Swarthmore at COP29

Hi everyone! Today marks the end of our time at COP 25 and on this blog, facts that may result in sadness for some and relief for others. Luckily, Swarthmore will be sending another delegation for week two of the conference, so those of you enjoying our posts should look forward to hearing from Chris, Nancy, and Isabel!

This morning, I attended the opening of the US Climate Action Center at the WWF pavilion. The US Climate Action Center hosts the #WeAreStillIn delegation, a network of subnational government, tribal, business, college, healthcare, and cultural professionals committed to collaborative climate action in the U.S. The work of the #WeAreStillIn campaign operates in direct opposition to the current federal administration’s anti-environment position and policies.

From today until next Tuesday, leaders from the #WeAreStillIn delegation will present best practices, models, and frameworks for continuing and furthering climate action in a number of sectors across the U.S. The coalition represents nearly 70 percent of U.S. GDP and 65 percent of the U.S. population and thus forms a powerful voice in mobilizing U.S. society to enact policies and programs to promote the green economy and limit our carbon output.

The #WeAreStillIn campaign is also committed to engaging with foreign leaders and delegates at the COP in a (seemingly) more meaningful and collaborative way than our State Department delegation. They are working to bridge the developed/non-developed divide and provide funding sources for cities and regions in developing countries.

As much as I am not proud of our federal climate policies, I am proud that so many of our civic and industry leaders recognize the urgency of the climate crisis and are forming coalitions to mobilize support for and further climate action.

Today I attended the Article 6 informal negotiations, a side event on Article 6 and decarbonizing the energy sector, and a side event on climate finance. The Article 6 negotiations were extremely well-attended — negotiators and observers filled the big plenary hall, and there were also lots of people interested in the finance panel. Several panelists in the finance panel pushed for more climate finance to be delivered through multilateral development banks. (The US is a donor to five of these: the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Inter-American Development Bank.) The argument was that these have been the most effective in mobilizing climate finance so far, and that they can move quickly using existing institutional knowledge and relationships. At the same time these entities can have conflicting priorities and varying mandates, so it seems that this might make more sense as a complement to mechanisms like the GEF, GCF, Adaptation Fund and (eventually?) a fund for loss and damage.

I also got a chance to visit the Green Zone, which is the area with broader access than the Blue Zone where negotiations, official side events, and pavilions are hosted. This area turned out to be a very corporate and sanitized space, meant for engagement with Spanish society. I saw lots of school groups, a VR headset exhibit, and an exhibit of children’s art and letters that had been sent over from Chile.

Sadly, we are nearing the end of our time in Madrid. We have all had an amazing (and hectic) week navigating the COP and this beautiful city.

Today, I attended a fascinating panel on nature-based solutions (NBS) in cities. Nature-based solutions have formed a large part of this year’s COP and refer to measures taken to protect, create, and restore ecosystems (in cities NBS essentially refer to green spaces, roofs, and infrastructure). Nature-based solutions are hugely important as they are often cost-effective and provide multiple environmental and social co-benefits. For instance, green spaces in city squares can simultaneously increase social interaction and pedestrian traffic, cool cities, and remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, nature-based solutions can also result in negative outcomes —most importantly “green gentrification” — which is especially important to me given my parallel interests in social justice and environmentalism. Green gentrification is a tricky issue. While urban areas, especially poor urban areas, lack access to environmental amenities, those same environmental amenities can drive up property values and result in displacement (think the High Line or Prospect Park in New York City).

As of now, I want to dedicate my life’s work to the planning of green spaces and thus am generally supportive of NBS measures. I am just fascinated by the fact that the activation of public spaces can transform cities from dark and imposing to beautiful and social. For instance, one of the panelists today outlined work that his company had completed in Germany. They had essentially placed a small, mobile park in the middle of an empty square, and, by the next day, the previously unused square had become the center of urban activity. The large impact of such a small action amazes me, especially given its environmental co-benefits (carbon uptake, increased walking, etc.).

Importantly, however, citizens of a city must never be left behind, even if we lose some environmental benefits. Thus, NBS measures should include participatory planning processes and must be implemented with ALL city citizens in mind. If not, a network of NBS will only be helping to solve one problem (e.g. climate change) while creating another (e.g. displacement).

P.S. One quick note from the presentation that I found fascinating: NBS planning must account for climate change. Generally, we plan for how nature-based solutions will positively impact the environment. We must also, however, take into account how an environment might be altered in response to climate change and thus plan to implement an NBS that can adapt to and perform in a changing or new environment.

