Day 4, the “health, relief, recovery, and peace” day kicked off with a powerful statement from Dr. Diarmid Campell-Lendrum, World Health Organization: “Negotiators have been negotiating with people’s lives, not just carbon emissions. They just didn’t realize it.”
Through the day there were high-level ministerial events and continued negotiations across all focus areas. Informal consultations among others convened on the New Collecive Goal on Quantified Finance (NCGQ), Global Stocktake (GST), mitigation, just transition pathways, and the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA).
There was also an emphasis on public finance by developed countries, with some parties urging to expand the contributor base in line with current and future responsibilities and capacities. Most underscored the mobilization of private finance and approaches such as levies as the second layer of the finance goal. Some also highlighted broader finance flow alignment, including through policy incentives, as the third layer.
By the end of the day, 70 states and 39 organizations backed the UAE declaration on Climate, Relief, Recovery and Peace. The Declaration includes a collective commitment to increase investment and actions to improve resilience in countries and communities affected by conflict, fragility, or humanitarian crisis.
Key points from negotiations included a focus on setting timeframes an metholodologies against goals, as well as the emphasis on developed countires to aid (without strings) the path for developing countries based on their needs and priorities and informed by best-available science and capacity-building partnerships and networks, however several developed countries opposed some parts of these negotiations.
These are all underscored by the need for a transparent tracking of the goal's implementation. President Sultan Al Jaber underscored the need to achieve a just and fair transition where developing nations do not have to choose between climate action and development.
The Global Stocktake negotiations focused on the Loss and Damage section. Many noted the IPCC shows that loss and damage is already a reality, and several stressed that related needs will increase without near-term emissions reductions.
For the forward-looking elements, developing countries proposed a mandate for a process to measure and monitor loss and damage using the biennial transparency reports (BTRs). They suggested common metrics and pursuing a mandate for a data interface to aggregate the data provided on these metrics, all backed with sufficient technical assistance and capacity building. Some developed countries disagreed, suggesting national inventories would be premature. Others were willing to engage, noting that providing loss and damage information in BTRs is voluntary.
Developing countries welcomed the initial pledges for the fund and funding arrangements and called for increasing resources after the initial capitalization phase. They underlined loss and damage finance should be new, additional, predictable, and permanent. One developing country group suggested scaling it up to USD 100 billion annually by 2030.
The first iterations of text are out for almost all the agenda items. Most were accepted; while a few were rejected. For other issues, a second draft is near at hand.
Just transition emerged as the hot topic of the day. Some called for a section on just transition in the GST, citing its centrality to the future of climate action. After several delays in the convening of the relevant informal consultations, another lamented that “we risk throwing in the dust bin a once in a lifetime opportunity where we have a chance to discuss justice,” suggesting that the work programme is the central decision of COP 28.
Source: IISD ENB
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