By Lisa Richmond
Before leaving for COP28, the UN climate summit in Dubai, I shared a list of things to watch: How I’m Making Sense of the Climate Summit. In the final chaotic hours of negotiations, when it looked like the parties might not reach agreement, I worked with fellow delegates on a call to action: With or without COP, we must get out of the fossil fuel business.
Coming out the other end, I’m taking a look back at key outcomes and important lived experiences. Below is my personal “stocktake” (to use a UN term), viewed from the ground.
The negotiators have flown home, the displays are packed, the stages are empty. The largest Conference of the Parties (COP) in history ended in Dubai with the first-ever agreement on fossil fuels. But with 100,000 attendees over 10 days, issuing dozens of commitments and agreements, attending hundreds of meetings and presentations, COP28 can’t be boiled down to a single success metric.
And no score sheet can sum up the personal impact of the experience: the feelings of inspiration, despair and overwhelm, fueled by exhaustion, leavened by moving interactions with remarkable people from every corner of the globe, every background. My eyes and heart are open to the gut-wrenching toll climate change is already having on vulnerable people, and the thousands of unsung heroes working day in, day out to address its root causes. Standing next to a person whose homeland will likely be gone in a few decades puts everything into perspective.
Negotiated Decisions
Fossil fuel phase-out: Better than expected, but the real action starts now.
The final hours of negotiations were nail-biters. In a flurry of WhatsApp texts, I followed along as negotiators spun towards chaos, then rallied for a late-game agreement on critical text of the Global Stocktake Decision, the marquee outcome of COP28. Teams worked through the night, with activists sleeping on sofas and orchestrating protest actions. When COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber gaveled in a final decision almost 24 hours behind schedule, there was a standing ovation, and a mix of hope, relief, disappointment and frustration.
For the first time, a COP agreement explicitly states a diagnosis: fossil fuels are the problem. While there are glaring caveats and loopholes, and of course the decision is non-binding, that is nonetheless a significant achievement. Getting 200 countries, including the Saudis and other OPEC nations, to agree was nothing short of a miracle. It’s also worth noting the many other multilateral agreements gaining steam: the Powering Past Coal Alliance, the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, the Clean Energy Transition Partnership, and others.
The real work of reducing emissions, however, will be done by nation-states, cities, and the private sector. The text calls on all countries to put forward ambitious economy-wide pledges covering all greenhouse gas sources in their next round of Nationally Declared Contributions (NDCs), due in 2025.
Loss and Damage: A big leap forward, but a funding disappointment.
Agreement to set up a Loss and Damage Fund on Day 1 was a landmark achievement, one that removed an issue that sucked up significant energy at COP27 and threatened to derail COP28. Early pledges, including $100million each from Germany and UAE, gave the fund legitimacy. That money will be used for disaster recovery and resilience measures (including built environment remedies) that are urgently needed, particularly in small island nations and Least Development Countries (LDCs).
Addressing the damage and suffering already inflicted on vulnerable populations by the climate crisis couldn’t be more urgent. People across the world are already suffering life-and-death consequences of our historic emissions. “In the end, the climate crisis is not about pledges, statistics, reports or activists,” writes activist Vanessa Nkate. “It’s about human suffering and ruined lives.”
Sadly, the pledge from the US, just over $17million, was wholly inadequate given the scale of our historic carbon emissions.
Global target on renewables: Major achievement, lacking finance for a just transition.
130 nations signed the Global Renewables and Energy Efficiency Pledge, an agreement to triple renewables and double efficiency in this decade. This is a significant step forward, building on already-considerable momentum for renewables. The inclusion of efficiency is a welcome advance for the buildings sector, where energy efficiency gains have been a signal achievement. But continued failure to address non-debt finance for a just transition in developing nations is a glaring omission that has led to frustration and anger in the Global South. At a climate justice press conference on the final day of negotiations, representatives noted “Without means of implementation and finance we might as well not have text at all.”
Global Goal on Adaptation: We have failed vulnerable countries.
COP28 did not make adequate progress on adaptation. The Global Goal on Adaptation, a required outcome for COP28, was watered down, caught up in the whirlwind negotiations around the Global Stocktake. Most detail was punted to national adaptation plans (NAPs).
There was little in the text that compelled developed countries to provide more money to developing countries.
Climate Finance: Kicking the can down the road.
