COP28 update: Day 7, 6 December

The COP Presidency may be feeling satisfied with the first week as well. The Loss & Damage Fund is up and running, this year’s event has highlighted new policy areas such as health, agriculture and clean cooking, and according to media round-ups, there have been pledges and commitments totalling more than $83 billion for purposes ranging from the Loss & Damage Fund to gender equality and safe water.

True, there have been controversies around the COP President’s comments on the fossil fuel phase-out, but that appears to have been absorbed into the disagreements over the GST text.

We’ll deal with Article 6 below, but before the closing plenary of SBSTA and SBI that dealt with Global Stocktake, UNFCCC Executive President Simon Stiell called on Parties to up their game in a fairly typical end-of-week-one statement: “All governments must give their negotiators clear marching orders. We need highest ambition, not point-scoring or lowest common denominator politics.

“There are many options that are on the table right now which speak to the phasing out of fossil fuels. It is for parties to unpick that, but come up with a very clear statement that signals the terminal decline of the fossil fuel era as we know it.”

Speaking to reporters today, Stiell said: “We need COP to deliver a bullet train to speed up climate action. We currently have an old caboose chugging over rickety tracks.”

Remember the mention of the COP Presidency’s roundtable event on the voluntary carbon markets a couple of days ago? While it was a closed event, we’ve managed to find a copy of Exec Sec Stiell’s remarks, which are a bit eye-opening in light of the many other things that have been said and done here at COP. Take a look and see what you think.

Given the many, many announcements from Parties and business representatives just in the last week, his comments seem to lag behind the ambition and commitment that we’ve seen displayed.

While the negotiations take a 24-hour break on Thursday, we’ll also be pausing our communiqués from Dubai. We’ve shared Friday’s agenda of events at “the Hub” below, and we will bring you the latest from the opening sessions of the ministerial segment of the talks on Friday.

And a final update on the coffee situation: it appears that staff from the nearby Italian pavilion have taken to dropping by the IETA Lounge each morning for their early dose, and if that doesn’t tell you something…..

Negotiations

New text for Article 6.4 was published at the crack of dawn on Wednesday, and an Article 6.2 draft came out later in the day, reflecting the informal consultations that have been going on for the last couple of days.

Both texts are heavily bracketed, reflecting that many of the highest-profile issues cut across both texts. While there has been progress on authorisation, there remain fundamental differences over the registry architecture and the level of central oversight that should be exerted over cooperative approaches, as we have described over the last few days.

Parties agreed to send both texts to the SBSTA plenary for adoption and further discussion next week under the CMA, but our observers heard unusually heated comments in the 6.2 discussions from the Like-Minded Developing Countries group and the United States.

Representatives from these referred to a lack of respect and an unwillingness to engage further on elements they do not consider as part of the mandate. Brazil, speaking on behalf of the Argentina-Brazil-Uruguay group, also made a strong intervention, while Canada, New Zealand and Ukraine expressed similar positions, though with a softer tone.

These Parties all believe there are attempts being made to reopen decisions made at COP26 and COP27. Taking very different positions are the EU, AILAC (the Independent Alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean) and the Association of Small Island States.

The Environmental Integrity Group (Mexico, Liechtenstein, Monaco, the Republic of Korea, Switzerland and Georgia) and the African Group remained on the fence.

In the closing SBSTA/SBI plenary, the Business and Industry NGOs expressed concern at the very slow progress made over the past days, and at some Parties “trying to introduce new barriers for the implementation of cooperative approaches under 6.2, by introducing a too prescriptive definition of ‘cooperative approaches’ and overly complex authorisation requirements.”

“In addition to this, we have heard concerning interventions from Parties saying that they wish to open up the recommendations forwarded to CMA on methodologies and removals after extensive work throughout the last year by the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body. We believe that these recommendations represent a constructive compromise and opening them up again would risk further delaying operationalisation of the 6.4 mechanism, meaning no new projects until 2025 at earliest, and limiting mitigation investments in this critical decade.”

Coming up on Friday at IETA’s COP28 Business Hub

IETA’s COP28 side event programme takes a break tomorrow, as the COP venue will be largely closed. Below is our Business Hub agenda for Friday, 8 December.

Many of the events hosted at the IETA Business Hub will be webcast – just click on the link by each event to participate! All event times are listed in Gulf Standard Time, which is three hours ahead of Central European and two hours behind Singapore time.

0930-1030: The Landscape of Article 6 Implementation – State of Play and Key Developments, with Sandra Greiner (Climate Focus), Stephan Hoch (Perspectives), Ursula Flossmann-Kraus (KLIK Foundation), Alick Muvundika (Zambia), Fenella Aouane (GGGI). Event webcast.

1100-1230: Verra Stakeholder Update, with Rick Parnell, Judith Simon, Hillary Navarro, Naomi Swickard and Andrew Howard. Event webcast.

1230-1400: Scaling up Public and Private Capacity to Deliver the Goals of the Paris Agreement – Lessons from the Launch of the West Africa Carbon Market Hub, with Sandra Greiner (Climate Focus), Ousmane Fall Sarr (West Africa Climate Alliance), Rachel Boti (Cote d’Ivoire), Bianca Gichangi (Eastern Africa Alliance on Carbon Markets and Climate Finance) and Andrea Bonzanni (IETA). Event webcast.

1400-1530: North America Carbon Market & Cooperation Leadership Dialogue, with Katie Sullivan (IETA), Benoit Charette (Quebec), Kasha Piquette (Alberta) and Nico van Aelstyn (SheppardMullin). Event webcast.

1530-1700: Transforming Carbon Markets through Digitization and Financial Transparency, with Wes Geisenberger (HBAR Foundation Sustainable Impact Fund), Matthew Lawrenson (Tolam Earth), Alexis Leroy (Allcot) and Benktesh Sharma (Verra). Event webcast.

1700-1800: COP28 Climate Finance Hour: Measuring and Monetising Women’s Empowerment within Climate Investments, with Jeannette Gurung (WOCAN), Cheri Sugal (integrity Global Partners), Cecile Njedjebet (REFACOF) and Destenie Nock (Devvstream).

Our side events are being recorded live and are also being uploaded to our YouTube channel. You can also find our full COP28 side-event programme on the IETA COP28 webpage.