The COP28 negotiations are a crucial moment for global climate action. With the planet facing increasing climate disruption, it’s imperative that national climate plans are upgraded to be economy-wide, include all global heating pollution, and accelerate timelines to zero emissions. This article delves into the key focus areas for these negotiations, emphasizing the importance of Action for Climate Empowerment, Capital to Communities, and climate-resilient strategies to ensure a livable future for all.
Our focus lies in ensuring that resilience is not just an ideal but a baseline imperative. We aim to explore the ethical dimensions of this design era and provide links to essential background resources that inform our approach to climate action. By addressing the right to a livable future, we can effectively tackle the existential threats posed by global heating and climate disruption.
The Imperative of a Right to a Livable Future
Global heating and climate disruption pose a significant threat, endangering lives, livelihoods, and the stability of food supplies. It is crucial to recognize the human right to a livable future in all climate discussions. This includes the right to experience the benefits of science-based decision-making, enjoy a clean environment, receive early warnings for climate-related disasters, access sustainable food systems, be protected from physical threats, participate in decision-making, and see loss and damage addressed responsibly.
To achieve this, we must acknowledge the severity of the threat, with reports indicating that a substantial portion of the global population may face unlivable conditions within the lifetime of children alive today. Already, millions are displaced by climate shocks, highlighting the urgent need for international cooperation and solutions that uphold the rights of those affected by climate change.
Key Focus Areas for COP28
Our efforts at COP28 will concentrate on six broad areas aimed at breaking down barriers and fostering cooperative future-building at the required scale and speed:
- The Right to a Livable Future: Framing climate action around the right to resilience to drive ambition and mobilization.
- Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE): Ensuring every stakeholder has the means to succeed through education, public awareness, and participation.
- Capital to Communities: Allowing communities to participate in the design and monitoring of climate-related financial flows.
- Food Systems Transformation: Transitioning to climate-smart food systems to ensure food security and sustainability.
- Climate-Resilient Trade: Aligning trade agreements with climate goals to support decarbonization.
- Non-Market Multilateral Cooperation: Activating real-world change through cooperation beyond emissions trading.
Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE)
Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) is vital in ensuring that every stakeholder, community, country, and region has the best possible chance of succeeding against the worsening global challenge of climate change. For us, a key aspect of ACE is the active participation of stakeholders in decision-making processes. However, all six elements of ACE—education, public awareness, training, public participation, public access to information, and international cooperation—are essential for creating vibrant, informed civic spaces that can effectively tackle climate-resilient development and prosperity.
Countries that prioritize ACE by leading in active, participatory climate mobilization will be the leaders that shape the climate-smart future. By empowering communities and ensuring they have the knowledge and resources to participate, we can drive more effective and sustainable climate action.
Capital to Communities: Empowering Local Participation
Capital to Communities represents a strategy designed to enable stakeholders and communities to participate in the design, deployment, and monitoring of climate-related financial flows and economic development strategies. This approach matters significantly because it addresses the need to avoid costly, large-scale errors that result from mistaken assumptions about local conditions. Furthermore, it ensures that the deployment of resources is transparently tracked not only by interested parties and experts but also by the people who experience the direct consequences of climate investments.
By involving local communities in the financial aspects of climate action, we can ensure that resources are used effectively and that the benefits of climate investments are felt by those who need them most.
Transforming Food Systems for Climate Resilience
Food systems are intrinsically linked to human health and well-being, yet the current model is failing, leading to food insecurity and unsustainable practices. Climate stresses are making it increasingly difficult for key regions to produce enough food, while natural systems vital for food production are deteriorating and at risk of collapse.
There is no path to climate-resilient security and prosperity without a rapid transition to food systems that are climate-smart, sustainable, and able to produce affordable, nutritious food for all. At COP28, initiatives supporting food systems transformation are essential, including financial mechanisms and stakeholder involvement in policies that shape agriculture, local economies, and climate finance delivery.
Climate-Resilient Trade: Integrating Climate Action into the Economy
Climate-resilient trade is a critical lever for mainstreaming climate action across the everyday economy. Achieving net-zero emissions requires climate-aligned trade agreements that support aggressive decarbonization and cooperative action to decarbonize trade and finance flows. Aligning trade relations with a climate-resilient future is a necessary part of aligning all financial flows with Paris Agreement goals.
This approach ensures that trade benefits all involved while contributing to a sustainable, climate-smart global economy.
Non-Market Multilateral Cooperation: Beyond Emissions Trading
Non-market multilateral cooperation, as outlined under Article 6.8 of the Paris Agreement, offers a way to activate real-world change that complements the other focus areas. This form of cooperation includes financial regulations, technology sharing, agricultural cooperation, and trade.
By leveraging climate income policies and other non-market modes of pollution pricing, nations can shift incentives at the national and multilateral levels. This provides a mechanism for voluntary progress, mainstreaming economic development strategies that reduce vulnerability and create conditions for climate-resilient security and prosperity.
Conclusion: A Call for High Ambition and Actionable Tools
As climate breakdown unfolds in real time, only the highest ambition makes sense. COP28 presents a critical opportunity to upgrade national climate action commitments and establish the tools, systems, standards, and incentives needed to achieve climate-resilient development. It is essential to ensure that the benefits of climate action are available to everyone, regardless of income level or geography.
We call on all parties to act with urgency and determination to ensure a livable future for all. By focusing on these key areas and working together, we can create a world where climate resilience and prosperity go hand in hand.
Leave a Reply