Opinion: Making a Together-For-Implementation COP?

A man walks past a board showing the 27th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

Photo: (IANS)

COP 27 has crossed its midway but is it actually an implementation COP? With a renewed hope of loss and damage inclusion in the main agenda, a lot was expected, but now it seems too little, too slow!

At the beginning of the second week of the 27th edition of COP, India yet again showed the world that it means serious business when it comes to climate change by launching its Long-Term Low Emission Development Strategy (LT-LEDS) to be submitted to UNFCCC by aligning with its homegrown global thought leadership movement LiFE.

As India joins the league of only 60 countries to do so of 195 member countries, it reaffirms its ambitious climate commitments and ensures sustainable life-for-all.

The LT-LEDS focuses on decarbonizing critical sectors like power, transport, industry, and forestry, among others but also stresses the importance of climate finance- which is still the most fissured link. The success of COP 27 rests on climate finance, but will it be mainstreamed?

Current Global Carbon Budget Could Last 9 Years

COP 27 marches on with a hope-filled-nebulous agenda, provision of climate finance, and addressing the issue of loss and damage remains intrinsic to a together-for-implementation COP.

Across the long list of agenda items, countries are bonded in some and divided in the other, but the only unanimous realization is “loss and damage.”

Though realized through the consensus on the Santiago network adoption by all parties at COP 27 is a long-awaited move.

However, developed countries are still skittish with the implementation of loss and damage facility that exposes and accounts for them to liability claims. While the launch of Global Shield-- a financing facility aimed at accelerating disaster financing by G7 countries is a leapfrogging step, skeptics tag it as a distraction.

As loss and damage negotiations are still on a sticky wicket, there is substantial progress on the mitigation work program, with the text in its finalization stage. The other development includes high-level formal closure on Global Stock Take. This might sound like substantial progress, but it also comes with a word of caution.

The recently launched Global Carbon Budget report, 2022, at a UNFCCC side event, estimates that under current and business-as-usual global CO2 emissions, the global carbon budget would last for nine years.

The progress made so far can be stated as normative compared to previous editions that have relied on guidelines, agreements, and frameworks.

Justice Needs to Be Delivered Not Greenwashed 

However, as climate-vulnerable countries are fast approaching adaptation thresholds, the outcome of COP 27 needs to deliver a true sense of solidarity and equity. As the discussions on global goals on adaptation, loss and damage, national adaptation ambitions, and Article 6 are underway, justice needs to be delivered not greenwashed.

Ignoring these urgency warning bells will leave climate-vulnerable countries and communities shattered, frustrated, and anxious.

Although it would be over-ambitious to expect solvency of these multi-decadal facets of the climate crisis at Sharm el-Sheikh, it should deliver on the climate finance for the most-affected and most-hit communities by considering a mosaic of financing options (as coined by the Maldives) through a concerted multilateral approach rather than just relying on disaster insurance or contingency financing mechanisms.

(Abinash Mohanty is the Sector Head of Climate Change and Sustainability- at IPE Global. Dr. Madhavan Nair Rajeevan is a Former Secretary and distinguished scientist at Ministry of Earth Sciences, India.)

(This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

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