COP28 pivots to building the future

It’s been over a month since COP28 ended. The 100,000 people who attended the UN’s annual climate summit this year in Dubai saw many things. This included global leaders staking out national positions, indigenous people defending their rights to their land, and corporate executives of all kinds working deals — all against the backdrop of banquets, lavish hotels, and the surreal wealth of the host city.

The meeting ended with a landmark agreement: a transition away from fossil fuels; tripling of renewables; doubling of efficiency; and many more solid provisions. Still, many people missed a profound shift in the COP proceeding — indeed, in the UN process itself: the shift to building through cooperation.

The Conference of the Parties (COPs), the name of the annual negotiations, started in Rio De Janeiro in 1992. There, the world’s nations ratified the Framework Convention for Climate Change, which agreed to limit global warming below dangerous levels. Fast forward to the present: we live in a world of manifest climate change impacts, costly and devastating, and approaching dangerous levels will alarming speed.

In the intervening years, from 1992 to 2015, one could argue that not much happened. In fact, a great deal happened but was not obvious or splashy. It was more like building the rocket and the launchpad, but still waiting for lift-off — essential work, but neither the mission nor the voyage.

We got a lift-off in 2015 with the Paris Agreement. The Agreement is like a weight-loss club: everyone who joins pledges how much weight they’re gonna lose this year. Those pledges are the Nationally Determined Contributions: each nation decides what they can contribute. Commitments include everything from buildouts of renewable energy to reforestation to efficiency measures and more.

Lift-off is not the same as reaching orbit — that requires thrust and direction. In the last six COPs, much thrust and direction in the negotiations came from raising the ambitions of nations. This work occurs inside nations but opens a big role for external parties — environmental groups, companies, philanthropies — to advocate for greater ambition and specific actions. These groups drove the COPs from a sleepy diplomatic process behind closed doors to a caravansary of thousands. COP26 in Glasgow hosted 60,000 protestors alone.

This all takes place outside the negotiations, including the national commitments, but drove the sensibility inside the negotiations. And that brought us into a metaphorical orbit.

It is now the case that if all nations meet their commitments, the world will be on track to limit warming to 1.7 C — an astonishing positive outcome (it looked like 4 C in 2015, before Paris).

Which brings me back to Dubai. I have attended every COPs since Paris, and this meeting had a dramatically different feel.

Specifically, the focus was not on raising climate ambition but on fielding climate solutions.

Let’s face it: weight loss clubs don’t deliver much if their members don’t diet or hit the gym. The challenge of climate is only met through action, including investments in energy infrastructure, renewable and nuclear power, electric vehicles, clean fuels, carbon capture from steel and cement, and ceasing destructive deforestation.

Compared to the last 7 COPs, this one had a workman-like feel. Announcements were planned in advance, including the remarkable global methane pledge and the new $30 billion Emirati commitment to clean energy projects in developing nations. A new charter pledges to triple renewable power by 2030, increasing to 11,000 gigawatts. Over $3 billion for climate resilient agriculture.