CONFERENCE OF THE PARTIES: COP28, the 28th annual climate change conference, took place in the UAE’s Expo City Dubai from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12, 2023. Photo Courtesy of COP28 / Christopher Pike
In Dubai from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12, 2023, the UAE hosted the 28 th annual international climate change conference. Delegates reached agreements about progress toward Paris Accord goals, a fund for loss and damage related to climate change, and the express need to transition away from fossil fuels.
Reminded of the capital city in The Hunger Games, Kaitlyn Leahy entered Expo City Dubai, marveling at its modernity, technology, size, and number of people. A master’s student in the Stanford University Doerr School of Sustainability (SDSS), Leahy spent weeks advocating for a place in Stanford’s delegation to the UAE, arriving in Expo City Dubai at the end of November 2023.
The pedestrian city, a little more than 20 miles outside of Dubai in the UAE, hosted the 28th annual Conference of the Parties (COP28) UN Climate Change Conference this past fall. In hopes to accelerate solutions to the increasingly destructive climate crisis, a record 85,000 people attended the conference.
“That degree of participation and global engagement suggests a deep desire and a demand to address all aspects of sustainability, from energy, water, food, biodiversity, ecology, global health, and climate change,” said Arun Majumdar, Dean of the SDSS, in a Stanford discussion after the conference. “And this was palpable at COP28.”
Among the 85,000 participants were Heads of State, government officials, and representatives from national delegations, universities, businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations. For two weeks, participants in the Green Zone (open to the public) visited buildings and booths of various countries and organizations, learning about sustainability initiatives.
“Just spending the day at the conference and not doing anything else, I think I walked 20,000 steps, and I was just walking between events,” said Leahy. “I’ve never been to anything like that.”
In the Blue Zone, formal conferences and negotiations took place, resulting in several landmark agreements.
This includes the “first global stocktake” decision which involved countries recognizing climate science and evaluating global progress toward Paris Agreement goals. Finding that parties are not on track to meet those goals, the decision called for further, ambitious action.
“COP28 made history for being the first in which leaders agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in a just and equitable way,” wrote Alicia Seiger, managing director of the Sustainable Finance Initiative. “Nearly thirty years into the multilateral negotiating process that is both remarkable (finally!) and astounding (how did that take 30 years?!)”
However, Seiger noted that “the gap between ambition and the necessary policy response is already making for a disorderly, and therefore more costly, transition.”
Another significant result of the conference was an agreement to organize funding for and create a specific UNFCCC fund for “loss and damage” caused by climate change. The fund supports vulnerable countries and communities already dealing with the impacts of climate change.
“There was early and meaningful progress on loss and damage funding, which is good,” said Seiger. “But with more oil lobbyists than all the delegates from the 10 most climate- vulnerable countries combined, and a final agreement so rushed it was reported the small-island states team didn’t even have time to make it into the plenary hall, it is clear rich countries were still in the driver’s seat.”
While wealthy countries pledged contributions to the loss and damage fund, critics note the proportionally small fund.
“To put contributions in perspective: Countries pledged a total of $656 million to the fund at COP28, while Shohei Ohtani's new baseball contract with the Dodgers amounts to $700 million,” said Colette Wabnitz, lead scientist at the Center for Ocean Solution.
Another issue the loss and damage fund brings up is the world’s reactionary approach to problems, noted Leahy.
What comes next?
In the month and a half since COP28 ended, many participants have reflected on the conference’s agreements, but significant action has yet been taken.
“COPs are a psychological stock take and an annual ambition check, but the real work of reducing emissions happens when everyone returns home,” wrote Seiger.
In California, conversations started at COP28 have continued in the weeks since the conference, with a briefing last week discussing protecting and strengthening CA climate policies. However, little progress has been made to date on the global agreements from the conference and the vagueness of the agreements left “no sense of urgency and ambition around adaptation,” stated the International Institute for Sustainable Development on Jan. 25, 2024.
Despite the imperfections of the global stocktake and loss and damage agreements, Leahy left COP28 with a feeling of optimism. Struck by the fact that “there were people making commitments that would actually make some people very upset,” Leahy was impressed by the inclusion of oil companies in the conference.
“A lot of these companies ... have thrived off damaging the climate [but] haven’t really had to face the fact that they need to change their ways,” said Leahy. “I felt like this conference confronted that face on. I don't know if that will actually lead to implementation, but the fact that that was a regular part of the conversation, like we need to change the actual problematic areas, ...was promising.”
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Megan King is a Master’s student in the Earth Systems Environmental Communication program in the Stanford University Doerr School of Sustainability. She earned her B.S. in Earth Systems with a focus on Human Environmental Systems and a minor in Italian. Megan is passionate about using photography to tell environmental stories and was awarded the Earth Systems Senior Capstone Excellence Award for her photo essay about the Coyote Creek Watershed. Moving forward, Megan seeks to address the climate crisis by becoming an environmental lawyer.
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