Hi all, I’m currently sitting on the floor of the convention center with 20% laptop battery so this is going to be a shorter post! Today I went to another WIM negotiation, and things started to heat up quite a bit. Last night, the co-facilitators wrote up a draft document outlining a summary of the key recommendations the parties had suggested for enhancing the WIM throughout the week. Notably, there was absolutely no mention of additional financing for loss and damage, despite the fact that this request had been made multiple times. The LDCs, G77, Vanuatu, Uruguay, and Sudan came out strong, reminding the co-facilitators that additional finance for loss and damage was important to include on the summary document. The US, EU, Australia, and Japan, however strongly opposed the need for additional finance for loss and damage much more clearly than in any previous negotiations. The US negotiator that I met with a few days ago, Farhan, said that the WIM specifically had absolutely no role for the provision of additional finance, therefore completely prejudging the outcome of the WIM review and dismissing the pleas from LDCs and other supporting parties. This was personally a pretty heartbreaking moment for me – I was not proud to be from the US in that moment. Japan proceeded to talk up the use of adaptation funding to support loss and damage (a conflation issue I discussed in my last post), as well as the role of insurance facilities in helping with loss and damage (another problematic argument). Lastly, the EU said that they saw no value in creating additional finance for loss and damage, and that finance discussions should be reserved for COP agenda item 8 in the finance room. These were all highly disappointing stances, given the urgent need for financial support in the most vulnerable countries. This session ran over time by an hour and a half, and another informal session may be scheduled for tomorrow at 4pm (I wonder how long the WIM review sessions can be extended…). More updates to come, but the unified stance against additional financing from the US and EU is incredibly disappointing, to say the least.

BTW, good introduction to WIM here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXK1W0S015I

On the way to the Article 6 negotiations this afternoon I ran into the wonderful Liz Nichols (former Swarthmore professor and now finance negotiator from the State Department) and decided to tag along with her for a bit instead.  We stopped by the US State Department Delegation Room and chatted while her colleagues busily prepared for their meetings.

I followed Liz to an informal meeting about the details of providing GEF support for Parties to the Paris Agreement to submit the (new) required BTRs (biennial transparency reports).  These are huge all-sector audits that contain a national greenhouse gas inventory and progress updates on achieving NDCs.  These reports are hugely expensive for developing countries, so funding is a make-or-break issue for whether these will be ready by January 2024.  It’s hard to manage emissions without measuring them, so this is a really big deal for tracking progress and reducing emissions.

I sat at a small table in the GEF pavilion with Liz and a couple of other US negotiators, GEF leads, representatives from UNDP and UNEP and three donor and LDC parties.  The discussion was a technical one on how to design the funding process for the BTRs to make it accessible and effective.  Even in a small group there were a lot of competing interests and perspectives even though everyone had (more or less) the same goal.  It really drove home what Liz had told us before — that the details are important and hard to get right.

Hi everyone, today’s blog is in the form of a video once again! Featured here are my reflections on this morning’s WIM negotiations, a CAN Loss and Damage Working Group session, and a Loss and Damage panel event: https://vimeo.com/377414757/5d24a4f10a

At this year’s COP, my focus is on subnational actors and their role in both official negotiations and in promoting climate action more broadly. As more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas and cities emit 75 percent of global CO₂ emissions, municipalities play perhaps the most important role in combatting the climate crisis on the ground.

Luckily, unlike many countries, cities are increasingly committed to climate action. For instance, almost 100 megacities across the globe have joined the C40 Climate Cities Leadership Group, which commits all of those cities to a Global Green New Deal and to developing climate action plans by 2020. Thirty C40 cities have peaked emissions and 25 have pledged to be emissions neutral by 2050. Similarly, almost 2000 small municipalities are members of Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI), which is a big proponent of data sharing, greenhouse gas inventories, and future emissions predictions. Together, these networks of municipalities are fighting for a greater role in the Paris Agreement, perhaps through LDCs (locally determined contributions) as a supplemental mechanism to NDCs. They are also working to improve urban climate finance mechanisms, especially in developing countries, as well as to pressure their national governments to up their NDCs.

