+Shift+R to have your browser try again and if that doesn't work, check out our troubleshooting guide .

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Youth as Key Leaders in Transforming Climate Promises into Inclusive Action

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UN Climate Change， 波恩. 489,692 次赞 · 86,100 人在谈论. The official Facebook page of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

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Data Explorer

How are nations doing on net zero targets compared with companies? How many regions and cities have published a plan to get to net zero? How many companies rule out the use of offsets or cover their Scope 3 emissions?

Explore aggregated data across the 4,073 entities in our database.

Note: We analyse all nations that are parties to the UNFCCC, every region in the largest 25 emitting nations, all cities with over 500,000 inhabitants, and the world's largest 2,000 publicly listed companies by revenue.

Global Net Zero Coverage

Country-level coverage only. We do not include sub-national net zero targets in countries without a target.

We provide an overview of the 2,000 largest publicly-traded companies in the world by revenue.
For those we find with a net zero (or other) target, we analyse the key components of that pledge.

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We analyse all countries and territories, every region in the 25 largest emitting countries and all cities with 500,000+ inhabitants.

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By Climate Champions | November 8, 2022

Launch of the Sharm-El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda - a comprehensive, shared agenda to rally global action around 30 adaptation outcomes that are needed to address the adaptation gap and achieve a resilient world by 2030

The Adaptation Agenda will accelerate transformative actions by countries, regions, cities, businesses, investors and civil society to adapt to the acute climate hazards facing vulnerable communities

COP President calls on State and non-State actors to join Agenda at COP27 and beyond

In response to the devastating impacts of climate change affecting vulnerable people all over the world, the COP27 Presidency today launches the Sharm-El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda in partnership with the High-Level Champions and the Marrakech Partnership.

The Sharm-El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda outlines 30 Adaptation Outcomes to enhance resilience for 4 billion people living in the most climate vulnerable communities by 2030. Each outcome presents global solutions that can be adopted at a local level to respond to local climate contexts, needs and risks and deliver the systems transformation required to protect vulnerable communities to the rising climate hazards, such as extreme heat, drought, flooding, or extreme weather. It comes as research warns that nearly half the world's population will be at severe risk of climate change impacts by 2030, even in a 1.5-degree world according to analysis published by IPCC AR6 WG II Report and the UN Climate Change High-Level Climate Champions.

Collectively, these outcomes represent the first comprehensive global plan to rally both State and non-State actors behind a shared set of adaptation actions that are required by the end of this decade across five impact systems: food and agriculture, water and nature, coastal and oceans, human settlements, and infrastructure, and including enabling solutions for planning and finance.

The 30 Adaptation Outcomes include urgent global 2030 targets related to:

Transitioning to climate resilient, sustainable agriculture that can increase yields by 17% and reduce farm level greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 21%, without expanding agricultural frontiers, and while improving livelihoods including of smallholder farmers

Protecting and restoring an estimated 400 million hectares in critical areas (land and freshwater ecosystems) supporting indigenous and local communities with use of nature-based solutions to improve water security and livelihoods and to transform 2 billion hectares of land into sustainable management.

Protecting 3 billion people by installing smart and early warning systems

Investing USD 4 billion to secure the future of 15 million hectares of mangroves through collective action to halt loss, restore, double protection and ensure sustainable finance for all existing mangroves.

Expanding access to clean cooking for 2.4 billion people through at least USD 10 billion/year in innovative finance.

Mobilising USD 140 to USD 300 billion needed across both public and private sources for adaptation and resilience and spur 2,000 of the world's largest companies to integrate physical climate risk and develop actionable adaptation plans

In a sign of recognition of this major milestone for the global adaptation process, the Adaptation Agenda is being driven by the COP27 Presidency, the High-Level Champions and Marrakech Partnership and underpinned by the 2,000+ organisations spanning 131 countries in the Race to Resilience campaign.

At the launch today, COP27 President Sameh Shoukry and High-Level Champions Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin and Nigel Topping, called on all State and non-State actors to get behind this critical Agenda.

