There’s no getting around it. The recently concluded climate talks in Bonn have left the goal of limiting global heating to under 1.5C in peril.  The reason: rich countries are backtracking on their financial pledges.   

The crucial deadline for next year’s new national climate plans, known as NDCs – which are the bedrock for the collective global effort to tackle climate change – are now in danger. This is because developing countries have no assurances that the climate finance they were promised, and which fund the NDCs, will be there.  

The theme of this year’s COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, is supposed to be climate finance. It is the meeting where the world is tasked with agreeing a new long-term global finance goal.  

This goal is the key ingredient to tackling climate injustice, and how we help vulnerable people adapt to the climate crisis and fund the transition to a zero-carbon energy system. However, at the mid-year talks in Bonn this month, rich countries dragged their feet, blocked progress and deliberately offered only vague signals about their intentions.  

UN climate chief warns of “steep mountain to climb” for COP29 after Bonn blame-game

They also attempted to unpick the commitment they made at COP28 in Dubai: to have an annual dialogue specifically on climate finance. They are now suggesting it cover other issues.  

Rich countries also used up valuable time arguing about who should pay the bill, trying to get some developing countries to also be included in the donor base. This was something they continued to talk about in the G7 summit communique issued this weekend. Delay and fudging on the new climate finance goal are hugely dangerous because the Bonn session was crucial to ensuring a successful COP29. 

Waiting for US election? 

COP summits take a huge amount of preparation with negotiators taking all year to lay the groundwork for the final landing zones that will be finalised this year in Baku. Leaving it all to the last minute would be disastrous and could result in a failure that derails international momentum on climate change just as Donald Trump is elected US President. 

The infuriating go-slow in Bonn seems to be because countries are waiting for the result of this election before making any finance commitments. This is folly.   

The need for a coalition of the sensible – to counter the ignorance and malice emanating from a potential Trump White House – will only be greater should the Republican candidate win.  

The victims of the climate crisis will need support, and the energy transition will need to be funded, whoever is elected as the next US president. Dragging out the process to the point where Baku might end up being a chaotic rush will only make things worse.  

COP29 host lacks influence 

The horrors of climate change continue to rage daily. Heatwaves mercilessly ravage lives, with over 100 people reported dead in India and over 50 lives claimed in Sudan during the Bonn talks. These are not just statistics; they are human lives from vulnerable countries, who once dared to hope for a better tomorrow.  

The dark clouds forming over Baku are compounded by the fact that the Azeri presidency for COP29 is inexperienced, with few diplomatic allies and lacking in geopolitical or economic weight to knock heads together as needed. The lack of a strong host in 2024 means we need to see leadership from other quarters. 

Bonn talks on climate finance goal end in stalemate on numbers

Those other would-be leaders must ensure that the negotiators see the coming dangers ahead and work to catch up and avoid them. The crucial opportunities for this are the UN General Assembly summit in September and the pre-COP meeting in Baku. It’s vital that much clearer and more ambitious negotiations take place so that ministers have a streamlined process when they get to Baku in November.   

Without that, we risk getting an underwhelming finance goal or even a failed COP. That would imperil millions of people who need climate finance, as well as taking the wind out of the sails of the NDCs from developing countries, which are due to be published next year.  How can these poorer countries be expected to slay the climate dragon with paper swords, having gotten zero assurances on the long-term finance they need?  

If countries can set a clear and unambiguous path for future finance in Baku, then the world will be set up for a hope-filled and ambitious round of climate action plans next year. This is the best way to protect the world from the volatility of the US election. The work to achieve that starts now.  

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This global goal is a playbook for how the world is going to adapt to a climate that is changing rapidly and will continue to change, even if we ended fossil fuel use today. Across the world millions of people, most of whom are least responsible for carbon emissions, are attempting to adapt their lives and livelihoods to a distorted climate.

This adaptation playbook is about more than money. It covers adaptation plans for a host of sectors, including farming, nature, health, water and transport among others. To be useful, this playbook needs a series of targets to plan actions, track investments and assess the effectiveness of adaptation measures and spending. These metrics need to specify what changes are needed to be in line with the science, by when and how to measure progress.

Funding gap

Although it isn’t just about money, funding is important and severely lacking. The goal for 2023 was to raise $300m for the Adaptation Fund, but at Cop28 we’ve only seen $169m in pledges, a mere 56% of the intended amount.

This is particularly galling considering that only last month, the UN’s Environment Programme published its Adaptation Gap report which calculates the difference between the world’s adaptation need and the amount of finance that has been committed. It found that this gap stands at around $387 billion. This is 10-18 times the actual finance flows to the countries and 50% more than the previous estimate.

Considering emissions are still going up, it’s a travesty that adaptation spending is falling. We are on course for a humanitarian crisis if this adaptation funding doesn’t match the rise in emissions.  And adaptation finance is great value for money.  As Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley pointed out at Cop28, every $1 invested in adaptation saves $7 in loss and damage.

