Yesterday, it was once again made clear that the COP is also a big numbers summit. According to a new study, the global community must spend up to $2.4 trillion annually to enable developing and emerging countries to achieve the Paris climate goals and adapt to climate change with the Global North contributing more than half of this sum.
At first glance, these sums seem unrealistically high – especially considering that Western countries have not even honored their 100 billion pledge. But these are investments in a livable future and not “costs”, as authors associated with the economist Sir Nicolas Stern point out with heavy emphasis. And when compared to the economic power of rich countries, the sums are put into perspective, as Bernhard Pötter writes.
Similarly, on the subject of climate adaptation, the COP presidency is trying to rally the public with big numbers and drive the states to take more action. The Sharm el-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda aims to provide support for four billion people threatened by climate disasters.
With that, we give you this new Climate.Table and wish you an insightful read!
The Paris Agreement now has a price tag: In order to achieve its goals, around $1 trillion will have to be invested in the energy transition, adaptation to climate change and the conservation of natural areas in the Global South (with the exception of China) as early as 2025, according to a new calculation. By 2030, this requirement will rise to $2.4 trillion annually, according to the “Finance for Climate Action” study.
The High Level Expert Group on Climate Finance prepared the report on behalf of the British and Egyptian COP presidencies. Led by economists Vera Songwe and Sir Nicolas Stern, the authors advise:
“Rich countries should recognize that it is in their vital self-interest and a matter of justice (…) to invest in climate action in emerging and developing countries,” Nicolas Stern said at the launch of the report. He said that most growth in energy infrastructure and consumption would occur there. If these countries become dependent on fossil fuels, the world will not be able to prevent dangerous climate change, Stern said.
Emerging and developing countries “should work with investors, developed countries and multilateral institutions” to mobilize the necessary capital, the report said. The $1 trillion investments would double the current $500 billion spent on climate action in these countries.
However, many others would have to contribute to such a “breakthrough” in climate finance, the authors said:
New financing methods are needed:
The report explicitly warns: “The one trillion is not the new 100 billion. It is is the result of an analysis of investment needs and financial capacities for effective climate protection. In contrast, the sum of $100 billion was politically negotiated and promised.
This $100 billion per year is the magic limit so far. At COP16 in Cancun, Mexico, in 2010, the industrialized countries promised to raise this amount yearly for climate protection in the Global South starting in 2020. The sum consists of public grants, loans and aid programs, but also, to a large extent, of private investments, for example, in renewable energies. It also includes payments to the Green Climate Fund and the GEF environmental facility.
The promise was not kept: In 2020, payments were below the limit, as officially stated by the industrialized countries organization OECD. A decisive cause is that not enough private capital came together. The failure to meet the $100 billion financial target is not only a disappointment for people hoping for this aid. It is also a recurring argument in the negotiations that the Global North as a whole is not keeping its promise.
The curve shows how the sum is growing but not enough. OECD countries pledged in 2021 to go above $100 billion by 2025 to fill in the gaps to retroactively make good on the promise. Whether this will happen, given the financial strains on national budgets from the Covid crisis and Ukraine war, or opposition in the US Congress to climate finance abroad, is questionable.
In addition to the total amount, the financial flows and their calculation have often been controversial. A large part of it consists of loans, which can increase the debt of poor countries even if the conditions are more favorable. It was also unclear for a long time which services the industrialized countries would take into account and whether, for example, previous development aid would only be given a green label.
Moreover, there is a large preponderance of payments for climate change “mitigation” over adaptation projects. This is because building wind or solar plants, for example, is a lucrative business model for European and US investors. Spending on new dams or sustainable agriculture that contributes to climate change adaptation often pays less directly in profits.
At COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, donor countries pledged to double their payments for adaptation to $40 billion by 2025. The think tank IIED accuses them of not pursuing this course consistently.
The financial experts of the development organization Oxfam have calculated, according to their own criteria, that of the official expenditures of the industrialized countries, so far, only about one-third effectively benefit climate protection in the poor countries. The figure is significantly lower than the official figures because it calculates, for example, only the grants and the share of loans that are subsidized. In addition, Oxfam assumes that donor countries overestimate the climate effectiveness of their aid.
Mr. Strilets, what are your priorities at the COP27?
