The timeline: About 200 days to COP28. The venue: A climate conference in Bonn, Germany. The world witnessed the first signal that there is a grave risk to negotiations. Signs emerged in Bonn that COP28 may be swept away in a flood of arguments and counter-agreements between developed and developing countries. A realisation emerged that any meaningful intent is likely to get buried under landslides of the unfulfilled promises by developed countries and possibly be lost in dense fogs generated by wildfires of self-interest of nations.

Cut to the present – about 100 days to COP28 – and we see that the risk is intensifying. But first, let us examine in detail what happened 200 days ago.

Dr Rajendra Shende

In a preparatory meeting leading to COP28, in June 2023, the world witnessed unprecedented scenes. The preparatory meeting was termed as SB58 (the 58th meeting of subsidiary bodies to COP). Out of the scheduled 12 days of the meeting, seven were lost to haggling when it came to finalising the agenda for the meeting. On the eighth day, the still-disgruntled delegates agreed to an agenda. The meeting in the subsequent four days was a theatre for half-hearted talk-shop. Evidently, the delegates were in no mood to recognise that the world is in a race against time to address the climate crisis. They just overlooked the fact that the climate emergency, for which they have to be prepared to address, is at their doorstep. From California to Comoros, from Australia to Afghanistan and from Siberia to South Africa, no one has been spared from climate disaster in 2022-2023.

So, why did the finalisation of the agenda of SB58 become a wrestling match? The reason was simple – it had issues that would pin down the countries during COP28. No country was in a mood to face such a situation in December, be it the stock-taking of the promised phaseout of fossil fuels or finances promised by the developed countries to developing countries for almost every climate action under the sky. That included capacity building for action on climate, mitigation of emissions, adaptation to climate change, loss and damage in developing countries, carbon off-sets, tree-cover, and even carbon-capture and removal. From Day One in SB58, the squabbling started and, later, became a deadlock for seven days. Just imagine, seven precious days lost to time.

At the end of SB58, delegates were in a lost stage, with some openly expressing that the last opportunity before COP28 had been squandered away. The ‘trust deficit’ between developed and developing countries was the root cause. As per Article 4 of the Paris Climate

Agreement of 2015, all countries agreed to return in five years to submit updated and enhanced commitments related to mitigation. Article 4 also included provision for updated and enhanced commitments of financial assistance from the developed countries. By 2020, and even later, quite a few countries submitted and continue to submit such commitments.

COP28 is being called as a ‘global-stocktaking conference’, where the commitments and their implementation would be assessed. The 2022 emission-gap report of UNEP showed that emissions are increasing unabated. Financial reports also reveal that there is a widening gap between promised financial assistance and what actually has been provided to the developing countries.

Strangely, global stock-taking will be taking place at a time when climate disasters are becoming widespread, and are increasing steeply in intensity and frequency. July 2023 was the hottest month on record. Wildfires are still burning in Algeria, Canada, China, Croatia, Greece, Spain, Tunisia and the United States, probably for the longest ever period in a year. Floods, hurricanes, landslides along with wildfires are making the exercise of global stock-taking look more and more like assessing the lifelines of a patient on deathbed.

While the above scenario points to the risk of failure of COP28, many are wondering if Artificial Intelligence should now be deployed for finalising the agenda and Chat GPT be used for negotiations. High-tech humour aside, there is still an opportunity to bring back the derailing process of negotiations. One of the principles of global diplomacy, particularly in environmental accords, is that when the discord is obvious amongst a large group of countries, dialogue is promoted in smaller groups.

H.E. Dr Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jabar, President-Designate of COP28, has been attempting such smaller group dialogues in a bid to save the global meet of 196 countries in the UAE. In other words, he is attempting to build an enabling environment to facilitate meaningful outcome during COP28.

Earlier in the year, he called on G7 nations in Japan to lead by example and make climate finance more accessible and affordable, to speed up the energy transition. His call to “replace polarisation with partnership and division with determination”, clearly demonstrates that he is for “a COP of action, a COP of unity, a COP of solidarity and a COP for all”. He showed his passion to get everyone along when he stated, “We must act together to ignite a transformational agenda that is pro-growth, pro-climate and leaves no one behind.” Considering that G7 nations represent nearly 40% of the global economy and approximately 25% of global GHG emissions, H.E. Dr Al Jabar’s call was more than just an appeal – it was meant to advance action.

John Kerry’s shuttle diplomacy for climate, which was really effective in realising the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, has now become in 2023 a seasonal exercise that has lost the teeth and sharpness, mainly because the Unites States’ own climate stock-taking reveals a dismal picture. His consultations with countries, including India and China, are effective but still far from what the world needs today to address the climate emergency, which would soon become a climate pandemic.

Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, also dared to call a Summit in Paris in June 2023, fashioned as the ‘New Global Financial Pact Summit’. The Summit failed to deliver any concrete reform plans, though attended by leaders and finance ministers of 40 countries as well as the World Bank, IMF, and regional and national financial agencies. Many criticised it as an attempt to deviate from the real issue of pledges of financial assistance to developing countries. Others commented, “When the pandemic grips the planet, what we need is a vaccine and not a plan to reform the health infrastructure.”

H.E. Dr Al Jabar nearly made the same point when he, in his address there, said, “We need transformational rather than incremental steps forward.” His statement, “Private capital is the force multiplier that can really change the game when it comes to effective climate finance”, raises the transformational idea of engaging giant private capital than helplessly depending on small (and poorly performing) international financial agencies. H.E. Dr Al Jabar was, in fact, presenting disruptive financial engineering as a pathbreaking idea.

In Mid-July, when India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, during his official visit to the UAE, met H.E. Dr Al Jabar and promised to support his presidentship of COP28, climate experts were disappointed. Though Prime Minister Modi signed trade and related agreements for cooperation between UAE and India, the real opportunity was missed to lead the global climate agenda and to demonstrate to the world the commitment to address the most formidable challenge of our times facing the planet. After all, Prime Minister Modi is Champion of the Earth, as awarded by United Nations, and H.E. Dr Al Jabar is winner of the ‘International Lifetime Achievement Award’ from Prime Minister Modi. The world was expecting dedication and practical global initiatives by India and UAE, similar to the International Solar Alliance declared by India and France.

The BRICS summit in Johannesburg of five countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – which represent 40% of greenhouse gas emissions, surprisingly seems to have just varnished over the climate issue. The forthcoming G20 Summit, to be held in early September in New Delhi under India’s presidency, is yet another opportunity for the world to ensure a meaningful outcome from COP28. It would be attended by leaders of 20 countries and nine other invited countries, including the UAE.

The very final cracked opening of an opportunity to ensure transformational success of COP28 is the United Nations’ SDG Summit on September 18 and 19 at its Headquarters in New York, during the General Assembly high-level week. It would review the mid-point progress on 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Indeed, the two SDGs – SDG7 and SDG13 – are directly related to climate change, and others are all indirectly impacted by them.

But again, that `SDG Summit’ will be a global meet of leaders that may not be as effective in making a difference to environmental diplomacy. Transformational and accelerated action, as ensured in smaller group meetings, is the need of the rest of the 100 days. Small is not only beautiful but also impactful.

The writer is former Director of UNEP. He is also the Founder-Director, Green TERRE Foundation; Prime Mover, SCCN; and Coordinating Lead Author, IPCC, which won the Nobel Peace Prize. He may be reached at shende.rajendra@gmail.com. He writes exclusively for Climate Control Middle East magazine.