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climate policy

The Case for a Global Climate Assembly

by Madaline Dunn September 24, 2024

written by Madaline Dunn

It has been nearly ten years since countries came together in Paris and agreed finally to get serious about averting a climate disaster. But while there is an emerging consensus on the structural economic reforms needed to transform sectors such as energy, transportation, and agriculture, the necessary investments are not being made fast enough.

Instead, our governance systems are struggling to muster an adequate response to what is an increasingly obvious and severe climate and ecological crisis. Although many governments have proposed robust climate measures, these often trigger a social backlash, because they are perceived as unjust and inequitable. Many see policies that pit the old against the young, the city against the country, or the Global North against the Global South. Such controversies are tailor-made for social media, where they ripen and then rot in a hothouse of misinformation, incendiary rhetoric, and polarization.

Although the argument for the necessity of major reform has been won, the argument for how to do it fairly has not. This challenge will become only more difficult the deeper we get into the net-zero transition. Most people care deeply about addressing the climate crisis: in a survey conducted across 18 G20 countries, 71% of respondents agreed that major action is needed immediately to reduce carbon emissions. But trust in government action is lacking, with only 39% believing that their own government will act effectively.

One way to address this gap is to allow citizens participation in the elaboration and implementation of climate policies and measures designed by governments. Instead of having climate policies imposed by technocrats from above, governments should embrace approaches that combine “top-down” with “bottom-up” methods, with the latter bringing together ordinary people who are tasked with shaping a shared vision of the future.

Successful examples of those participatory methods already exist. Citizens’ assemblies in France are decision-making bodies composed of randomly selected, demographically representative individuals who deliberate on a specific issue of public concern and provide policy recommendations.

In addition to fostering consensus on divisive topics, citizens’ assemblies educate the public about complex policy issues and give citizens a direct role in decisions that affect their lives. These elements are especially important for issues like the net-zero transition, which entails major economic changes that can leave communities feeling divided. Unlike politicians, assembly members make decisions free from electoral pressures and lobbying. Notable examples include Ireland’s assemblies on marriage equality and abortion, which led to national referenda and breakthrough legislation; and France’s climate assembly, which helped shape its most ambitious climate bill to date.

Brazil’s long standing participatory approach to policymaking has also proved successful. For example, its Climate Plan is being developed through a governance structure that includes several ministries of the federal government together with representatives from the scientific community, subnational governments, the private sector, and civil society.

Moreover, a climate participatory platform (involving both digital and in-person exchanges) has been launched to invite all Brazilian citizens to propose solutions. The National Environmental Conference and the National Social and Economic Development Council, by prioritizing the Climate Plan, have further contributed to strengthening this bottom-up process.

Such methods can steer climate policy proposals away from sources of polarization, and toward opportunities for collaboration and deliberation. Among G20 countries, 62% of people favor using citizens’ assemblies for decision-making, and that number has risen above 70% in countries like Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Africa, and to over 80% in Kenya. More than 170 citizens’ assemblies have been held in more than 30 countries, each with the goal of accelerating climate action in ways that support a fair and just transition for all.

Drawing on the model of the World Social Forum, what we need now is a Global Social-Climate Forum, or a Global Citizens’ Assembly for People and Planet, to bring citizens together from every country, not just to chart a collective path forward, but to reimagine our politics and encourage a global ethical stock-take. This would be an opportunity for humanity to come together, to understand each other’s aspirations and anxieties, and to co-create a green transition that benefits everyone. Rather than leaving anyone behind, we can forge a new social contract rooted in solidarity, equity, and fairness.

In 2015, France and Peru established a new mechanism, the Action Agenda, because they recognized that the scale of change needed to tackle the climate crisis requires more than just government action. It also depends on the wealth of ideas that civil society – including businesses, cities, and communities – has to offer.

As countries prepare to announce their next climate commitments in 2025, we must acknowledge the critical role that ordinary citizens have to play, both individually and collectively, in addressing the climate crisis. At COP30 and beyond, we must provide a dedicated space to hear every voice, and to ensure that the transition is not only fast but fair. Failing that, we will not achieve our common goals. That is why Brazil is committed to making COP30 (in November 2025) the People’s COP, and to giving every person on Earth the opportunity to participate in shaping our common future.

By Laurence Tubiana, former French ambassador to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and professor at Sciences Po and Ana Toni, National Secretary for Climate Change at the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change of Brazil.