Ruslan Strilets: The delegation of Ukraine will be advocating, in particular, the following positions at COP27. First, that Ukraine’s position is considered in the COP27 outcome documents, as a country whose economy is currently in decline due to the military aggression of the Russian Federation, but which will recover and therefore will have the right to a certain increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
Second, providing Ukraine with access to the financial resources of the Green Climate Fund. And third, , providing all Parties to the Paris Agreement equal access to market and non-market mechanisms and approaches specified in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement (editor’s note: Article 6 allows countries to cooperate to achieve emission reductions, for example by trading greenhouse gas emission reductions across countries).
A very sensitive issue for Ukraine are the items on the COP27 agenda, which relate to the submission and verification of reports from the Parties to Annex I to the UNFCCC. Ukraine has blocked and will block consideration within the framework of climate conferences of any document that contains or refers to statistical information from the Russian Federation, which includes statistics of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol and/or other temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, without a relevant reference note, such as stipulated by the resolutions of the UN General Assembly.
Will you present own initiatives for climate action?
For the first time, Ukraine plans to organize a national pavilion and will hold a series of events. Among others, Ukraine will present two initiatives. One of them is a discussion of unified international approaches to the assessment of damage to the climate and the environment caused by military actions. The main purpose is to demonstrate the negative impact of the war on the environment and climate, to present the methodologies developed by Ukraine. Given that the issue is relevant not only for Ukraine, we want to initiate an international dialogue on the adoption of unified approaches to calculating the consequences and damages from the war.
We will also announce the “Green Grain Supply Paths” initiative, the main goal of which is to demonstrate the global threat to the world’s food security and create partnerships to promote and support climate-friendly approaches and technologies at each stage of the grain supply chain.
At COP26 in Glasgow Ukraine declared a coal phase out by 2035, but later said that this commitment was not legally binding and the date is still under discussion. Are there discussions of a coal phase-out date?
Right now, there are no such discussions and our main goal is to protect our environment and assess the environmental damage. We adopted our NDC in 2021 and didn’t stop our work on elaborating the plan of achieving the targets of Ukraine. Despite the war, I believe in a few months, the government will adopt our plan to achieve the NDC we already announced.
Will there be changes to the Ukrainian NDC due to the impact of the Russian war?
We don’t plan to change the indicators, set before the war, NDC will stay the same, but we will definitely change the way of our progress towards these goals. We don’t need to change indicators, but it is very important to understand how to reach these targets according to the situation after the war. If the reconstruction of Ukraine is in accordance with the green course, with the EU Green Deal, with modern European legislation, that is the way to make our recovery faster and greener.
How does the Russian war impact your work and the work of the Ministry of the Environment? What are the difficulties that you have to deal with every day?
It was the first time in our life that we needed to change our everyday job. We understand that we need to protect our nature, but we cannot defend it physically. From the first days of the full-scale war, we believed in our armed forces and that they would be capable to defend our country. We understood that our main goal as the ministry of environmental protection is, while our army is defending our country physically, to assess the environmental damage, caused by the war, and not to miss any environmental crime committed.
We were impacted psychologically, socially and from the humanitarian point of view. It became part of our daily routine to go to the bomb shelter, while air radar is on, and to continue working without electricity and internet. Despite all of this, we continue our work to ensure EU integration, implementation of environmental reforms and assessment of environmental damage, caused by the war.
What is the current estimate of the damage and costs of the Russian war to the environment?
Overall estimate of the environmental damage already exceeded 37 billion euros. The largest part, more than 60 percent of the damage, is caused by air pollution. We estimate that during the 8 months of the war, emissions into the atmosphere already exceeded 67 million tons as a result of forest fires, military attacks on oil depots and industrial facilities.
According to the data of the ministry of economy, the Ukrainian economy is working only at 30 percent of its capacity. Despite the economy not working, emissions have increased drastically, because of wildfires in our forests and Russian attacks on our infrastructure, plants and oil depots. We continue assessing the damage caused by the war, based on the new methodology we developed. One of our goals is and will be to call on the international community to agree on it and to adopt it as an international recognized methodology for assessing the environmental damage.
On October 25, Germany hosted an international conference on Recovery of Ukraine, but experts say that it did not bring clarity on long-term reconstruction plans. Are there already concrete plans regarding the green recovery and how it should be financed? What is your vision for the green recovery?
At the moment, not all environmental legislation is up to date with the European standards. One of the main goals for our ministry is synchronization of our legislation with the European one. We have an EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. According to our estimates we completed this synchronization by 66 percent. If we continue implementing European environmental reforms, we’ll reach 72-75 percent of implementation of the EU association agreement in two years. That’s why green recovery will depend on how fast we’ll implement European reforms in our legislation.
