COP28 – Germany and UAE kickstart new climate loss and damage fund with 100 mln USD each
Germany and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will each provide 100 million U.S. dollars to the newly established fund to support poorer countries in dealing with irreversible impacts of climate change, the governments announced on the opening day of the UN climate change conference COP28 in Dubai.
“At COP28, we need to move from words to action,” said German development minister Svenja Schulze. “This is why today, the UAE and Germany declared to stand ready to kickstart the new fund for responding to loss and damage with 100 million US dollars each.” She called on other countries to also make pledges for the fund, which was agreed by governments today. NGO’s welcomed the agreement and the first pledges for the fund. This was “an important step towards more climate justice,” said Laura Schäfer of Germanwatch, saying the contributions by Germany and the UAE were “a noteworthy first step.” Oxfam’s Jan Kowalzig said other industrialised countries were now under pressure to follow suit. “This should create a confidence-building dynamic that can contribute to a successful overall outcome of the conference.”
Governments from around the world are ready to use COP28 to tackle the issue at hand, despite multiple other crises going on, German special climate envoy and state secretary Jennifer Morgan said.
“Our headlines are full of wars and natural disasters that spell humanitarian suffering,” she said. However, “what I’ve sensed here since arriving yesterday is a very strong determination to focus on this crisis here and now,” Morgan said at a press conference in Dubai. She called on governments to be united on this. The German government’s goals for COP28 included setting up the fund to support vulnerable countries dealing with losses and damages from climate change, agreeing to accelerate the energy transition away from fossil fuels and finding more clarity on how the transition can be financed, Morgan said.
COP28 is taking place in Dubai, UAE, from 30 November to 12 December. Global cooperation on climate change has taken on a new sense of urgency as 2023 has seen many climate records shattered, with unprecedented air and ocean temperature anomalies and low sea ice coverage. However, negotiations at COP28 are set to be exceptionally difficult, complicated by new geopolitical realities, which are exemplified by tensions between western countries and Russia, or around the violent conflict in the Middle East.
In Dubai, governments will take stock of how far the global community has come since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015. The process named “global stocktake” (GST) is meant to set the stage for climate action in the coming years and ensure more ambition in the future. Morgan called the GST the “heart of the Paris Agreement.”
The global stocktake is far from the only issue on the table. The German government underlined its support for three key outcomes it seeks at COP28: tripling renewable energies by 2030, doubling energy efficiency and gradually phasing out fossil fuels.
A fierce debate about a possible agreement on phasing out fossil fuels is set to be a major component of COP28. EU leaders agreed to push for a world-first global deal to phase out the "unabated" use of coal, oil and gas, which many producing countries could oppose. Russia has already signalled it would block a deal.
“We will surely be among the more ambitious part of those negotiating in Dubai,” a German government official told journalists in Berlin. “However, we are realistic.” At the level of the G20, governments agreed on a language that had called for a phase down of fossil fuels, not a phase out, as countries including Russia had opposed a more ambitious phrasing, the official said.
German government aims to be “bridge builder”
Over the years, COPs have evolved from government negotiating platforms into huge climate fairs with delegates from almost 200 countries, observers from business, NGOs and science, and thousands of accredited media representatives. This year, the organisers expect a record 70,000 participants.
The German government delegation will have more than 250 members, the foreign office told national media. This includes the chancellor and five ministers, as well as several state secretaries. The group, which the government calls “Team Germany,” is a “demonstration of how seriously the German government takes the issue of climate change and how we see it as something that is mainstreamed across different topics,” climate envoy Morgan said. “In order to be a shaper of this COP and not a taker, we need to have the right team here.”
Germany aims to act as a “bridge builder” between the different groups of countries at COP28, development minister Svenja Schulze said. “One example is the new fund for climate losses and damages,” she had said before the start of the conference.
Climate finance plays a critical role in ensuring global collective action on climate change. A pledge by rich countries to mobilise 100 billion U.S. dollars per year by 2020 for climate action in developing countries is seen as a cornerstone of trust between the different groups. However, developed economies have failed on the pledge for years. Two weeks before the start of COP28, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said developed countries might have finally made good on their pledge in 2022, two years later than promised.
The government official said Germany will meet its own target of providing 6 billion euros from the state budget for climate finance this year. It had already surpassed the target – originally set for 2025 – in 2022 with a total of 6.4 billion euros. However, with the current budget crisis in Germany, the government could “not make binding statements” for 2024, as lawmakers have yet to decide next year’s budget.
International climate club to help industry decarbonise
On 1 December, chancellor Olaf Scholz will conduct the “full launch” of the international climate club he initiated under Germany’s G7 presidency last year. The club currently has 33 members and is fully functional with an interim secretariat at the OECD and the International Energy Agency (IEA).
State secretary Morgan called the club a “real signal for our focus on collaboration.”
The G7 set up the climate club in 2022 to support the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement, with a focus on pushing the climate-friendly transition of the industry sector. The club is open to other countries and aims to boost climate action globally. Scholz had been advocating for the club for years, even before he became chancellor.
Initially, the climate club concept put a much greater focus on a common and uniform CO2 price among member countries. However, the idea was largely abandoned because it was seen as unrealistic to implement it, as key countries like the U.S. currently have no plans to implement a nationwide carbon price, let alone an international schemes.