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September 24, 2024 0 comments

Most Climate Policies Not Fit for Purpose, Global Gear Change Required

by Madaline Dunn September 4, 2024

written by Madaline Dunn

Most climate policies fail to deliver impact, according to a new report, which calls for a global gear change.

The study, which assessed 1,500 policies implemented between 1998 and 2022 across 41 countries in six continents, found that, against the backdrop of an intensifying climate crisis, just 63 policy interventions (4.3 per cent) have actually been successful, with total emission reductions between 0.6 and 1.8 Gt CO2.

Led by Climate Econometricians at the University of Oxford, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC), the research marks the first time a global dataset of policies has been compared and ranked in this way.

The researchers concluded that:

Climate policies are more effective as part of a mix,
Climate policy needs vary between developed and developing countries,
The Paris emissions gap can be closed by using successful policies as a template from which to draw.

Policy Mixes Most Effective

The study, published in the journal Science, found that policy instruments, such as bans and phase-outs, are more effective when part of a mix rather than being implemented alone.

Researchers used a methodology developed by Climate Econometrics at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School (INET Oxford) to measure ’emission breaks’ that followed policy interventions.

The break detection methodology, called indicator saturation estimation, allows break indicators for all possible dates to be examined objectively using a variant of machine learning, it was shared.

Most (70 per cent) of the breaks were matched to two or more policies.

“Our findings demonstrate that more policies do not necessarily equate to better outcomes. Instead, the right mix of measures is crucial,” said lead author Nicolas Koch from PIK and MCC.

“For example, subsidies or regulations alone are insufficient; only in combination with price-based instruments, such as carbon and energy taxes, can they deliver substantial emission reductions,” added Koch.

However, an outlier here, it said, is taxation, which was found to be the only policy instrument effective as a standalone policy.

Focus on Sector-Specific Best Practices

Alongside policy mixes, the report also recommended policymakers focus on sector-specific best practices when designing climate policy rather than following a “one-size-fits-all” approach.

Indeed, the report notes the combinations of complementary policy instruments vary across sectors and country groups, and although transport stood out as the sector with the most complementaries, the dominant sectoral policy differs across country groups.

For example, in this sector, when looking at developed economies, pricing stood out individually, with 20 per cent of all successful detected interventions being associated with pricing individually. Subsidies were found to be the most complementary instrument, especially in combination with pricing.

In contrast, in developing economies regulation was found to be the most powerful policy, “highly effective” as an individual policy, and also in combination with the duo of subsidies and pricing and information.

Meanwhile, in the industry sector, pricing was found to play a “prominent role,” effective individually in developed economies, and showing the most synergy with other policies in developing economies.

Effective policies also vary with economic development, the report outlined.

“In sharp contrast to developed economies, we do not find any successful pricing intervention with large emission reductions in the electricity sector of developing economies, even though around 13% of policies are pricing interventions,” said Moritz Schwarz, a research fellow at the Technical University of Berlin and Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research and Climate Econometrics Associate at the University of Oxford.

However, the researchers noted that, due largely to a sparsity of data for developing countries, especially in Africa and Asia, the analysis suffers from regional imbalance.

It is also worth noting that the study only covered the building, electricity, industry, and transportation sectors, omitting other high-emitting sectors.

Closing The Emissions Gap

According to Professor Felix Pretis, a co-author of the study and the Co-Director of the Climate Econometrics Programme at Nuffield College, scaling up good-practice policies identified in the study can, in the short term, be a “powerful climate mitigation strategy.”

Indeed, the key characteristic of successful climate policies was found to be the inclusion of tax and price incentives in well-designed policy mixes.

In the UK, a successful example was found to be the introduction of a carbon price floor for power producers in the EU emissions trading system. This was brought in as part of a wider policy mix that included command-and-control measures such as renewable portfolio standards and a phase-out of coal power plants, alongside market-based incentives.

The researchers outlined that the results show emissions would have been nearly 50 per cent higher in the absence of those policy interventions in the early 2010s.

Elsewhere, in China, its pilot emissions trading systems were complemented by reduced fossil fuel subsidies and stronger financing incentives for energy efficiency.

The report noted that if more countries relied on such policies, the remaining emissions gap for 2030 could be closed by as much as 26 per cent to 41 per cent.

It does warn, however, that even if all countries in the sample were able to replicate past success, “more than four times” the effort witnessed so far would have to be exerted to close the emissions gap.

Indeed, UN estimates are that there remains a median emissions gap of 23 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030, Ebba Mark, study co-author and a researcher at the Calleva Project at INET, Oxford shared.