As the host of COP30, Brazil has made climate finance reform their top priority. That’s a good thing, because COP28 made limited progress on critical questions about how countries will pay for clean energy transition, adaptation and recovery. Issues like the lending policies of multilateral development banks, debt swaps, private finance incentives and carbon markets are where the rubber meets the road on climate progress. Brazil plans to use its platform as President of the G20 in 2024 and COP30 host country in 2025 to bring serious attention to climate finance.
Action agenda
COP isn’t just about negotiated decisions. It is also a giant implementation conference, with a robust action agenda led by the host country, plus hundreds of sessions for subnational (city and state) government, NGO and private sector actors from across the economy. Take-aways from this “Action Agenda” can be substantive and inspiring. “Solving climate change is a poly solution,” says Al Gore, and solutions from every corner of the economy were on display.
Two COPS, one planet
In her coverage for the New York Times, Somini Sengupta observed, “There are two climate summits taking place in Dubai. One is the gathering of bleary-eyed, sharp-tongued diplomats parsing over every word and comma in the international declaration that is expected in the coming days. But the bigger event is happening outside the negotiating rooms. It’s part trade fair, part protest stage, part debate forum. It’s where people come from all over the world, from all kinds of sectors to show off their gadgets, make deals, spar over big ideas and of course, lobby the diplomats.”
This second COP is at once the most inspiring thing about going, and the most worrying. Harvard’s Robert Stavins calls it “climate expo 2023” (a complement). UN Climate Champion Nigel Topping calls it “a collaborative effort to find and accelerate the solutions to get to net zero.” The entire global economy is represented in microcosm.
At the same time, businesses (including the oil and gas industry) are increasingly using COP as an opportunity for brand positioning and business development, activities that can feel crass and tone-deaf next to the heart-felt pleas of representatives of island nations facing an existential threat from global warming.
Nature: a big winner.
Nature was a big winner of COP28, with significant announcements about conservation finance and nature based solutions. There was also increased attention on connecting climate negotiations with biodiversity goals. In a first-of-its-kind initiative, the UAE COP28 presidency and China COP15 (biodiversity COP) presidency released a Joint Statement on Climate, Nature and People. Architecture 2030’s focus on nature-based infrastructure solutions for urban environments featured in multiple presentations, including one I moderated on a UN main stage.
Cities and regions: Increasing recognition.
COP28 put unprecedented attention on the role of sub-national governments, which is a great thing. The Local Climate Action Summit brought together local leaders as critical implementation partners. 70 countries endorsed the Coalition for High Ambition Multilevel Partnerships (CHAMP) for Climate Action. Some progress was made to broaden climate finance instruments to include local government action.
New to COP: Health, Food, Gender
Recognizing that climate progress will be driven by the real economy, COP28 highlighted new sectors and connections, including the first-ever Health Day, a focus on Gender, and a new action agenda on food systems. New commitments included the COP28 Declaration on Climate and Health and a global commitment from 134 world leaders to account for emissions from food and land use and invest in resilient and sustainable agriculture, the COP28 Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action,
Architecture 2030 at COP28
I was proud of our delegation. Our 6 delegates hosted more than a dozen presentations over the 10 days, on using nature to address urban infrastructure needs and mitigate carbon, prioritizing existing building re-use, and scaling up heritage and indigenous building principles, which are naturally lower carbon and more fitted to culture and place. I spoke from a UN main stage, and at venues run by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the countries of Thailand and Denmark. We forged relationships with built environment leaders across the globe, from Singapore to Kigali to Quito. We raised awareness among global leaders of the critical role buildings play in climate change, and supported greater ambition by demonstrating the change that is already possible. Importantly, we introduced the concept of Sufficiency (stopping consumption at “enough”) into the built environment dialogue.
Next year, COP29 will be in Baku, Azerbaijan. I doubt I will go for a fourth year in a row. But the impact of this experience will stay with me, motivating and directing me, at work and in life.
Lisa–
Lisa Richmond Hon. AIA, SEA (she/they)
Strategic Advisor, Climate + Sustainability | Climate Strategy Works
Senior Fellow | Architecture 2030
climatestrategyworks.com | architecture2030.org
Get buildings out of the fossil fuel business.
A big thanks to Lisa Richmond, longtime South Seattle resident for allowing SSCAN to post this article to our blog.