COP27 President and Egypt's Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry: "It is our aspiration that the Sharm-El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda represents a significant contribution to enhancing global action on adaptation and resilience as an utmost priority. The COP 27 Presidency is keen to develop a governance arrangement to secure continuity in scope, priorities and reporting. It will lead the work building on: a) the adaptation focused initiatives launched by COP27 Presidency at COP27 that shall accelerate action across system interventions and b) the adaptation and resilience outcome targets identified by the High-Level Champions. The Marrakech Partnership, the High-Level Champions and a number of specialised UN agencies will work together- as partners- to accelerate an agenda of global adaptation action through following up on the implementation of Sharm-El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda. The COP 27 Presidency will receive - before COP 28 - from the High-Level Champions, the Marrakech Partnership and a number of specialised UN agencies a report on the progress achieved in implementing the Sharm-El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda. Overall progress on implementation will be reported back to COP 28."

Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP27: "The Outcomes were identified jointly with a broad range of active stakeholders, reflecting existing and new global targets based on science along with local knowledge and initiatives. The Outcome targets will continue to be refined and expanded by the High-Level Champions with inputs from State and non-State actors to support their operationalization. At the core of the Outcomes is the recognition that adaptation is often locally-driven and globally relevant, whilel simultaneously needing to address equity, diversity and justice. This agenda will accelerate the Race to Resilience's global goal of making 4 billion vulnerable people more resilient by 2030. Of particular importance is the role of key enablers like finance and planning to accelerate adaptation in the near-term. USD140 to USD300 billion needs to be mobilised across both public and private sources annually with a minimum target of 50% for adaptation, as called by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Of particular concern and focus is Africa, where the private finance share in the total financing of climate adaptation efforts is not more than 3% ($11.4 billion). Seven times that amount will be needed annually until 2030."

Simon Stiell UNFCCC Executive Secretary: "The Sharm el-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda firmly puts key human needs at its core, along with concrete, specific action on the ground to build resilience to climate change. As the growing number of climate emergencies throughout the world clearly shows, focusing on adaptation is a crucial, pressing necessity. The Adaptation Agenda outlines multiple actions and combines the commitments of governments and non-Party stakeholders into a joint vision and a joint plan. We need all stakeholders on board to deal with current and future impacts of climate change, and this is a prime example of how that can happen."

The Agenda emphasises the urgency for counting with evidence-based, actionable adaptation plans for all actors, making climate risks visible and accessible, and to deploy the locally-led adaptation principles.
The Sharm-El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda: Food Security and Agriculture Systems

Climate resilient, sustainable agriculture increases yields by 17% and reduces farm level greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 21%, without expansion of the agricultural frontier.

Halve the share of food production lost, and per capita food waste (relative to 2019).

Healthy alternative proteins capture 15% of the global meat and seafood market.

Healthy alternative proteins capture 15% of the global meat and seafood market.

The global consumption of fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts and legumes increases 1.5 times.

Water and Nature Systems

Protection of 45 million hectares (lands and inland waters), 2 billion hectares sustainable management and 350 million hectares restoration of land securing legal indigenous and local communities with use of nature-based solutions to improve water security and livelihoods.

By 2025: financial institutions contribute to halting land conversion by eliminating commodity-driven deforestation from portfolios and tap into nature-based solutions investment opportunities of USD 354 billion/year needed by 2030.

Water systems are smart, efficient and robust with a reduction in water loss through leakage.

Wastewater systems maximise recycling and reuse alongside natural wetland filtration with zero environmental spillage.

Sustainable irrigation systems are implemented across 20% of global croplands to preserve water availability whilst supporting yield growth.

Human Settlements Systems

1 billion people have better design, construction and access to finance to live in decent, safe homes.

Smart and early warning systems reach 3 billion people.

USD 1 trillion invested in nature based solutions for communities in urban areas.

Harden social infrastructure to ensure access to basic and essential community services.*

Increased use of waste as a secondary resource boosts the livelihoods of informal workers and reduces open waste burning by 60%, lowering pollution levels and improving the health of local communities.

Ocean and Coastal Systems

Invest USD 4 billion to secure the future of 15 million hectares of mangroves globally through collective action on halting mangrove loss, restoring half of recent losses, doubling protection of mangroves globally and ensuring sustainable long-term finance for all existing mangroves.

Halt loss, protect and restore coral reefs to support people in tropical communities.

Halt loss, protect and restore seagrass, marshes, and kelp forests to support people in temperate communities.