I am sure if we have transparent and modern environmental rules, Ukraine will offer an attractive platform for international investments, including in objects of environmental protection.
He is one of the three key officials negotiating for the EU at COP27: Jacob Werksman traveled to Sharm el-Sheikh with Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans as an advisor on international climate law. In the EU Commission, he is the main advisor for the international aspects of European climate policy.
“When I went to law school in the late 1980s, there was no course in international environmental law,” says the US American. After graduation, he came across the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). At the time, the organization was advising developing countries preparing for the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Werksman starts as an intern at CIEL, then stays for ten years. “My colleagues and I were among the first lawyers to practice international environmental law as a separate discipline,” Werksman says.
He makes stops at the United Nations Development Program, the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Resources Institute. Then Connie Hedegaard brings him to Denmark to prepare for the 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen. When Hedegaard becomes EU Commissioner, Werksman moves with her to Brussels.
He now works for Timmermans. At the climate conference in Egypt, Werksman is one of three chief EU negotiators. This means that whatever is not decided in the technical committees ends up on his desk before Timmermans negotiates at the ministerial level. For the ministers, there are usually not many decisions left, Werksman says. How many end up on his desk? “Too many.”
In Egypt, Werksman does not expect any groundbreaking, completely new results. Unlike in Glasgow, there will be fewer concrete decisions to negotiate. It will be about climate adaptation, damage and loss, and funding for particularly affected, poorer nations, he said. “We’re not going to fully resolve any of these issues, but there will be a formal space to find and accelerate solutions,” Werksman says.
This is the third EU Commission Werksman has worked for. His work has changed since the Green Deal came into existence: “For the first time, we no longer had to lobby the other parts of the Commission for climate protection. All of a sudden, we were being asked for advice all the time,” Werksman says. Since then, the entire Commission has to focus on climate protection.
For Werksman, it’s also one of the most important examples of how internationally negotiated goals prevail at the regional and national level – something the international law expert has never seen before: “I don’t think it was ever really appreciated from the outside how revolutionary it was.” Jana Hemmersmeier
Yesterday, it was once again made clear that the COP is also a big numbers summit. According to a new study, the global community must spend up to $2.4 trillion annually to enable developing and emerging countries to achieve the Paris climate goals and adapt to climate change with the Global North contributing more than half of this sum.
At first glance, these sums seem unrealistically high – especially considering that Western countries have not even honored their 100 billion pledge. But these are investments in a livable future and not “costs”, as authors associated with the economist Sir Nicolas Stern point out with heavy emphasis. And when compared to the economic power of rich countries, the sums are put into perspective, as Bernhard Pötter writes.
Similarly, on the subject of climate adaptation, the COP presidency is trying to rally the public with big numbers and drive the states to take more action. The Sharm el-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda aims to provide support for four billion people threatened by climate disasters.
With that, we give you this new Climate.Table and wish you an insightful read!
The Paris Agreement now has a price tag: In order to achieve its goals, around $1 trillion will have to be invested in the energy transition, adaptation to climate change and the conservation of natural areas in the Global South (with the exception of China) as early as 2025, according to a new calculation. By 2030, this requirement will rise to $2.4 trillion annually, according to the “Finance for Climate Action” study.
The High Level Expert Group on Climate Finance prepared the report on behalf of the British and Egyptian COP presidencies. Led by economists Vera Songwe and Sir Nicolas Stern, the authors advise:
“Rich countries should recognize that it is in their vital self-interest and a matter of justice (…) to invest in climate action in emerging and developing countries,” Nicolas Stern said at the launch of the report. He said that most growth in energy infrastructure and consumption would occur there. If these countries become dependent on fossil fuels, the world will not be able to prevent dangerous climate change, Stern said.
Emerging and developing countries “should work with investors, developed countries and multilateral institutions” to mobilize the necessary capital, the report said. The $1 trillion investments would double the current $500 billion spent on climate action in these countries.
However, many others would have to contribute to such a “breakthrough” in climate finance, the authors said:
New financing methods are needed:
The report explicitly warns: “The one trillion is not the new 100 billion. It is is the result of an analysis of investment needs and financial capacities for effective climate protection. In contrast, the sum of $100 billion was politically negotiated and promised.