Today, I attended an interesting talk on how many cities across the globe are aligning their policies and plans with a 1.5C pathway. One of the speakers at the event was Susan Aitken, who serves as the leader (mayor) of Glasgow, a city that will host next year’s COP. Susan, as she preferred to be called, outlined Glasgow’s plans to become the UK’s first net-zero carbon city (by 2030). She discussed a public-private partnership with Scottish Power to boost investment in renewable energy production and storage, as well as to promote the use of electric vehicles.

Refreshingly, she also spoke in depth about a moral responsibility for climate justice and a just transition, especially given that Glasgow’s bad air quality is concentrated in poorer areas of the city. She emphasized the need to expand the city’s public transportation networks to poorer neighborhoods, as well as to promote access to green space and recreation in those areas. Importantly, she stressed the importance of including citizen voices in any sustainable planning processes.

It was really interesting to learn about Glasgow’s innovative leadership role in combatting climate change — both through the private sector and through participatory planning. It also made me excited about next year’s COP (even if I won’t actually be there). Hopefully at COP 26, Glasgow emphasizes the importance of including subnational actors more directly in the COP process. I also hope that being in Glasgow will provide other subnational leaders with a model on how to decarbonize former industrial cities. Glasgow was where James Watt conceived of the modern steam engine. Now it is becoming a pioneer in new, participatory, just environmental technologies and policies. The city has come a long way from its industrial roots.

Quick video summary of Glasgow’s net-zero efforts here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANLdqvzi44s.

Hello everyone! Today I had another exciting day of the COP, and got to learn more about the various parties’ perspectives on the WIM. This morning, I attended a WIM negotiation contact group (see Max’s post for an explanation of this term) where the parties began discussions about how to enhance the WIM. The session began with a welcome and introduction from the two co-facilitators, who then explained the agenda for the meeting: a brief summary of the outcomes from Sunday’s WIM review meeting and the ExeComm report (Execomm is the central body of WIM), an explanation of the WIM negotiation process for this COP, and finally, open interventions from the parties. From what I understand, Sunday’s review was organized by the Secretariat to provide an opportunity for parties to hold preliminary discussions around the effectiveness of the WIM thus far – it was not a formal negotiation, rather a brainstorming session with multiple break-out groups. Today was the first time that the parties were formally negotiating. It was then revealed that the parties would only have two more formal negotiations like today to finish their discussion about the WIM and submit a draft decision on next steps to the appropriate UNFCCC bodies by December 7th. This means that the parties are expected to finish WIM negotiations in two more sessions, one tomorrow, and one the following day. Parties are allowed to meet on their own for ‘informal informals’ in the interim period between formal negotiations, but co-facilitators are not present and observers are not allowed to attend (some LDC members later requested the co-facilitators and the Secretariat be present at these informal informals, TBD if this request will be granted). Though this tight timeline was highly contested by multiple LDC members, it was later revealed by a co-facilitator that these negotiations were only allotted 8 hours of deliberation under the UNFCCC mandate and therefore cannot be altered (for now…we’ll see if something changes towards the end of the week). If no extra time is permitted to negotiate the WIM, I highly doubt the parties will come to a conclusion about the financing facility. Next, the parties were allowed to present their interventions (AKA speeches) on the floor. As expected based on my conversations from yesterday, G77 and China and the LDCs were strong and unified in their push for the establishment of a financing facility. These parties stressed the fact that loss and damage is happening already and that adequate funding is crucial for poorer countries’ survival. The EU and New Zealand, while in agreement with the idea that WIM needed to be improved to better serve developing countries and the LDCs, focused most of their interventions on the successes of the WIM. The session ended 15 minutes late, with multiple parties/countries still waiting to speak, one of which was the US. I left the negotiation eager to hear what the US was planning to say, but luckily I had a meeting scheduled with Farhan Ahktar, the US State Department head negotiator on WIM, only a few hours later (big thank you to Liz Nichols for the connection). I only had about ten minutes to ask him some questions, as negotiators tend to run between a million different meetings at the COP, giving them little time to take a lunch break, let alone chat with an undergrad student. When I asked Ahktar about the US’s stance on the establishment of a financing facility, he said that the US was in favor of using existing funds (like the Adaptation Fund) to support loss and damage, rather than creating an entirely new facility. This opinion is based on two ideas: first, that creating a new funding facility would take too long to implement given the urgency of loss and damage problems (Liz said it could take up to a decade) and second, that the kinds of funding needs from loss and damage would be eligible for coverage under other existing funding mechanisms. Ahktar added that the US simply could not subscribe to unlimited liability and compensation for loss and damage. A brief note: the US only agreed to sign on to the creation of the WIM in 2013 once a sentence was added about the WIM NOT creating a basis for liability and compensation, so it’s clear that developed countries have been avoiding direct payment to vulnerable nations for years; this is not a new conversation. Ahktar said that the US definitely wants to support the LDCs and other vulnerable nations to become more resilient and able to address the impacts of loss and damage, but that this support would need to materialize through the use of existing funding mechanisms and through the strengthening of other aspects of the WIM. I am excited to hear how all of this gets translated into more formal negotiation language tomorrow morning when the US gets its turn to speak. 