Urban coastline is protected by grey and hybrid solutions.

Infrastructure Systems

A diverse set of energy generation sources enable affordable access to electricity for 679 million unconnected people and higher quality access for 1 billion underserved people through climate resilient energy systems.

4 billion people with access to clean cooking through at least USD 10 billion/year in innovative finance for clean cooking action worldwide.

585 GW of battery storage capacity and extension of transmission and distribution networks enable decentralised generation and consumption.

2 billion people access low-cost, clean vehicles and mobility solutions through the expansion of affordable public and private transport services.

Transport infrastructure is resilient to climate hazards through adoption of new technology, design and materials.

Cross-cutting: Planning

10,000 cities and 100 regional governments have evidence-based, actionable adaptation plans.

2,000 of the world's largest companies developed actionable adaptation plans.

Universal access to the tools and information required to integrate climate risks into decision making from local to global levels.

Operationalisation of National Adaptation Plans and Locally-Led Principles, enabling adaptation in a country-driven localised and consultative manner.

Crosscutting: Finance

Private sector integrates physical climate risks into investment decisions and continues to innovate mechanisms for financing adaptation and resilience so as to enable the mobilisation of the USD 140 to USD 300 billion that will be needed across both public and private sources.

Public finance actors increase provision of climate finance and allocate 50% of climate funds to adaptation and resilience.

Global property and casualty insurance sector has an industry capabilities framework, actively supports project implementation, and institutionalises a longer-term industry approach to climate adaptation.

Notes to editors For any press enquiries contact rtz@brunswickgroup.com

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COP27 Presidency launches Adaptation Agenda to build climate resilience for 4 billion by 2030 - Climate Champions

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By Climate Champions | November 8, 2022 Launch of the Sharm-El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda - a comprehensive, shared agenda to rally global action around 30 adaptation outcomes that are needed to address the adaptation gap and achieve a resilient world by 2030 The Adaptation Agenda will accelerate transformative actions by countries,

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A UN group set up to crack down on the greenwashing of net zero pledges by industry and government has called for "red lines" to stop support for new fossil fuel exploration and overuse of carbon offsets.

The "high-level expert group", created in March by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, to advise on rules to improve integrity and transparency in net zero commitments by industry, regions and cities, said climate plans must include deep cuts in greenhouse gases before 2030, and not delay action until closer to 2050.

It stressed serious commitments must prioritise immediate cuts in absolute emissions, with carbon offsets - which allow companies and governments to pay for cuts elsewhere instead of reducing their own pollution - to be used sparingly. Rules were needed to ensure offsets were high-quality and came from a reliable and verifiable source, the group said.

The group of experts was created after widespread concern about greenwashing, including claims by major fossil fuel companies that they were aiming for net zero emissions by 2050 while backing new coal, oil and gas developments and relying heavily on offsets.

A Guardian investigation this year revealed that ​​oil and gas companies, including several with net zero pledges, were still planning vast new developments that would push the world well beyond the goals of the landmark 2015 Paris agreement. In Australia, they include Woodside, which has taken on BHP's global petroleum assets and is planning to open new fields off the north-west coast.

Net zero plans already adopted have drawn criticism for being vague, delaying action until it is too late and relying too heavily on reductions claimed from unrelated nature-based offset projects, such as tree planting and supporting forest regrowth. While offsets have enjoyed wide support from governments and industry as a cheaper way to cut pollution than absolute cuts, the experts said they should only be used after a business or regional or local government had met short and medium-term targets.

Releasing the report at the Cop27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, the expert group's chair, the former Canadian climate minister Catherine McKenna, said net zero pledges must be "about cutting emissions, not corners".

"Right now, the planet cannot afford delays, excuses, or more greenwashing,' she said.

Panel member Bill Hare, a climate scientist and chief executive of Climate Analytics, said no one could ignore the need to "immediately and drastically cut emissions".

"If industry, financial institutions, cities and regions mean what they say in their net zero pledges, they will adopt these recommendations," he said. "If fossil fuel companies think that they can expand production under a net zero target, they need to think again."

The experts said non-state actors should have to report publicly each year, backing up their claims with verifiable information, to prevent dishonest climate accounting. They called for voluntary net zero commitments for large corporate emitters to be replaced with regulated requirements, and said industry must address "scope 3" emissions - those released through the use of their products - as well as direct pollution.

