Page 32 - bneMag Dec22

32 I Companies & Markets bne December 2022
Adaption
The UN also said that governments have agreed to push Adaption up the agenda at COP28 in a bid to improve resilience amongst the most vulnerable countries.
Adaption means investing in infrastructure to prevent disaster climate change that have yet to happen. New pledges, totalling more than $230mn, were made to the Adaptation Fund at COP27 as part of the grandly named Sharm el-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda. These pledges will help many more vulnerable communities adapt to climate change through concrete adaptation solutions.
There was also a commitment to double the annual spending on adaption from $20bn per year at present to $40bn.
EU President Ursula von der Leyen was lukewarm in welcoming the final COP27 decision, saying: “COP27 marks a small step towards climate justice but much more is needed for the planet. We have treated some of the symptoms but not cured the patient from its fever.”
“COP27 has kept alive the goal of 1.5C. Unfortunately, however, it has not delivered on a commitment by the world's major emitters to phase down fossil fuels, nor new commitments on climate mitigation,” she lamented.
Climate finance failure
Perhaps the biggest scandal of COP27 was the target of $100bn per year of climate finance flowing from the developed world
Uberwealthy are the worst climate criminals
Richard Lockhart in Edinburgh
The investments of the world’s 125 wealthiest people produce the same amount of CO2 as the whole of France, while each of them emits a million times more greenhouse gases (GHGs) than the average person.
A new report from Oxfam found that billionaires’ investments create an average of 3m tonnes per year per person of CO2, compared with 2.76 tpy per person for the bottom 90% of humanity, and found that an average of 14% of their investments were in polluting industries such as energy and cement.
“These few billionaires together have ‘investment emissions’ that equal the carbon footprints of entire countries like
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to developing economies has still not been met, and there was no commitment to finally meet this target.
The final document did say that $4 trillion per year was needed to invested in renewable energy by 2030 if the world is to have any chance of reaching net zero emissions by 2050. Meanwhile, a global transformation to a low-carbon economy is expected to require investment of at least $4-6 trillion per year. Again, these are merely aspirational targets, and there was no detail of how to raise this money.
Fossil fuels are still being treated softly, with only coal to be phased down. The final cover document refers to boosting “low-emission energy systems,” as well as “clean power generation and energy efficiency measures.” It does not single out oil or gas, allowing countries to continue to invest in fossil fuels as long as they use clean technology, which effectively means various bits of kit that can reduce emissions, such as better flue technology at power stations and more efficient petrol engines for cars.
All in all, the language of the final COP27 deal was stronger and more forceful than at COP26, but the agreement was still as toothless as in Glasgow, with no progress on winding down consumption of coal or other fossil fuels.
The world now moves forward to COP28 in Abu Dhabi,
where a key event will be the First Global Stocktake, which will independently evaluate the progress made by then in implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement. COP27 will probably not receive the most glowing assessment.
France, Egypt or Argentina,” said Nafkote Dabi, climate change lead at Oxfam.
“The major and growing responsibility of wealthy people
for overall emissions is rarely discussed or considered in climate policy making. This has to change. These billionaire investors at the top of the corporate pyramid have huge responsibility for driving climate breakdown. They have escaped accountability for too long,” said Dabi.
Oxfam’s report said that many of the 183 corporations examined were off track in setting their climate transition plans, including hiding behind unrealistic and unreliable