COP27, in 2022 in Egypt, wriggled itself out by agreeing to fund the developing countries from the impacts of climate change. The declaration of the ‘Loss and Damage Fund’ was more than enough for climate negotiators to hail COP27 a ‘success’. However, it is important to note that climate-history is replete with financial promises that have not seen the light of day. The media, generally speaking, perhaps missed noticing this point and joined the chorus with such headlines as ‘Breakthrough at COP27’.

I found the whole episode a tad odd, because climate negotiators as well as the media knew very well that the fund has been in discussion right from 1992, and got off the ground at COP19, in Warsaw.

Subsequent to the Sharm El-Sheikh declaration, representatives from 24 countries set out to work together well into 2023 to decide what form the fund should take, which countries should contribute, and where and how the money should be distributed. That was the happy ending of COP27 and the beginning of yet another entry in the list of funds for developing countries under the Climate treaties, which as I mentioned earlier, to date have not translated into significant amounts.

Dr Rajendra Shende

COP27 earned the moniker, ‘Loss and Damage COP’. COP28, in November 2023, in the UAE, is already being called as ‘Stocktaking-COP’. The dictionary meaning of stocktaking is the activity of counting the total supply of things that a shop or business has at a particular point in time. The meaning and purpose of global stocktaking – as included in Article 14 of the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 – is ‘to assess the collective progress towards achieving the purpose of this Agreement and its long-term goals’. As per the Agreement, the first ever global stocktake is scheduled to take place in 2023 – and every five years, thereafter. Before 2030, by which the global emissions need to be halved, there will be one more stocktaking in 2027, unless there are additional emergency stocktaking activities, which is very likely.

In brief, the stocktaking would include a clear status of climate actions by countries, in the context of the objective of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), adopted in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. As set out in Article 2 of the Paris Climate Agreement, and by taking into account equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, taking into consideration different national circumstances, the following would be the goals for stocktaking:

a) Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels

b) Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and fostering climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production

c) Making finance flows to developing countries consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development

Specifically, the stocktaking would assess extent to which Parties have achieved individual Nationally Determined Contributions under Article 4; adaptation actions under Article 7; good practices, priorities, needs and gaps in meeting targets of emissions; aggregate financial support to developing countries; and extent to which technology development and transfer for developing country Parties has been achieved.

The outcome of the global stocktake is expected to inform the Parties on updating and enhancing their NDCs (Nationally Determined Contribution), their actions and support in accordance with the relevant provisions of this Agreement, as well as in enhancing international cooperation for climate action.

To put it crudely, COP28 would be the exercise, exactly as per the dictionary meaning of stocktaking, viz to take inventory and ‘summon the supply’ of actions on finances, technology transfer, collaboration and sense of urgency in the ‘climate shop’. It has been decided that stocktaking would be a country-driven process, conducted in a democratic and transparent manner with the participation of civil society stakeholders, to make it inclusive. In my view, that line of thought and action perhaps needs to be carefully reviewed.

Since the adoption of UNFCCC, in 1992, the world has seen unabated rise of global average temperature, greenhouse gas emissions and a large number of unfulfilled promises on financial assistance by developed countries to developing countries. Stocktaking would take place under the dark shadow of the shocking gross failure of humanity to act on the ‘climate-pandemic’.

The stocktaking of the consequences of our collective failure is also very evident. The past nine years have been the warmest since modern recordkeeping began in 1880. NASA scientists as well as international scientists determined that carbon dioxide emissions were the highest on record in 2022. NASA also identified some super emitters, mainly petrochemical refineries, of methane – another powerful greenhouse gas, using the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation instrument that launched to the International Space Station, last year. The Arctic region continues to experience the strongest warming trends – close to four times the global average – according to research results presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Climate change has intensified rainfall and tropical storms, and deepened the severity of droughts and their frequency, as evidenced in last year’s torrential monsoon that devastated Pakistan. In September 2022,

Hurricane Ian became one of the strongest and costliest hurricanes to strike the continental United States. Drought, floods and heatwaves continue to affect food and health security in large parts of the world, and the related costs are rising.

The shock-taking that would have to be taken into account, while stocktaking, would include the following facts:

· Sea level and ocean heat are at record levels – and this trend will continue for many centuries

· Antarctic sea ice has fallen to the lowest extent on record

· Europe has shattered records for glacier-melt

Among the most vulnerable regions is the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Indeed, the region’s water supplies and food production systems are frightening. The affluent Gulf nations face depleted freshwater resources within the next 50 years, while in conflict-ridden Iraq, average temperatures are soaring at a rate that is 2-7 times faster than the global average. Food and water production systems across the Levant – the eastern part of the Mediterranean – face imminent collapse.

A simple stocktaking exercise at COP28, without a necessary shock-taking, would make it yet another meek COP. The need of the hour is to give teeth to the Paris Climate Agreement and make it accountable with appropriate punitive measures for non-performance. Agreeing to end fossil fuel subsidy and global phasedown of coal; making the ‘polluters to pay’ principle strong through taxes; and transforming global financial structural framework, as proposed in the June 23-24 conference in Paris, would be the key climate actions needed. We need to fix the future of climate and agree to Globally Determined National Contributions (GDNCs), and not just NDCs. Peaking emissions by 2025, two years from now, halving them by 2030 and achieving net-zero by 2050 would need punitive and accountable actions for defaulters – the way we fervently undertook during COVID-19. Surely, climate change is a pandemic in waiting.