The annual UN Climate Change COP summits get high level of attention but what do the people who have attended the event think? Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, through its
Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES), hosted a seminar titled "
COP28 Outcomes and Insights for Southeast Asia."
The panellists,
Dr Navroz K. Dubash, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, LKYSPP, Professor Winston Chow, SMU Urban Institute,
Dr Mirza Sadaqat Huda, Lead Researcher at the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore and Mr Varad Pande, Partner & Director at Boston Consulting Group, Sustainability & Social Impact, have extensive experience with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Conference of the Parties (COP). The panel was chaired by IES Director,
Professor Ben Cashore.
The panellists laid out how COP28 works and what they viewed as key takeaways to Southeast Asia.
Is COP effective?
Dr Dubash outlined three things that COPs can do:
- Stimulate national action
COP28 was unique as it debuted the Global Stocktake, the process in the Paris Agreement to assess the progress to mitigate climate change and identify the gaps for further action. Dr Dubash pointed out that while there was "wiggle space" in the language of the COP statement, for example, "call on" instead of "mandate" and "transition" from fossil fuels as opposed to "phase out", he observed an important shift in behaviour from the UAE and other Gulf petrostates.
Said Dr Dubash: "They are beginning to see ways in which they can pivot their economies … that allow them either to continue using fossil fuels and do carbon capture, or pivot to new energy sources like hydrogen on the back of a lot of solar potential. So, they are finding a way to tell a story about continued economic success."
The key question is what will the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) — which are countries’ efforts to reduce emissions under the Paris Agreement, due next year — contain?
- Enabling function
One of the most important ways to enable national change is to finance it. Dr Dubash said the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG) is the latest initiative to make "finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development".
He said the collective agreement communicates a strong and clear stance. However, he said: "You are not seeing evidence on the ground of the mobilisation of those sorts of funds. It sends signals (but) will those signals translate to action? This is not so clear."
- Global public goods
Among the positive outcomes from COP28 is the launch of the loss and damage fund for countries harmed by climate disasters. Said Dr Dubash: "COPs are less a place to get countries to do what they otherwise would not do, and more a place to make it easier for national politics to bring themselves around to doing something more."
Perceptions of progress
Mr Pande cited four areas of progress namely:
- Renewables Energy (RE) and Energy Efficiency (EE)
Over 130 countries pledged their commitment to triple RE capacity and double EE improvements globally by 2030. Companies representing 40 per cent of oil production pledged their goal to achieve near zero methane by 2030 and net zero for Scope 1 & 2 emissions by 2050 or earlier.
- Heavy Emitting Sectors (HES)
The recent COP28 saw the launch of an Industrial Transition Accelerator, a first of its kind initiative aimed at decarbonisation of the sector.
- Funding
Mr Pande noted that US$85billion in new funding has been raised, including the new ALTÉRRA climate fund, The World Bank's US$14billion for climate and clean energy in Africa and the loss and damage fund.
- Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA)
Professor Chow participated in the GGA dialogue, which attempts to reduce vulnerabilities and impacts while enhancing adaptation of countries and cities facing climate change over the 1.5°C limit of the Paris agreement. He noted that the discussions looked at quantifying issues such as impacts and risks. Importantly, instead of only quantifying first-order risks such as heat waves, floods and droughts, there is now a greater focus on compounding and cascading risks. That means understanding the way climate change can affect larger systems such as city infrastructure and global supply chains.
Ensuring a just energy transition
Dr Mirza Sadaqat Huda, who specialises in energy at the
Climate Change in Southeast Asia Programme (CCSEAP) of ISEAS said that COP28 saw the first
High-Level Ministerial Roundtable on Just Transition and its focus on the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP).
JETP is a program for transferring funds from developed economies and international corporations — both public and private sector stakeholders — to developing countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia and South Africa to help facilitate their energy transition.
Dr Huda said Vietnam is a case study on how to ramp up renewable energy. The country added 20 gigawatts of solar and wind to its grid between 2019 and 2021. The power generation is mostly in the South, leading to blackouts in the demand centres of the North due to inadequate supply. The Vietnamese government is looking at the JETP as a means of ramping up transmission.
Dr Huda said Indonesia has traditionally focused on local generation, and local demand which has made it reliant on fossil fuels. But with its new Comprehensive Investment and Policy Plan (CIPP), it is looking at using hydropower resources in Sumatra and Kalimantan and transferring it to demand centres in Java, which requires cross border transmission systems between the various islands. The Indonesian government is planning to use the JETP to help fund the transmission systems.
For both countries, the problem lies in the finance gap. In Vietnam there is almost a 70 per cent gap between what JETP is providing and what it needs for energy transition. In Indonesia it is 80 per cent.
Most of the JETP finance is commercial or concessionary loans which Dr Huda said, “creates a huge burden on these two countries”.
Challenges remain
The panellists agreed that the Global Stocktake showed that countries are not doing enough. Real progress demands adequate financing, which Mr Pande said requires “the four Ms - Mandate, Metrics, Money and Mechanics”. He said that it is the mechanics that is missing.
Professor Cashore of
IES emphasised the fundamental need for policy design. He said: "We are doing the science and technology and even the finance, but we are not having the policy design. Where is the policy designed for durability and effectiveness as part of this conversation?"
Despite criticisms of COP28, the panellists said countries and organisations had made specific commitments, along with pledges of funding, and initiated new projects. A significant win, they said, is that there is a political agreement that energy must be delivered in line with science.
But, as the President of COP28 UAE, H.E. Dr. Sultan Al Jaber put it: "An agreement is only as good as its implementation. This historic consensus is only the beginning of the road."