COP 28 adaptation accord blasted as 'devoid of actionable commitments'

Countries have agreed on a playbook for the world to increase its resilience to worsening climate shocks at the United Nations’ climate change conference, or COP 28, in Dubai. But low-income countries warned much stronger finance provisions are needed to deliver. The framework — which was reached today following an extension of the negotiations — is intended to help nations develop adaptation plans, orient investments, and track progress on delivering on a global goal on adaptation to “enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change.” Enhancing adaptation action is necessary to protect the lives and livelihoods of people threatened by climate impacts caused by current and future levels of warming. Scientists estimate that 3.6 billion people are highly vulnerable to climate change. “Adaptation is a matter of survival for us in Africa,” Collins Nzovu, Zambia's green economy and environment minister, speaking on behalf of the African Group of Negotiators, told a press conference in Dubai. African countries repeatedly described an agreement on a robust adaptation framework as “the most important outcome for Africa at COP 28.” But the outcome fell short of many low-income countries’ expectations and followed difficult negotiations, in which the Arab group and a grouping of like-minded emerging economies, which includes China and India, repeatedly blocked negotiations in the first week of the conference. Low-income nations wanted the framework to help leverage more adaptation finance and link the adaptation goal with specific monetary targets — something high-income nations resisted. The issue was one of the main points of disagreement. Madeleine Diouf Sarr, chair of the Least Developed Countries, or LDC, group, described the adoption of the framework as a “historic achievement” but warned the outcome “is full of eloquent language but regrettably devoid of actionable commitments.” “Our communities deserve more than aspirational goals; they need real, immediate, and impactful support to adapt to the realities of climate change,” she said. Cecilia Silva, climate adaptation negotiator for Angola and the LDC group, told Devex the finance provisions in the text are “weak.” The decision, she said, fails to call on high-income countries to take the lead on providing the necessary finance to deliver on the adaptation goal. “Everything will be possible if the means of implementation are available for developing countries.” A recent U.N. report found that low- and middle-income countries’ adaptation needs are 10-18 times greater than the flow of international public finance and the gap is widening. Having an adaptation goal without the finance to deliver is like “being given a bike without the tires,” Nzovu told journalists earlier in the conference. “How are we to cope with the persistent droughts, the devastating storms, the rising seas which threaten our very lives and livelihoods?” Under the agreement, countries agreed on seven thematic targets to achieve “by 2030 and progressively beyond.” This includes significantly reducing climate-induced water scarcity, building climate-resilient food production, health services and infrastructure, protecting cultural heritage, and reducing impacts on ecosystems and poverty eradication. The framework also sets targets for countries to deliver adaptation planning, implementation, and monitoring. By 2027, all countries should establish early warning systems and by 2030, nations should have adaptation plans in place, and have made progress in implementing them. Timo Leiter, a lead author of the U.N. Environment Programme’s Adaptation Gap Report and researcher at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, told Devex that the framework could help focus attention and provide new momentum on building a more resilient world. “Matched with the right support to developing countries, it can get the world on a path towards higher resilience,” he said. However, observers expressed concerns that language on finance to deliver on the goal was weakened in the final text and that targets remain vague. “It’s not an ambitious framework,” Obed Koringo, climate policy adviser for CARE Denmark, told Devex, adding: “Much more work needs to be done to make it more relevant for countries to use it as a tool to enhance adaptation.” “There is no accountability for developed countries to provide financing to developing countries to support their adaptation efforts,” said Gabrielle Swaby, of environmental think tank the World Resources Institute. A “request” to high-income countries to provide low-income nations “with long-term, scaled-up, predictable, new and additional finance” was removed. While the text previously “committed” to closing the adaptation finance gap, the final agreement only “seeks” to do so. The accord, however, “urges” high-income countries “to mobilise support, including private finance” to support low-income nations in implementing the goal. Countries agreed to prepare a report on a goal to double adaptation finance provisions — to $40 billion — by 2025 ahead of COP 29 in Azerbaijan next year when a ministerial dialogue will be held on the issue. But this falls short of the roadmap detailing how the goal will be met, which low-income countries have been calling for. “Currently rich nations whose emissions have created the crisis are refusing to pay their climate debt and making some of the poorest people in the world fend for themselves,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa. Low-income nations, and particularly African countries, repeatedly asked for the framework to set specific, measurable, and time-bound quantitative and qualitative targets to help guide the delivery of the adaptation goal. This is a complex issue. Unlike cutting emissions, there is no single metric to measure adaptation. High-income countries were more focused on setting targets for the adaptation policy process, arguing that thematic targets would require more work to establish baselines against which progress can be measured. Countries agreed to set up a two-year work program to identify and develop indicators and other quantified elements “as needed” to assess progress on meeting the targets. Nzovu told the closing plenary that he was “confident” further work on the adaptation goal will deliver the targets that Africa “aimed for.”