In sum, I’ve now got two pretty clear opinions on the need, or lack thereof, for a new financial facility under WIM. I am working on setting up another meeting with the negotiator for the LDCs later this week to ask the question: can loss and damage funding actually be covered under existing funding mechanisms? If yes, why is a new facility needed? If not, what other factors are keeping the developed countries from creating this facility?

Wow! Today has been a whirlwind. My day began at 9am at the YOUNGO Spokes meeting, which is a daily meeting of youth representing NGOs at the conference. I then proceeded to attend negotiations sessions on two key issues at COP 25 — Article 6 of the Paris Agreement (which Jenn talked about in her latest post) and the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (which Allie discussed yesterday) — as well as two side events at country pavilions and two official side events hosted by the UNFCCC, before leaving the venue around 8pm.

Since there are so many venues and meetings at the COP, I thought it would be helpful to provide visuals and descriptions of the different types of events and negotiations.

Official Negotiations – Plenaries and Contact Groups

Plenaries: Plenaries are open to all in attendance. They are held in large halls (see below) and are used as forums for public speeches, the adoption of agendas, all procedural issues, and the adoption of any decisions/conclusions.

Contact Groups: When agenda items in plenary warrant further discussion (they almost always do), contact groups are formed. Contact group discussions generally take place in smaller settings (though not always as you will see below). Contact groups work out detailed texts that are then adopted/approved in plenary. These events are sometimes open to observer organizations and sometimes not.

It is also important to note that “official” negotiations continue outside of these sessions informally in negotiating blocks, bilaterals, and multilaterals.

Informal Proceedings – Side Events and Exhibits

Official Side Events: These are thematic talks sanctioned by the UNFCCC. They serve as opportunities for observer organizations — which are limited in official negotiating capacity — to engage with the conference, share information, and promote climate action.

Pavilion Side Events: Similar to the official side events, pavilion talks are opportunities for observer organizations to share their work and engage with the conference. These events, however, are curated based on the pavilion host’s (an NGO, UN body, or country) positionality on the climate crisis. Below are pavilions from two countries, the IPCC, and a NGO representing a coalition of development banks.

Official Exhibits: These serve as additional opportunities for observer organizations to share their work with the conference attendees. They function almost as rotating poster sessions (as the exhibits shift every couple of days).

This is being called the “Action COP”, and yesterday’s opening plenaries focused again and again on turning pledges into concrete action as countries prepare their climate action plans for next year.  Chile’s graphic for the COP leans in to its long-skinny resemblance to the hand of a clock:

 

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which lays out the rules for global carbon markets, has turned out to be a major sticking point in the negotiations and is a key outstanding issue on the negotiating table this year.  A well-designed system can decrease abatement costs, direct investments to areas where they can most effectively reduce emissions, and allow countries to increase ambitions for their targets.  A poorly-designed system can make NDCs meaningless by flooding international markets with credits that do not reflect actual reductions in emissions, whether because they were banked under less-restrictive systems, are double-counted through multiple NDCs, or reflect “reductions” from artificially high business-as-usual emissions. This afternoon I attended an academic session on designing carbon markets to avoid some of these pitfalls, including a range of interesting ways to test for “additionality”, i.e. whether a project reflects a real reduction in emissions below BAU levels.  (For example, should switching to solar count toward emission reductions even when it’s the lowest-cost option for power generation?) . It’s an incredibly interesting issue where the technical details are extremely important and very political.  I don’t expect we’ll see too much progress this week, but I’ll be watching closely after I get back to see what happens in week 2.

Finally, an easter egg for econ folks was this event hosted by the Indonesia pavilion:

Global eminent person Jeffrey Sachs is speaking next Thursday — following up on his talk at Swarthmore in October!  (There’s another global eminent person speaking the day before: H.E. Al Gore.)