Next Steps for Policymakers

Alongside the research paper, a Climate Policy Explorer was also released, aimed at helping governments gain deeper insight into what works and what doesn’t.

“The dashboard that we make available to policy-makers provides an accessible platform to conduct country-by-country, sector-by-sector comparisons and to find a suitable policy mix for different situations,” said Pretis.

This call for a recalibration of how countries approach climate policy comes against the backdrop of record-high global emissions and follows the first year-long breach of the 1.5-degree warming limit.

Indeed, as the world continues to heat, countries are off track from meeting climate goals.

Assessing the current situation, a 2023 UNEP report found that fully implementing unconditional Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) would limit temperature rise to 2.9°C above pre-industrial levels this century, while fully implementing conditional NDCs would lower this to 2.5°C – far above 1.5 °C.

However, imminent deadlines are ahead, including the 2025 deadline for submission of the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

Back in March, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said that the next round of NDCs may be the most “important documents” to be produced in a multilateral context this century.

According to the Energy Transitions Commission (ETC), if governments reflect existing policy commitments made at COP28 and nationally and the latest technological progress in the next round of NDCs, “overall ambition levels could almost triple.”

This would result in 18 GtCO2e of mitigation per year in 2035 and put the world on the path to limit global heating to 2°C, it said.

By Madaline Dunn, Editor, ESG Mena.

September 4, 2024 0 comments

Environment Opinion Policy & Finance

Climate Adaptation Is as Imperative as Mitigation

by Madaline Dunn August 22, 2024

written by Madaline Dunn

Climate-policy debates tend to focus on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. This makes sense, given that GHGs are the primary cause of climate change. But global warming is expected to continue even under the most optimistic scenarios, implying an urgent need for comprehensive strategies to minimize the economic costs, public-safety risks, and health threats associated with the escalating climate crisis.

While some experts argue that full adaptation is impossible, owing to the significant risks posed by global warming, this view is misleading. Admittedly, adaptation alone cannot offset the worst effects of climate change, and current efforts to reduce global GHG emissions must be ramped up. But overlooking the need to develop, implement, and invest in strategies aimed at protecting businesses, households, and communities from the inevitable consequences of a warming planet would be profoundly irresponsible.

Flood protection is a prime example. As inundations become more frequent and severe, restoring floodplains and other proactive measures have become increasingly important. Long-term adaptation should also play a central role in post-disaster reconstruction projects. Instead of repeatedly repairing damaged houses, for example, it might be more prudent to rebuild them in less flood-prone areas.

Adaptation efforts are only as effective as the mechanisms to finance them. While many taxpayers understandably support funding reconstruction efforts, doing so can create incentives for construction in vulnerable areas. Instead, these funds would be better spent on measures that protect communities against future flooding, not just building new houses in safer areas, but also investing in targeted research and innovation aimed at helping sectors affected by climate change, particularly agriculture, adapt to the threat.

Increasingly dangerous heat waves also underscore the urgent need for adaptation measures. Although record-breaking temperatures pose significant health risks, particularly for the elderly, pregnant women, and people with pre-existing conditions, countries like Germany are still reluctant to invest in air conditioning systems and other cooling methods. But such systems do not require fossil fuels; they can be powered by solar energy, which is abundant during hot periods.

Extreme heat is especially risky for outdoor workers, highlighting the need to update occupational health and safety laws. Companies must be required to have measures in place to protect their employees, such as providing shaded areas and access to drinking water.

Given that low-income earners often work in high-risk conditions, climate adaptation offers far-reaching social benefits. The ability to implement such measures is, however, largely restricted to households, municipalities, regions, and countries with sufficient financial resources and technical expertise. Without adequate adaptation strategies and financing mechanisms, impoverished individuals and communities will disproportionately bear the brunt of climate change, further deepening economic and social disparities both locally and globally.

In principle, households and companies should approach adaptation like any other investment decision. Instead of pursuing every option, they should focus on those that offer the greatest value, similar to how an entrepreneur would evaluate various expenditures.

To be sure, adaptation efforts face numerous obstacles, including uncertainty about the future trajectory of climate change and the high costs associated with modifying existing structures and processes. Moreover, the scarcity of information on effective adaptation measures and how they could be implemented within current legal frameworks could drive up costs. All of this could depress investment in adaptation, especially since the benefits may be realized only in the medium to long term.

