From Moment to Momentum:
We must push for progress at pace after COP27
TwitterThere was a COP in Scotland last year. Big agreements were heralded. This year’s COP in Egypt has just concluded. Big agreements have been heralded. Planning for next year’s COP in the UAE is already underway. Doubtless, more big agreements will be heralded. There have already been 27 COPs and countless agreements over the decades, yet we are still driving our planet towards climate catastrophe. Despite the unambiguous 1.5 degree celsius target having been in place since 2015’s COP, a recent UN report laments that the current policies of national governments will still lead to a temperature rise of almost double that target. With so much progress still to be made, it feels that we will need more COPs than the planet realistically has time for.
So how do we ensure that the momentum and pledges made at COPs are backed up by meaningful and co-ordinated action in the weeks and months following, and who is best placed to be leading the charge?
Rob Doepel, UK&I Managing Partner, EYSustainability, and Dr Nicky Dee, Co-Founder and Chief Sustainability and Innovation Officer of Carbon13, the venture builder for the climate emergency, caught up in a conversation on exactly this challenge. Here are their takeaways:
We’re now relying on business and entrepreneurs
Nicky:
I actually decided against going to COP27 and was surprised that I wasn’t the only one who felt that my energy would be better spent doing the work where I can most effect change on the ground. There’s always so much energy and thinking that goes into a COP but that’s usually followed by a huge dip in momentum and a feeling that words aren’t met with consistent and concerted action. Some governments were even trying to row back from the promises they made in COP26.
Entrepreneurs, in contrast, are in a rush to get things done before they need the next funding round. Carbon13 entrepreneurs are building ventures to reduce CO2e emissions by millions of tonnes. These entrepreneurs are the kind of intelligent, passionate, radical, and collaborative thinkers and doers who will come up with the game-changing solutions our planet so urgently needs. It would be great to infuse this energy and urgency into the policy makers at COPs.
Rob:
Every country comes to COPs with their own constraints and agendas. That’s why international agreements are slow to strike and even slower to enact. This, sadly, isn’t likely to change any time soon. But the one thing we don’t have when we’re already off course is time. This means that if business doesn’t step up, our outlook looks incredibly bleak. But, if the best entrepreneurial minds and the bravest corporations do step up, then we have a chance.
For this reason, I’d like to see the COP events become even more of an enabler for businesses to drive and lead the change. Governments can set targets, but we’ve already seen that collectively these targets haven’t spawned plans that go far or fast enough. The challenge then is for businesses to reduce their own emissions and to be ambitious enough to go beyond whatever minimum requirements governments might set.
What we really need are bolder and more forward-thinking governments and organisations that are committed to investing in, innovating towards, and implementing the solutions our planet needs at speed. Because speed is of the essence, investment and money need to flow. This will mean weighing up the risks of not acting with urgency against the those of streamlining bureaucratic processes. Doing so might even require reform of the large financial institutions and multilateral development banks to enable them to deploy capital faster.
This is everyone’s business, so new partnerships will be vital
Rob:
If we accept that the business plays an important role in the transition to a more sustainable economy, and if we believe that new solutions are needed and fast, then it also follows that we must forge new partnerships today capable of developing and deploying innovative models and products tomorrow.
Organisations need to do better at working together, so the ‘COPs of the future’ could also do better at helping facilitate and forge these vital and necessary new connections.. Climate change is everyone’s business, and I believe the most effective collaborations might end up being those that span borders and that involve collaborators from across sectors.
Nicky:
The majority of innovation occurs incrementally, and big business is fantastic at doing this. Today’s challenge is that we need to do something more radical and disruptive than we already have. In these circumstances, it’s really helpful to be relatively unencumbered in a way that big businesses are not. Our own partnership has meant that big businesses are able to tap into the most radical and disruptive new ideas and technologies, and help to get them into use faster. This is just one example of the kind of partnerships that we need to develop once the big challenges and targets have been identified at COPs. We need everybody to be tackling net zero, together. One specific area of progress that we did see at COP27 was on the Methane Pledges, which could really accelerate greenhouse gas mitigation in the short term if we can get these partnerships working.
Solutions need to be fair to those who stand to lose the most.
Nicky:
Whether it’s to stave off the threat of climate litigation or whether it’s the result of three decades of tireless lobbying from affected countries, the agreement for the nations that have produced the most carbon emission to contribute to a fund (Loss and Damage Fund) that will compensate those countries suffering the effects of those emissions is significant. It’s a positive, but it’s also telling that we have an agreement to treat the symptoms and not necessarily the cause. However, for the communities living with the consequences of climate change, these funds can’t come soon enough.
Rob:
Hottest summer on record in the UK. Worst floods ever in Pakistan. Most severe drought in 40 years Somalia. Record destruction by wildfires across Europe. The sobering reality is that, despite 2022’s screeching alarm bells, we’re not all on the same page. Countries whose economies rely on fossil fuel production – especially in the global south – will retain an interest in being able to exploit them in the absence of viable alternatives.
Wealthier nations have pledged $8.5bn to help Africa’s most industrialised nations accelerate a shift away from coal. However, South Africa alone costed their national coal-to-clean energy transition plan at $84bn. In the words of the South African president, what has been pledged “is not sufficient to meet the scale of our ambition”.
These chasms between what is needed and is what is available, what is experienced by those worst affected and what is being done by the international community will continue to flare. The landmark agreement on loss and damage is a significant breakthrough for countries reeling from the effects of a problem not of their own making, but will this come at the expense of funding for climate adaptation?
Regardless, an agreement has been reached on creating this fund, but there’s not yet clarity on the details of how it will actually be funded. There is prior form for richer nations dragging their feet on providing adaptation funds that they had promised. Countries will need to decide quickly where these funds are coming from, how to release them, and to which countries. All this is crucial and timely because if 2023 breaks records for all the wrong reasons, more loss to life and ecosystems will ensue.
Nicky:
On a related point since we are talking about finance, I was really pleased to see a commitment to tackling greenwashing. The High-Level Expert Group on Net-Zero Commitments has a non-trivial but important task of connecting ESG investments with actual impact.
Rob:
Yes, this was a positive development. However have you heard of the term “green hushing”? It basically refers to a recent phenomenon of firms removing statements about their ESG goals, in fear of being accused of greenwashing. We need a balance between holding firms accountable for their actions or lack of actions, but also encouraging them to be bold and ambitious in their targets and plans. If we punish every company that just misses an ambitious target, we will just encourage more conservative goal setting.
Nicky:
Yes it’s a tricky balance. So few companies have perfect ESG scores, it’s complex trying to get things right, and we are generating new insights daily. We don’t want companies going to ground because they are fearful, we need them to share what is and isn’t working for genuine ESG progress.