This $100 billion per year is the magic limit so far. At COP16 in Cancun, Mexico, in 2010, the industrialized countries promised to raise this amount yearly for climate protection in the Global South starting in 2020. The sum consists of public grants, loans and aid programs, but also, to a large extent, of private investments, for example, in renewable energies. It also includes payments to the Green Climate Fund and the GEF environmental facility.
The promise was not kept: In 2020, payments were below the limit, as officially stated by the industrialized countries organization OECD. A decisive cause is that not enough private capital came together. The failure to meet the $100 billion financial target is not only a disappointment for people hoping for this aid. It is also a recurring argument in the negotiations that the Global North as a whole is not keeping its promise.
The curve shows how the sum is growing but not enough. OECD countries pledged in 2021 to go above $100 billion by 2025 to fill in the gaps to retroactively make good on the promise. Whether this will happen, given the financial strains on national budgets from the Covid crisis and Ukraine war, or opposition in the US Congress to climate finance abroad, is questionable.
In addition to the total amount, the financial flows and their calculation have often been controversial. A large part of it consists of loans, which can increase the debt of poor countries even if the conditions are more favorable. It was also unclear for a long time which services the industrialized countries would take into account and whether, for example, previous development aid would only be given a green label.
Moreover, there is a large preponderance of payments for climate change “mitigation” over adaptation projects. This is because building wind or solar plants, for example, is a lucrative business model for European and US investors. Spending on new dams or sustainable agriculture that contributes to climate change adaptation often pays less directly in profits.
At COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, donor countries pledged to double their payments for adaptation to $40 billion by 2025. The think tank IIED accuses them of not pursuing this course consistently.
The financial experts of the development organization Oxfam have calculated, according to their own criteria, that of the official expenditures of the industrialized countries, so far, only about one-third effectively benefit climate protection in the poor countries. The figure is significantly lower than the official figures because it calculates, for example, only the grants and the share of loans that are subsidized. In addition, Oxfam assumes that donor countries overestimate the climate effectiveness of their aid.
Mr. Strilets, what are your priorities at the COP27?
Ruslan Strilets: The delegation of Ukraine will be advocating, in particular, the following positions at COP27. First, that Ukraine’s position is considered in the COP27 outcome documents, as a country whose economy is currently in decline due to the military aggression of the Russian Federation, but which will recover and therefore will have the right to a certain increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
Second, providing Ukraine with access to the financial resources of the Green Climate Fund. And third, , providing all Parties to the Paris Agreement equal access to market and non-market mechanisms and approaches specified in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement (editor’s note: Article 6 allows countries to cooperate to achieve emission reductions, for example by trading greenhouse gas emission reductions across countries).
A very sensitive issue for Ukraine are the items on the COP27 agenda, which relate to the submission and verification of reports from the Parties to Annex I to the UNFCCC. Ukraine has blocked and will block consideration within the framework of climate conferences of any document that contains or refers to statistical information from the Russian Federation, which includes statistics of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol and/or other temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, without a relevant reference note, such as stipulated by the resolutions of the UN General Assembly.
Will you present own initiatives for climate action?
For the first time, Ukraine plans to organize a national pavilion and will hold a series of events. Among others, Ukraine will present two initiatives. One of them is a discussion of unified international approaches to the assessment of damage to the climate and the environment caused by military actions. The main purpose is to demonstrate the negative impact of the war on the environment and climate, to present the methodologies developed by Ukraine. Given that the issue is relevant not only for Ukraine, we want to initiate an international dialogue on the adoption of unified approaches to calculating the consequences and damages from the war.
We will also announce the “Green Grain Supply Paths” initiative, the main goal of which is to demonstrate the global threat to the world’s food security and create partnerships to promote and support climate-friendly approaches and technologies at each stage of the grain supply chain.
At COP26 in Glasgow Ukraine declared a coal phase out by 2035, but later said that this commitment was not legally binding and the date is still under discussion. Are there discussions of a coal phase-out date?
Right now, there are no such discussions and our main goal is to protect our environment and assess the environmental damage. We adopted our NDC in 2021 and didn’t stop our work on elaborating the plan of achieving the targets of Ukraine. Despite the war, I believe in a few months, the government will adopt our plan to achieve the NDC we already announced.
Will there be changes to the Ukrainian NDC due to the impact of the Russian war?
