Positive highlights of COP27

Year after year, the COPs show the power of the fossil fuel industry and its cruel indifference to the planetary suffering it is causing and the climate chaos it will soon unleash.?

Yet even as COP27 came to its tired end, there were several critical developments from Sharm El-Sheikh that may still lead us to a relatively safe planet:

1. Keeping 1.5°C alive to address the climate emergency requires head of State leadership. The world is waking up to the fact that we are in a climate emergency, that the fast-approaching 1.5°C guardrail is a hard scientific limit, and that the consequence of crashing through it will risk planetary chaos as self-reinforcing feedbacks take over and the planet starts to cook itself and push us past a series of irreversible and almost certainly catastrophic tipping points.

• US President Biden and Brazil’s President-elect Lula made special trips to the COP, and along with the many other leaders attending the opening, showed that addressing the climate emergency demands head of State leadership. Barbados PM Mia Mottle continued to shine.

2. Negotiators and financial leaders are getting the picture, as are heads of State, and the 1.5°C guardrail remains.

• The final COP 27 decisions reiterate “that the impacts of climate change will be much lower at the temperature increase of 1.5 °C compared with 2 °C and resolves to pursue further efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C….”
• The final decisions also recognize “the impact of climate change on the cryosphere and the need for further understanding of these impacts, including of tipping points….”

3. Cutting methane is key to slowing near-term warming and keeping 1.5°C alive. Negotiators and heads of State are beginning to appreciate that cutting emissions of methane, which is responsible for about half of today’s net warming, is key to slowing warming in the next decade or two and limiting overshoot of the 1.5°C guardrail.

• Along with President Biden, US Special Presidential Climate Envoy John Kerry was the champion of the methane mitigation strategy at COP27, along with the new White House climate czar John Podesta, Kerry’s deputy Rick Duke, and the EU. Island states and African states are on board, and the World Bank launched its fast methane mitigation sprint initiative.
• Kerry and team promoted the strengthened Global Methane Pledge, which was launched at COP26, and now has more than 150 countries and the EU agreeing to cut methane globally by at least 30% below the 2020 baseline by 2030.
• The final decisions of COP27 mention methane but fail to note that it is the most important opportunity to slow warming in the near term, merely reiterating an “invitation to Parties to consider further actions to reduce by 2030 noncarbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions, including methane….”

The next necessary step is to move from the voluntary pledge to a Global Methane Agreement with mandatory obligations to cut methane.

• The agreement should use the Montreal Protocol for its inspiration, as the Protocol is the world’s most successful climate treaty to date, and has key elements that can be borrowed for a new methane agreement. Such a sectoral agreement on methane would be a critical complement to the efforts of the COPs to speed the transition to clean energy and decarbonize by mid-century. We need the one-two punch of methane mitigation to win the near-term sprint, and decarbonization to win the marathon to mid-century.

4. China and the US are working together again. Equally important, Kerry and lead Chinese negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, announced that they would resume their formal negotiations, including on cutting methane.

• Xie Zhenhua reported that China would soon approve its methane mitigation plan, as contemplated in the bilateral deal with the US at COP26.
• Most countries are starting to include methane cuts in their NDCs.

5. There is a viable plan to unlock hundreds of billions in climate financing. Another critical development is the Bridgetown Initiative from Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley and Special?Envoy on Investment and Financial Services, Avinash Persaud, which shows a promising path to unlocking hundreds of billions of climate financing, without anyone having to write a check.

• The initiative would use the idle liquidity of the International Monetary Fund in the form of Special Drawing Rights to strengthen the balance sheets of the World Bank and other regional development banks so they can vastly increase their lending to developing countries to address climate change.
• The final COP27 decisions took an important step forward by calling on the shareholders of multilateral development banks and international financial institutions to reform their practices and priorities, and significantly increase their climate ambition.
• The Bridgetown Initiative, which is outside the COP process, could be launched as soon as the Spring meeting of the IMP and World Bank.
• Unlocking financing next year is critical for climate resilience and for climate justice. The IMF’s Resilience and Sustainability Trust is a good start.

6. In a historic decision, a loss and damage fund was finally agreed. ?The battle now shifts to ensuring sufficient funds are put into the fund. Given the dodgy history of the richer countries fulfilling their past pledges on climate funding, this will be a challenge. Nevertheless, there are immediate benefits of the fund:

• First, the fund further darkens the shadow of climate liability and sends a powerful signal to corporate boardrooms that their reconning is coming.
• Second, it reinforces how important it is to slow warming in the near-term and keep 1.5°C in sight; otherwise, the planetary damages will exceed our ability to adapt, as well as our ability to pay.
• Without fast mitigation to cut methane and the other non-CO2 short-lived climate pollutants, self-reinforcing feedbacks will take over and push the planet past the series of tipping points lurking beyond the 1.5°C guardrail into climate chaos.
• If we don’t slow warming this decade, no amount of money will be able to pay for the human suffering and the other loss and damage from climate chaos.

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