As always, it's all about the money. Rod Oram reports from Egypt on a cut-through message by a global finance leader
‘WTF’ is the lapel badge sported by Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin around the COP27 climate negotiations underway in Egypt. It stands for ‘Where’s the Finance,’ he wryly explains to whoever asks.
As it happens, his words count. He is the High-Level Champion for COP27, appointed by the United Nations.
He also knows about money. The Egyptian-born economist has more than 30 years of experience in international finance and development. He is an Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund. He is also the UN’s Special Envoy on Financing the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.
The usual meaning, though, also has plenty of resonance for many COP delegates, as progress-poor negotiations grind towards this weekend’s conclusion of the annual UN climate summit.
Finance dominates in a wide array of agenda items, most particularly developing countries’ need for trillions of dollars to help them cope with the fast-increasing Loss and Damage they’re suffering from the escalating climate crisis.
Reports back from the Loss and Damage debates say there’s a near-universal consensus among countries that their developing neighbours deserve finance for recovery and adaptation. But there seems to be a shortage of ideas of how to bridge their wide divides of how much, when and through what new mechanisms.
Yet the modest goal they have set themselves is only to achieve an outline at this COP, which would then be developed and approved by next year’s COP in the UAE, with implementation to start after the 2024 COP. Meanwhile, developing countries are getting increasingly anxious and angry that their plight is being ignored, or at best slow-walked to vague goals.
Deployed well, such finance would also help begin the restoration of biodiversity and ecosystem health – so-called Nature Based Solutions.
A strong call for such was made on Wednesday by four of the key architects of the Paris Agreement at COP 21 in 2015 - Christiana Figueres, Laurence Tubiana, Laurent Fabius and Manuel Pulgar-Vidal.
They advocated COP27 make robust decisions to support nature which could then embolden COP15 on biodiversity resuming in Montreal in two weeks’ time. COP15 is an “unprecedented” opportunity for humanity to begin to reverse the great damage it was doing to nature, they said.
But COP15 is struggling badly. China, its president, is playing that crucial role in UN negotiations for the first time. The first leg of COP15 last year in China made scant progress; and the second leg this year is moving to Canada because of China’s Covid clampdown. China will continue its presidency, albeit with Canada’s help.
The vital role of COP15 was also emphasised yesterday at the climate COP in a statement from 350 scientists, indigenous peoples, NGOs and businesses. They urged nations’ political leaders to give a high priority to the nature summit.
“There is no pathway to limiting global warming to 1.5C without action on protecting and restoring nature. Only by taking urgent action to halt and reverse the loss of nature this decade, while continuing to step up efforts to rapidly decarbonise our economies, can we hope to achieve the promise of the Paris agreement,” it read.
Nature was also a key message from Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president-elect, who arrived yesterday at COP27. He called for COP30 in 2025 to be held in the Amazon region, to help support his goal of halting its deforestation during his upcoming-presidential term.
Of all the heads of state visiting this COP, Lula has attracted the largest, most eager crowds, with people queueing for several hours to get into those of his meetings open widely to delegates.
Yesterday also generated lively presentations and protests from an international alliance of NGOs on their self-proclaimed Phasing Out Fossil Fuels Day. Among a number of newly released reports on the sector, one from Oil Change International analysed the emissions likely from new oil and gas developments the sector has announced so far this year and “at risk of approval of the coming three years.”
Titled Inversing in Disaster, the report says those projects could produce oil and gas generating 70 billion tonnes of emissions over their lifetime. That would consume 17 percent of the world’s remaining carbon budget for keeping the rise in temperature to 1.5°C. It was also the equivalent of lifecycle emissions of 468 coal-fired electricity plants.
The US and Saudi Arabia account for more than half of the carbon pollution locked-in by new drilling approved in 2022 alone. Moreover, the United Arab Emirates, the upcoming COP28 President, could be the third largest expander of oil and gas production in the world over the next three years, behind the US and China.
In contrast, seeking ways to decarbonise sectors is a broad and deep theme running through these two weeks of COP27. The global push for Sustainable Aviation Fuels was one example in several sessions yesterday.
The UK is among the leaders, with a government-mandated goal of SAFs accounting for 10 percent of aviation fuel by 2030, Dr Rannia Leontaridi, the UK’s director general of civil aviation told one of the meetings. Towards that goal, the government will pick winning bids soon for the first of five commercial-scale SAF plants the UK plans to be built by 2025.
One of the key drivers of rapid progress is the government-initiated Jet Zero Council, which brings together representatives of all key players across the aviation sector and government.
From an airline’s perspective, Mariam AlQubaisi, head of Sustainability & Business Excellence at Etihad Airways, described its strategy for building up its use of SAF. While modest supplies are available now internationally, UAE, its home base and a major producer of fossil jet fuels, is planning to build SAF plants.
In an interview with Newsroom, she also talked of Etihad’s use of CarbonClick, an Auckland-based company, for sourcing carbon credits for its passengers. It’s also working with CarbonClick to deepen that passenger relationship.
A very different example of transport decarbonisation came from Dustin Kahler in another Newsroom interview yesterday. He is head of mobility at M-KOPA, a Nairobi-based company which is rolling out electric motorbikes to replace fossil-fuel powered ones which are a mainstay of transport, particularly for small businesses across Africa.
The scope for emissions reduction are dramatic, he says. And at a lower cost to users than petrol-powered motorcycles.
IM-KOPA is an asset finance company that enables unbanked African customers to access solar lighting, televisions, fridges, smartphones & financial services. Founded in 2012, its investors include Generation Investment Management, co-founded by Al Gore.