We don’t plan to change the indicators, set before the war, NDC will stay the same, but we will definitely change the way of our progress towards these goals. We don’t need to change indicators, but it is very important to understand how to reach these targets according to the situation after the war. If the reconstruction of Ukraine is in accordance with the green course, with the EU Green Deal, with modern European legislation, that is the way to make our recovery faster and greener.
How does the Russian war impact your work and the work of the Ministry of the Environment? What are the difficulties that you have to deal with every day?
It was the first time in our life that we needed to change our everyday job. We understand that we need to protect our nature, but we cannot defend it physically. From the first days of the full-scale war, we believed in our armed forces and that they would be capable to defend our country. We understood that our main goal as the ministry of environmental protection is, while our army is defending our country physically, to assess the environmental damage, caused by the war, and not to miss any environmental crime committed.
We were impacted psychologically, socially and from the humanitarian point of view. It became part of our daily routine to go to the bomb shelter, while air radar is on, and to continue working without electricity and internet. Despite all of this, we continue our work to ensure EU integration, implementation of environmental reforms and assessment of environmental damage, caused by the war.
What is the current estimate of the damage and costs of the Russian war to the environment?
Overall estimate of the environmental damage already exceeded 37 billion euros. The largest part, more than 60 percent of the damage, is caused by air pollution. We estimate that during the 8 months of the war, emissions into the atmosphere already exceeded 67 million tons as a result of forest fires, military attacks on oil depots and industrial facilities.
According to the data of the ministry of economy, the Ukrainian economy is working only at 30 percent of its capacity. Despite the economy not working, emissions have increased drastically, because of wildfires in our forests and Russian attacks on our infrastructure, plants and oil depots. We continue assessing the damage caused by the war, based on the new methodology we developed. One of our goals is and will be to call on the international community to agree on it and to adopt it as an international recognized methodology for assessing the environmental damage.
On October 25, Germany hosted an international conference on Recovery of Ukraine, but experts say that it did not bring clarity on long-term reconstruction plans. Are there already concrete plans regarding the green recovery and how it should be financed? What is your vision for the green recovery?
At the moment, not all environmental legislation is up to date with the European standards. One of the main goals for our ministry is synchronization of our legislation with the European one. We have an EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. According to our estimates we completed this synchronization by 66 percent. If we continue implementing European environmental reforms, we’ll reach 72-75 percent of implementation of the EU association agreement in two years. That’s why green recovery will depend on how fast we’ll implement European reforms in our legislation.
I am sure if we have transparent and modern environmental rules, Ukraine will offer an attractive platform for international investments, including in objects of environmental protection.
He is one of the three key officials negotiating for the EU at COP27: Jacob Werksman traveled to Sharm el-Sheikh with Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans as an advisor on international climate law. In the EU Commission, he is the main advisor for the international aspects of European climate policy.
“When I went to law school in the late 1980s, there was no course in international environmental law,” says the US American. After graduation, he came across the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). At the time, the organization was advising developing countries preparing for the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Werksman starts as an intern at CIEL, then stays for ten years. “My colleagues and I were among the first lawyers to practice international environmental law as a separate discipline,” Werksman says.
He makes stops at the United Nations Development Program, the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Resources Institute. Then Connie Hedegaard brings him to Denmark to prepare for the 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen. When Hedegaard becomes EU Commissioner, Werksman moves with her to Brussels.
He now works for Timmermans. At the climate conference in Egypt, Werksman is one of three chief EU negotiators. This means that whatever is not decided in the technical committees ends up on his desk before Timmermans negotiates at the ministerial level. For the ministers, there are usually not many decisions left, Werksman says. How many end up on his desk? “Too many.”
In Egypt, Werksman does not expect any groundbreaking, completely new results. Unlike in Glasgow, there will be fewer concrete decisions to negotiate. It will be about climate adaptation, damage and loss, and funding for particularly affected, poorer nations, he said. “We’re not going to fully resolve any of these issues, but there will be a formal space to find and accelerate solutions,” Werksman says.
This is the third EU Commission Werksman has worked for. His work has changed since the Green Deal came into existence: “For the first time, we no longer had to lobby the other parts of the Commission for climate protection. All of a sudden, we were being asked for advice all the time,” Werksman says. Since then, the entire Commission has to focus on climate protection.
For Werksman, it’s also one of the most important examples of how internationally negotiated goals prevail at the regional and national level – something the international law expert has never seen before: “I don’t think it was ever really appreciated from the outside how revolutionary it was.” Jana Hemmersmeier
