What will be on the COP 28 agenda? 3 questions to watch

When the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference kicks off in Dubai on Nov. 30, delegates will dig into a daunting to-do list. “This particular COP — COP 28 in Dubai — is quite an unusual one,” Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at the Climate Action Network, told Devex. “I’ve been following negotiations continuously since 2008, but this one is far more complicated and really, really busy.” That is partly a function of self-imposed scheduling. Some major streams of work have to be wrapped up at the summit. Others will get underway. Big ticket items such as the new fund for loss and damage need to be translated from paper into reality. But there’s also heavy pressure to get things done this year in the face of a potential challenge to the legitimacy of the climate policy process itself. Just as multiple major new reports detail how the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement is falling short — including the one released Monday from the U.N. Environment Programme — the responsibility for getting them back on track falls to the United Arab Emirates, a Middle Eastern petrostate, and to Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the oil company CEO serving as COP president. “This COP being in UAE makes it absolutely important for us to talk about the cause of the crisis, which is fossil fuels,” Singh said. Despite the make-or-break nature of this climate summit, the highly technical nature of the negotiations can make it difficult to tell the difference between success, failure, or — more likely — something in between. Here are three big questions that could tip the balance: 1. Will the host be an ally or an obstacle? “You can't really get away from who the UAE is,” Rachel Kyte, co-chair of the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative, told Devex. That comes with the obvious risk that the negotiations could be co-opted by oil interests, but it might also create unique openings. COP presidents and host countries stake a lot of credibility on the outcome of the summit — in part by trying to achieve big wins in high-priority areas. The UAE has embraced calls to triple global renewable energy capacity, double energy efficiency, and phase out “unabated” fossil fuels by mid-century. Kyte said a strong commitment from fossil fuel companies to zero out methane emissions is another place where this COP president could be uniquely positioned to exert influence. If the UAE delivers on some of these items, the conclusion will be, “This is why the president of a national oil company, when they're the president of the COP, can pull things off that maybe others can’t,” said Kyte. If they don’t, the question will be, “what are we doing having the president of a national oil company as the president of the COP?” she added. There is also the issue of civil society space. Civil society observers are integral to the negotiations themselves, and COPs create an opportunity for climate change activism. In September, a group of civil society organizations listed seven human rights-related demands of the UAE as it prepares to host the summit, and they raised concerns about potential restrictions on speech and protest at COP. Civil society representatives who have been involved in the COP process say that so far the presidency has offered assurances that advocates will have space to voice their concerns. “That’s our role. We have to speak truth to power,” Singh said. 2. Can the World Bank win hearts and minds? The leadup to COP 28 has been dominated by debates over the new loss and damage fund, the product of a breakthrough agreement last year at COP 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, but which countries still have to operationalize. One of the sharpest dividing lines has been where the new fund should be housed. A take-it-or-leave-it decision earlier this month will see the fund temporarily hosted by the World Bank, so long as the bank is able to meet certain conditions such as ensuring the fund’s autonomy. It’s one of many litmus tests for an institution under the new management of President Ajay Banga, who has pledged to squeeze more lending capacity out of the bank in response to unmet climate finance needs. COP 28 — Banga’s first climate summit since taking office — will be a key moment for the bank chief to offer more details to climate advocates about what that looks like and how it represents a new way of doing business. To win them over, said Kyte — who previously led the World Bank’s climate portfolio — Banga should ensure that the bank doesn’t just come to Dubai with new announcements, but also more information about how it is fixing its internal “plumbing.” “It needs to show how it’s going to work differently to be in service of its borrowers and the private markets in everything that it does,” she said. 3. Will geopolitics crowd out compromise? COP 28 will take place against the backdrop of multiple wars — one of them in the same region as the summit and still threatening wider escalation. Many countries are still grappling with debt distress, price inflation, and the lingering effects of the pandemic. These crises have furthered divisions between higher- and lower-income countries that have already struggled to build trust in light of the former’s failure to live up to Paris Agreement commitments. They have also heightened tensions between rival powers whose cooperation is vital to meeting global climate targets. And they have exacerbated internal political divisions in many countries at a time when all of them need to be pursuing more ambitious climate policies. The success or failure of COP 28 will serve as another referendum on a beleaguered multilateral system. “Are the leaders of this world ready to place the urgency of climate change over their own interests, their own position, and their own geopolitical influence? This is the main question, and we will see the results during COP 28,” Hakima El-Haité, Morocco’s former minister of environment, told Devex.