Photo: Faudzan Aiman/Shutterstock. Retrieved from opensocietyfoundations.org
Last year, flooding displaced 8 million people in Pakistan and submerged one-third of the country. This year, entire city blocks in the Libyan port of Derna were washed away into the sea. From Californian cities to Pacific atolls, intensifying weather extremes are threatening food security, prompting migratory movements, and risking conflict. And yet the Paris Agreement’s pledge to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius looks more elusive every day. COP28, convening this week in Dubai, offers a critical opportunity to safeguard hard-won progress and bring the world back from the brink. Securing a just outcome will require an extraordinary effort.
Trust levels are critically low. Developing countries on the front lines of climate change are losing patience with the continuing failure of wealthy nations to fulfill their commitments. In 2009, they agreed to allot $100 billion a year for climate finance. In 2021, they pledged to double their contributions toward adaptation. And this year, they were due to replenish the UN Green Climate Fund with at least $10 billion. Righting these will be key to unlocking many thorny issues under the negotiations.
TheState of Climate Action 2023report shows that, despite some encouraging developments in areas like electric vehicle sales, progress is occurring at nowhere near the pace and scale needed to fight climate change. While renewable energy investments have increased thanks to falling costs, fossil fuel investments have expanded, with subsidies almost doubling since 2020 to their highest level in a decade.