Guterres said: "A growing number of governments and [companies] are pledging to be carbon free - and that's good news. The problem is that the criteria and benchmarks for these net zero commitments have varying levels of rigour and loopholes wide enough to drive a diesel truck through," he said. "We must have zero tolerance for net zero greenwashing."

The secretary general also had strong words for fossil fuel companies: "So-called 'net zero pledges' that exclude core products [coal, oil, gas] are poisoning our planet. Using bogus net-zero pledges to cover up massive fossil fuel expansion is reprehensible. This toxic cover-up could push our world over the climate cliff."

The report was backed by Laurence Tubiana, the chief executive of the European Climate Foundation and considered one of the architects of the Paris agreement as French environment minister. She said living up to that deal demanded drawing "a clear line on true net zero - what it really means and requires, and what is simply greenwashing".

"We can't afford creative accounting," she said. "I urge all actors - including cities, regions, businesses, investors, alliances, countries, and regulators to take these recommendations seriously and embed them with urgency."

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UN experts demand crackdown on greenwashing of net zero pledges

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A UN group set up to crack down on the greenwashing of net zero pledges by industry and government has called for "red lines" to stop support for new fossil fuel exploration and overuse of carbon offsets.

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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Nov 8 (Reuters) - As negotiators at COP27 wrangle over whether wealthy polluters should help vulnerable nations pay for costly extreme weather events fueled by climate change, a handful of small, European governments has stepped up to offer " loss and damage" funds.

The modest tally so far is nowhere near the hundreds of billions of dollars that experts predict will be needed each year by 2030 to help communities repair and rebuild when disasters hit. But the moves have broken decades of refusal by rich nations to offer such reparations or to discuss their historical responsibility for climate change for fear of liabilities.

Here are the pledges made so far:

SCOTLAND

Scotland, a nation within the United Kingdom, was the first to offer loss and damage funding at last year's U.N. climate summit in November, making a symbolic 2 million pound pledge as a way to encourage other countries to follow suit.

While vulnerable countries say one-off commitments are no substitute for a fund to provide ongoing support, some praised Scotland's leadership in acknowledging the issue.

At COP27 on Tuesday, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon pledged an extra 5 million pounds, bringing the total to £7 million.

DENMARK

Denmark committed 100 million Danish crowns in September, with a focus on fragile areas including the Sahel region in northwestern Africa.

GERMANY

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Monday at COP27 that Germany would provide 170 million euros for a "Global Shield" initiative launched by the Group of Seven rich countries and finance ministers from the Climate Vulnerable Forum group of 58 developing countries on the frontline of climate impacts. The initiative is aimed at strengthening insurance and disaster protection finance.

Scholz did not specify what the German funding would cover or over which period it would be provided. Countries are expected to formally launch the "Global Shield" later in the summit.

AUSTRIA

Austria will provide at least 50 million euros to tackle loss and damage over the next four years, the government said on Tuesday.

The funds could support the "Santiago Network", a U.N. scheme providing technical support to countries faced with damages from climate-fuelled natural disasters, and a programme providing early warning systems to countries prone to extreme weather.

IRELAND

Irish PM Micheal Martin committion 10 million euros to the "Global Shield" initiative for 2023.

BELGIUM

Belgium on Monday pledged 2.5 million euros as part of a 25-million-euro package of climate-related support for the southern African country of Mozambique from 2023 to 2028.

The government said its funding would focus on preventing and limiting loss and damage, for example by mapping areas vulnerable to storm surges and by rolling out early warning systems.

Some vulnerable countries say that type of funding does not count as "loss and damage" money, which they say should compensate countries for unavoidable costs from disasters.

Wealthy countries already provide funds to help countries adapt to climate change by preparing for worse weather impacts, although this funding has fallen short of promised amounts. In 2020 rich countries provided $83.3 billion in climate finance, a third of which went to adaptation.

Reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by Katy Daigle

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Factbox: COP27: Which countries have offered 'loss and damage' funds?

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SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Nov 8 (Reuters) - As negotiators at COP27 wrangle over whether wealthy polluters should help vulnerable nations pay for costly extreme weather events fueled by climate change, a handful of small, European governments has stepped up to offer " loss and damage" funds.

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