Author: Udit Gupta

Former Secretary of State, Hilliary Clinton was instrumental in getting developed countries to promise 100 $ billion in climate finance in Durban in 2011. Since that breakthrough, climate finance has always been a major point of indecisiveness at Conference of Parties (COP). It has historically been the last item in which brackets (a sign of disagreement) is resolved.
This years’ COP at Katowice was an opportunity to set the ambitions higher. And in the process enable developing countries to raise their emission reductions.

In the latest report by the Standing Committee of Finance to the UNFCCC estimated $55 billion in climate finance was raised by developed countries in 2016. This is 55 % of the 2020 target. The report also noted that only 25% of the 55 billion went towards adaptation, while the majority went towards mitigation in the form of renewable energy projects. Interestingly, renewable energy is a field where developing countries have already set up ambitious targets. In doing so, we lost an opportunity to increase focus on adaptation activities and enable LDCs to adapt to a 1.5 degree world.

The latest IPCC report had a powerful message in this regard – that it is time to focus on both mitigation and adaptation. And that there are potent synergies in both.Going by the latest publicly available draft of the final text (at the time this blog was published), the parties did not agree on a long-term vision of climate finance post-2020. The parties also did not agree on raising ambition on climate finance. The phrase on “new and additional” funding is still in brackets.

Additionally, the definition of a financial instrument has been expanded to include grant, concessional loan, non-concessional loan, equity, guarantee, insurance and other. This dilutes commitment of national governments even further as more private finance can now be counted under climate finance.

However, there was some good news. Most of adaptation activities are funded through World Bank Group’s Adaptation Fund . In 2017, $96 Million was pledged by developed countries towards this fund – representing 5% of all climate finance. At the COP, new funding commitments were made, raising this pledge to approximately $129 Million. However, the conversation lacks a credible estimate of adaption finance requirements.

Whether Katowice is a success or not will depend if parties can agree to climate finance provisions.

This years’ Conference of Parties has two key over-arching aims:

1. Parties agree on a rulebook for the implementation of the Paris Agreement
2. Parties increase national ambitions on climate action.

The progress on Climate finance is critical to both these aims. Most of the climate finance negotiations happen at the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) and to a lesser extent at the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI) and Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA). The progress also influences other negotiating tracks in varying degrees.

Progress in the first week:

Green Climate Fund (GCF), the operational arm of UNFCCC introduced a Readiness 2.0 program. It will increase support to direct access actors and will draft new metrics and framework for quick assessment of funding proposals.

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement is a key building block for enabling the mobilization and flow of climate finance to developing countries. Parties in SBSTA, the body in charge of drafting the rulebook on Article 6, agreed to a text on the last minute. The text was forwarded to the SBSTA plenary for adoption. However, due to some parties not agreeing to welcome the findings of the IPCC report, and the text was not formally adopted. In the second week, the text find itself back to the technical committee.

Article 6: Reporting and Communications:

It was known before that developed countries would call for an increase in stringent reporting and accounting standards on climate finance. In the APA, negotiations on CDM – India and Nigeria successfully fought down EU’s attempts to include stringent deadline on reporting expenditures. EU in Article 6 CDM wanted the UNFCCC to report discretionary expenditures on a side-event at SBSTA 50. Nigeria and India argued that in doing so, the text reduced the health of millions of people to a side-event.

Coal

Katowice in Poland and Dhanbad in India – share a unique attribute. Both are coal mining town in coal-dependent nations. The kind of cities that invite the despise of the world and understandably so. However, my experience of living and studying in Dhanbad gave me a different perspective.

I realized how vital access to energy is to anyone who doesn’t have it. Reliable power is an essential requirement for human well-being. I felt everyone in Dhanbad knew that and had an emotional alliance with coal. It was like being in a time capsule when coal and mining were cool – which I’d argue has been true for much longer than it should have. As Katowice hosts a climate change conference now, it represents an exciting turn of the page for both itself and Dhanbad.

Carl Sagan

While I can’t wait to dive into details of the negotiations, I can’t escape the bigger picture either.

As Carl Sagan, the astrophysicist, and my childhood icon would point out – The Earth, an insignificant piece of rock is our stage to the universe. It’s the only home we knew. This is where our loved ones came into life. It’s the only place we know where conditions were perfect for us to evolve, and for us to stretch a bit closer to the grand questions – Where are we? And how did we come about? The Earth is our stage to know the nature of reality, and for the universe to identify itself. I can’t imagine what great miseries of the universe might be unlocked in the next 100 years. But as we make our planet inhabitable, the continuity of that endeavor- greatest of them- might be in doubt. And that to me is one of the biggest dangers from impacts of Climate Change.

In the next week, I’d come to know how we decide what we do with the consciousness that evolved over 3.6 billion years? What defines us as a species? What is our collective aim for the next 100 – 1000 years?

I hope the answers are as grand as our collective story.