For example, small-scale family farms are especially vulnerable and need urgent scaling up of adaptation finance; 2.5 billion people rely on them for a livelihood. They produce a third of the world’s food and as much as half of the calories consumed globally but receive just 0.3% of climate finance.

US blocking

The problem is that here in Dubai, rich countries, especially the US, are blocking progress on the adaptation playbook. To some degree that’s understandable. It is rich, high emitting countries like the US that need to contribute most to adaptation funding and take responsibility for the climate harm they have caused and continue to cause.

But by dragging their feet, these countries are playing games with people’s lives. The adaptation talks at Cop28 are crucial as we’re not going to reduce emissions fast enough and therefore do actually need to tackle the impacts of climate change. We can’t just settle for vague and aspirational objectives, we need a concrete plan that spells out how adaptation will be implemented for the people that need it most.

African countries are the biggest cheerleaders for adaptation. It is Africans who are facing some of the most damaging impacts from the climate crisis. It’s no wonder that Africa’s chief negotiator in Dubai said agreement in Dubai on adaptation was a matter of life and death.

The Cop28 host nation’s close ties with the fossil fuel industry understandably makes for an easy story, but when it comes to whether this Cop did enough to help the world’s climate vulnerable, it will be on whether it delivers strong language on a robust global response to the adaptation crisis that will be the real test.

Mohamed Adow is the founder and director of Power Shift Africa

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Politicians, businesses, some NGOs and big philanthropy are trying to get an African Carbon Market Initiative off the ground, which would allow companies to buy carbon credits in exchange for continued emissions.

It’s become a major topic of controversy in the run up to the Africa Climate Summit this month. But Africa’s leaders should think twice before supporting this wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The idea is that some of the money paid by the corporations for these “carbon credits” – or more accurately, permits to pollute – would go towards projects in Africa that avoid or reduce emissions: renewable energy projects, or land and nature schemes that aim to capture carbon from the atmosphere.

But a number of key questions are being ignored – do they work for African people, the climate and development?

UAE pitches itself as Africa’s carbon credits leader

For western polluters, they are a silver bullet painkiller that allows them to keep pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But for Africa, they are a placebo drug that ends up making the pain of climate change far worse.

Africa is indeed right to demand climate funding from the global north, who caused the climate crisis which is devastating African people, economies, and nature in the first place.

But instead of signing up to a carbon market initiative that is full of booby traps, African leaders should use the opportunity to work together with others in the global south to interrogate where the real and essential money is for the critical role we play in protecting forests and nature, without which the Paris Agreement would fail?

Where is the money for the actions to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change that we need and deserve?

African leaders skirt over fossil fuels in climate summit declaration

A string of summits – the Amazon Summit last month, the Africa Climate Summit, the Three Basins Summit, and Cop28 – offer real opportunities for Southern leaders to drive forward financing options that aren’t merely set up to cover for the big polluters.

African leaders have three serious questions to ask about the African Carbon Market Initiative.

The first: will this cut pollution, or enable it? For global corporations, purchasing credits is the cheapest way to avoid real cuts and continue business as usual.

Take Delta Airlines: they claimed to be carbon neutral, in part down to the purchase of tens of millions of carbon credits per year. Meanwhile, they continue to operate 4,000 flights a day.

Calculations like this rely on the argument that a ton of carbon pumped out is equivalent to a ton of carbon avoided, or captured in forests or agricultural land. This is wrong.

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Fossil fuel emissions are permanent, but storing carbon in nature is fragile: forests burn down, loggers move in, and the carbon is released again. That means a hotter world: and for Africa, more droughts, floods and devastating storms. 

The second question Africa’s leaders must ask: when we follow the money, who wins? Two players benefit from carbon markets more than anyone else: fossil fuel companies, and the financial brokers who buy and sell credits with huge markups.

Fossil fuel giants see their product legitimised, because polluters can continue to burn it by buying pollution permits.

Carbon credit traders are in line for hefty profits too: one study found that some brokers sell credits for three times the price they pay to the project that actually created them.

Southeast Asia must not let Japan hijack its energy transition

Because they profit from every trade, they’re incentivised to create, trade and speculate on as many carbon credits as possible – so a market claimed to be worth $100 could actually be due to a single $10 credit being traded ten times. African countries will be sorely disappointed when the actual flow of funds is well below the market value they’re promised.

The third question leaders need to answer: Will carbon markets promote development? What do African people gain from this? It won’t be the money they deserve: financial brokers pocket plenty of the cash before it reaches projects in Africa. And promises of economic development by the African Carbon Markets Initiative rely on exaggerated claims for job creation and income.

