Reflecting on International Climate Negotiations: COP28 and Beyond

By Aarushi Aggarwal

*Aarushi with a poster calling for fixing climate finance.*

Just weeks before the COP, the UNEP released the Adaptation Gap 2023, which estimated gaps in financing adaptation to be between USD 194 billion and USD 366 billion per year. The report further stated that “adaptation finance needs are 10–18 times as great as current international public adaptation finance flows [and] at least 50 percent higher than previously estimated.” As a student of climate policy with an interest in adaptation and finance, at the COP I was most curious to see how the conversation on financing adaptation is developing—within academic circles, multilateral development banks, and the private sector, whose need for increased participation in financing adaptation is widely recognized and demanded.

It seemed that I was not alone in asking this question. The question of how to mobilize private sector capital towards adaptation, biodiversity conservation, and loss and damage came up repeatedly at panels I attended, which tended to be diverse with representation from think tanks, international organizations, corporations, and banks. The panel I enjoyed the most on this subject was about debt-for-climate swaps, where panelists discussed the potential for swaps as an underutilized climate finance instrument. Through the case studies of Seychelles and Belize, the panel provided a deep dive into how this framework could be leveraged for creating a blended capital structure that incentivizes enhanced private sector involvement in financing climate action. I was struck by a comment that Daniel Ortega-Pacheco, the co-chair of the expert panel at IC-VCM, made at this panel, “Focus on integrity, and scale will follow.” As countries look to debt-for-climate swaps to address the twin problems of high sovereign debt and climate change, this is perhaps something to bear in mind.

The financial case for investing in climate adaptation has been clear for some time now, and while corporations might largely accept this need, they do not always identify it as an investment but as grants. They are not to be blamed entirely; adaptation has remained predominantly donor-funded. However, at another panel on the climate-biodiversity nexus, Dorothy Shaver, the global food sustainability director at Unilever, explained that the company had been working with tomato farmers in southern Spain whose produce was affected by increased temperatures. Ms. Shaver further explained that Unilever uses tomatoes in many of its very popular consumer products. Helping these farmers adapt at the farm level, then, is in the interest of Unilever’s bottom line. The case for localized corporate engagement in adaptation is, therefore, also clear in certain instances.

Despite broad civil society agreement on how climate change action and adaptation, particularly, may be financed, negotiations taking place on the other side of the venue were far less decided on this matter. Aside from the operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund on the first day of the conference, no agenda item focused exclusively on the issue of climate finance, which for most developing countries and certainly all least developed countries and small island developing states, is the question separating adaptation from experiencing devastating impacts of climate change. Without a dollar amount commitment from developed countries who are able to pay, the developing world is simply unable to take meaningful climate action.

I remember COP26 in Glasgow as Indian Prime Minister Modi announced the country’s Net Zero pledge, I followed closely on television, hoping that soon I could attend in person. I am grateful to have been a part of the Tufts University delegation to a historic COP and to have had a chance to witness closely the processes I have studied and followed for years. However, as we were repeatedly denied access to rooms where negotiations took place and where ministers continued to prioritize their narrow agendas instead of making material progress toward emissions reduction and financing adaptation, I am left wondering what purpose each successive COP serves. Is it merely a stage for parties to make bold yet toothless statements, or for a civil society rendezvous? If globally, we fail each year to arrive at a negotiated text we desire and expect, might the COP be better served by a self-reflected course correction where we are no longer dependent on countries alone to push the needle forward on climate action? What alternative form of climate negotiations can allow strong collective action that meets the needs and expectations of all parties?