This year, the EU is going in strong, setting out its position early on regarding the need for a phaseout of all fossil fuels and related subsidies in a decision text by the Council of the European Union. It supports a global phase-out of unabated fossil fuels (including coal, oil and gas) with a near term peak but recognising a transitional role for natural gas. That’s a lot of words and conditions for a phaseout.
The Loss and Damage transitional committee tasked with operationalising the new fund has finally been established. They will make recommendations on the design of the fund and in doing so will have to deal with contentious debates around who contributes, who benefits and where the fund will sit within the broader regime.
Energy companies are loving the US’s Inflation Reduction Act that seeks to shore up green technologies and supply chains through various financial incentives and the EU is taking its own measures to respond. However, the head of the IMF has cautioned that these moves may come at a cost to developing countries who have limited capacities to compete.
The recently concluded High Seas Treaty will bolster the world’s ability to protect climate vulnerable areas on the high seas. It also requires countries to undertake EIAs and which must take climate change into account, one of the first global treaties to ever require this.
The AU has resolved to continue pursuing membership of the G20 and efforts to promote climate finance reform. In parallel the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change agreed to participate in climate change legal proceedings brought before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
Early analyses indicate that the CBAM will negatively affect developing countries more than developed ones, and that the impact on African exports may be considerable in some sectors
Climate change was not meaningfully addressed in any of the parties’ manifestos, and none of the candidates have demonstrated how they will practically upscale adaptation, mitigation or the finance challenges plaguing Nigeria.
As trade and climate become increasingly prominent on the global agenda, the newly established Coalition of Trade Ministers could play a foundational role in breaking down siloes between the international trade and climate communities, as well as bridging developed and developing country interests.
African governments have sought to prevent the US from co-chairing the Green Climate Fund, on the basis that it has failed to live up to its promise to deliver $2 billion in climate finance to the fund. This follows on from the unsuccessful attempt by the US to take part in negotiations on the Adaptation Fund at COP27 last year (which were objected to by South Africa), even though it was not a party to the Kyoto Protocol under which the Fund was established.
At this year’s Africa Climate Talks, the Chair of the African Group of Negotiators briefed African Union member states and stakeholders on the outcomes of COP27. He acknowledged that while some considered it to be a failure, the position of the AGN is that success is measured in light of the mandate given, and that COP27 delivered on its mandate.
The African Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI) was launched at COP27 in November last year, with the ambition of having at least 300 million carbon credits from projects on the continent retired annually by 2030. At its Steering Committee meeting in January this year during the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, ACMI launched 13 action programmes to achieve this goal. This includes the development of “country carbon activation plans” which Kenya, Gabon, Malawi, Mozambique, Togo, Nigeria, and Burundi have all signed up to do.
In the early hours of the morning on 19 December 2022, the gavel came down on the 15th COP of the Convention on Biodiversity, hosted in Montreal under the Presidency of China. The outcome of the COP is the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), the product of more than four years of global negotiations. Some of the debates at the negotiations will be familiar to veterans of the climate negotiations, including on the ambition of 2030 and 2050 targets and their specificity, a lack of finance for developing countries to meet the targets, the ability of states to determine how to meet the global targets through national planning frameworks, the ratcheting of ambition, the protection of indigenous community rights and special dispensations and considerations for small island states and least developed countries. In our analysis we highlight some of the key aspects of the GBF, particularly as they relate to climate, focusing on the main targets agreed to. We also discuss the debates around finance, explaining why the DRC understandably objected to the final package that was presented. Lastly, we unpack the interlinkages between two regimes and how they can learn from each other going forward.