Indeed, since carbon markets were started more than two decades ago, initially with the Kyoto Protocol, there’s a large body of evidence showing offsetting schemes mean insecurity and land grabs.

‘Carbon bomb’ in Argentina gets push from local government

Planting new forests requires land, and so does flooding valleys for new hydropower projects.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, families were kicked off land they had owned and farmed for generations to make way for a carbon offsetting project for oil giant Total Energies.

Similar stories ripple through countries, like Colombia, who’ve had similar experiences. Which is why Indigenous communities from South America spoke out against carbon markets at Cop26.

Instead, Africa needs to take control of the discussion about how to finance our response to the climate crisis.

There is a lot at stake: adaptation costs in Africa as well as the costs for a clean energy transition and other measures to build zero-carbon societies will amount to hundreds of billions of dollars a year over the coming decades.

US denies rigging loss and damage fund’s board in rich nations’ favour

We can’t afford to lock ourselves into the constraints of illusory and non-functioning carbon markets.

Africa is blessed with world-leading talent, the planet’s best sources of wind, sun, biodiversity and geothermal energy, and the ability to leapfrog other continents to the technologies of the future.

We should consider a new “polluter pays” funding mechanism, where polluting businesses would pay towards reducing emissions and adapting to climate change, where Africa defines its own needs.

The amount they pay would increase over time, to incentivise companies to stay within the limits of the Paris Agreement.

The money would boost African capacity for clean, resilient and affordable development led by local communities. It would remove the market brokers and middlemen and maximise money to projects.

We need a plan for debt cancellation, more domestic investment in renewables, an end to fossil fuel subsidies and investments, and a fair share of climate finance for Africa. Africa can’t afford another false solution to the climate crisis.  

Mohammed Adow is the founding director of Power Shift Africa, a Nairobi based climate change and energy think tank.

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So, it is a joy to see this year’s meeting, which happened to take place on African soil in Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh, finally respond to the calls of those on the front line of the climate emergency.

Countries at Cop27 agreed to create a special fund for “loss and damage” which will effectively compensate people who have suffered the most severe climate impacts, ones so bad they cannot be adapted to.

It’s a remarkable achievement considering that vulnerable countries had to fight to even get the issue on the agenda in the first few days of the meeting. Many of us weren’t convinced we would get this positive outcome halfway through the two-week summit in Sharm.

But in the negotiating rooms and conference halls, the developing countries, with civil society support, fought as if their lives depended on it because they do. The cause of climate justice prevailed. How is it fair that those suffering loss and damage caused by others, not themselves, should have to pay for it?

Creating the fund is one thing, but it’s currently an empty vessel. The next task is to get money flowing through it to the frontline communities that need it.

Root causes

Although the meeting made a major step in dealing with the consequences of climate change, it made less progress tackling the root causes of the problem.

We had hoped to build on the agreement secured in Glasgow last year at Cop26, that saw countries agree to a global phase down of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.

A number of countries sought to secure a commitment to phase down all fossil fuels, including oil and gas, but those efforts were thwarted by Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran among others.

It’s infuriating to see the science become clearer, the climate impacts become more devastating, and the cost of fossil fuels worsen, and yet countries refuse to do the one thing we all know needs to be done to stop the world from destroying itself. 90% of all coal reserves and 60% of oil and gas reserves must be left in the ground if we’re going to secure a planet which is prosperous and safe to live on.

Analysis: What was decided at Cop27 climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh?

However, the forces of progress and climate common sense fought hard in Sharm El-Sheikh for a fossil fuel phase down to be secured, so much so the momentum will now build ahead of next year’s meeting in the United Arab Emirates. And we take heart from the victory of the vulnerables on loss and damage.

Twelve months ago, we left Glasgow disappointed that no loss and damage fund had been created.  But we knew the case was so strong, and the voices so loud, that rich nations would not be able to ignore us again. And so it proved last week.

The end of oil and gas

We now need to spend the next twelve months ensuring the end of the oil and gas era is heralded in 2023. And what better place for it to happen than in an Opec country?

Already, there are signs that the reign of the fossil fuel industry is beginning to crack. For the first time a Cop decision document included language around the expansion of renewables.

World leaders who attended the summit, such as Kenya’s president William Ruto, championed the benefits of clean power and outlined why they were leaving their fossil fuel reserves in the ground.

Witnessing African leadership on African soil was a proud moment for this African.  There’s no reason we can’t see our entire continent becoming pioneers for such forward-thinking energy policy. After all, Africa contains 39% of the world’s renewable energy potential.

Another sign the fossil fuel industry is getting nervous is just how many lobbyists they are now sending to these annual climate talks to try and disrupt them in favour of flogging their product of pollution.

This year saw a record number of fossil fuel industry delegates, more than 600. A few years ago, they wouldn’t have bothered but they know the growing demand for action on climate change by the public and that the transformative potential of clean energy is a threat to their century-long monopoly of the global energy market. So much so they have distorted the world’s carefully balanced climate during that time.

We still have a long way to go, and the indifference of the fossil fuel companies at the climate suffering they cause knows no bounds. But the victory of the vulnerables in Sharm shows what can be achieved when enough people get behind a good idea and gives us confidence that we can, and must, end the world’s addiction to fossil fuels.

Mohamed Adow is the director of Power Shift Africa.

The post The climate vulnerable are starting to roar appeared first on Climate Home News.

These were the words of former UK Cabinet Minister Andrew Mitchell, bitterly condemning the government’s decision to cut its aid to Yemen by more than half. In the grip of the world’s worst crisis, 400,000 children in Yemen are at imminent risk of starvation.

He’s right: it is a sad day. But it is also one half of a story about British leadership – one that reveals the truth about how it conducts itself overseas. We now know that while the UK government doesn’t feel able to help stop thousands of children dying overseas, it is able to find hundreds of millions of pounds to invest in polluting fossil fuels.

Four months ago, the UK Government attracted almost universal praise for its announcement that it would stop directly funding overseas fossil fuel projects. It came after Boris Johnson came under sustained pressure for his inexplicable decision to finance a gas project in Mozambique via UK Export Finance.

At the time, this announcement seemed world-leading: an appropriate position for a country holding the Presidency of COP26. But the launch of its consultation to flesh out the detail of the policy reveals a loophole so big that it looks like Boris Johnson doesn’t deserve the praise he received.

Long read: Total’s play for Ugandan oil tests the climate commitment of international banks

Hidden in the detail of the government’s proposals is a loophole that could see the UK continuing to pour hundreds of millions of pounds of British cash into fossil fuels. Money that’s badged as ‘development aid’ will leave Britain through the government’s development bank, CDC Group, which is not governed by Boris Johnson’s proposed policy. While the CDC has published its own policy and guidance, which politicians defend as “well aligned” with the UK policy position, it does little to allay concerns that CDC will continue to invest in new fossil fuel projects overseas – with direct investments in the case of gas-fired power generation, and indirectly through its large investments in financial institutions.

While the CDC policy claims to be Paris agreement aligned, it also makes it clear that the absence of a national decarbonisation strategy will not be considered a barrier to investment in new gas power plants and associated infrastructure.

As of December 2019, CDC Group’s total investments and investment commitments to fossil fuels totalled nearly $1bn, 85% of the total electricity generated and distributed through CDC investments was from fossil fuels. CDC’s true exposure to fossil fuels is difficult to measure due to a lack of transparency over the entirety of its portfolio.

While CDC does invest in renewable energy projects, its continued investment in fossil fuel projects represents an enormous wasted opportunity to harness the vast renewable natural resources of continents like Africa and South America.

Growing up in pastoral Kenya, I know first-hand the reality of climate breakdown. But I also know that Kenya, like the rest of Africa, enjoys some of the richest renewable energy sources in the world. We have the talent and grit to lead the world, leapfrogging other countries in rolling out renewable energy technology. But that can only happen if countries like the UK invest in the right things.

The UK could be investing in next-generation solar farms in Mozambique. Instead, it’s building  the Temane gas-fired power plant. It could help Nigeria to solve its electricity crisis and make the most of its abundant hours of sunshine with solar technology – but instead, it’s financing the Qua Iboe gas-fired power plant.

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The UK’s investments in fossil fuels have a tragic price, just like the decision to cut the aid budget. A recent Harvard University study found that one in five deaths are caused by fossil fuels. Millions of pounds invested in fossil fuels will be paid for by people drowning in typhoons, families starved by famine and drought, and children suffocated by chronic air pollution.

If that wasn’t enough, the international implications of this bad policy design could be profound. The UK’s global influence – its wealth, diplomatic networks, and COP Presidency – means that how it designs this policy matters. If this gives the green light for other countries to exempt development finance institutions from overseas subsidy bans, it will be a major setback for climate action.

The final flaw in this plan? While Britain is tooling itself up with the technology of the future, it’s saddling developing countries with assets fit only for the last century. It will leave them with stranded assets that will soon be unusable, as governments and international agencies begin to implement stringent plans to cut emissions. And it’ll leave British cash tied up in outdated fossil fuel projects that no well-run private company would ever invest in.

The UK government has time to turn this around. To retain its credibility as a global leader, it has to close the loopholes in this policy and enact its promise to stop UK Export Finance and CDC funding fossil projects as soon as possible. Making this policy watertight before November’s COP26 is a basic hygiene factor for a government that says it’s dedicated to leading the world in tackling climate change.

Mohamed Adow is director of energy and climate think tank Power Shift Africa. This article was updated after publication to clarify the nature of the CDC’s investments in fossil fuels.

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