Nevertheless, both governments and the private sector must make climate adaptation a top priority. By anticipating risks and taking proactive steps to adjust their operations, companies could reduce implementation costs. Meanwhile, policymakers must invest heavily in building resilient infrastructure, supporting research and innovation, and disseminating vital information to households, businesses, and local authorities to help them prepare for various climate-related challenges, including floods, heat waves, and other extreme weather events.

Adaptation is not just a practical necessity; it is a moral imperative. While reducing GHG emissions is necessary, adaptation is equally important to ensuring that the world’s most vulnerable populations do not bear the brunt of the most devastating effects of climate change. By placing adaptation measures at the heart of climate policies, alongside mitigation, we can create a future that is both resilient and equitable.

By Clemens Fuest, President of the Ifo Institute, Professor of Economics at the University of Munich and Maria Waldinger, a climate economist at the Ifo Institute in Munich.

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August 22, 2024 0 comments

Opinion Policy & Finance

The Best Climate Policy Puts Carrots Before Sticks

by Madaline Dunn August 8, 2024

written by Madaline Dunn

It is widely recognized that the transition to a zero-carbon economy requires both carrots and sticks – incentives and penalties. Less appreciated is the importance of this sequence: carrots before sticks.

True, economists have long insisted that the only way to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases rapidly and at scale is to put a price on them. In a world where burning fossil fuels causes more damage than it adds in value to GDP, each ton of coal or barrel of oil consumed ultimately destroys collective prosperity.

Calculations of these emissions’ social costs provide a guide to pricing them. Accounting for the full damages caused by each ton of CO₂ emitted, an appropriate price is well over $200. But that comes out to almost $2 per gallon (or $0.50 per liter) of gasoline at the pump, which helps to explain why, for example, neither Europe’s well-functioning carbon market (with prices of around $75 per ton) nor Germany’s own carbon tax covers gasoline to the extent needed. In Germany, where 80 million people own 40 million gasoline- and diesel-powered cars, an adequately high tax would appear too punitive to pass political muster.

These calculations also explain why electric vehicles are such an important solution. The technology’s advantage lies in basic physics: EVs convert 90% of their power into distance, compared to just 20% for internal combustion engines. And similar efficiency ratios apply when comparing heat pumps to gas furnaces, induction stoves to gas stoves, and LEDs to the incandescent lightbulbs of yore.

That last example is particularly instructive, since the transition to LEDs is already mostly complete. Given that incandescent bulbs were notoriously inefficient – converting 90% of power to heat instead of light – switching to LEDs has paid for itself many times over. But even this common-sense change required coordination to achieve scale, and to overcome barriers like high upfront costs and landlords’ unwillingness to provide more efficient bulbs to tenants.

In the United States, it started with the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, signed into law by President George W. Bush, which set new efficiency standards for household lightbulbs. That triggered a typical culture-war response, with the Republican congresswoman Michele Bachmann introducing the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act in 2008. Fortunately, her bill went nowhere, and nor did President Donald Trump’s attempts to abolish efficiency standards a decade later. LEDs had already taken over as the better, more efficient, and ultimately cheaper technology. Physics and economics trumped culture wars, and both consumers and the planet benefited as a result.

The transitions to EVs, heat pumps, induction stoves, and many other newer, better technologies are now following similar – and similarly rapid – trajectories. While the cost of coal power in inflation-adjusted terms has stayed roughly the same for more than 200 years, the costs of solar power and batteries have declined by more than 99% in the past 30 years alone. In fact, solar is now the cheapest source of electricity ever – yes, even accounting for the fact that the sun doesn’t shine at night – and it is bound to become even cheaper. Sun, sand, and human innovation are all plentiful, leading to further economies of scale.

But, like LED adoption, rapid solar deployment requires coordination among households, utilities, regulators, industry, and those developing new technologies. After all, the goal is to have plug-in EVs charging when the sun shines, and powering the dishwasher or helping to stabilize the local grid when it doesn’t.

Coordination is also needed to encourage purchases of solar panels and other technologies in the first place. When Germany launched its ambitious Energiewende (energy transition) in 2011, feed-in tariffs and other subsidies helped solar-panel manufacturers climb the learning curve and drive down costs. Solar manufacturers then decamped to China, however, which drove costs down further but hurt German employment. And now, massive new US subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) may lead more European clean-tech businesses to look to greener shores, this time across the Atlantic.

The proper response to these developments is not to give up on newer, more efficient technologies. It is to find other ways to manufacture and deploy them at home. The European Union’s ban on sales of cars powered by internal combustion engines beginning in 2035 would help, as would a coordinated push to support adoption of heat pumps.

Backpedaling on these policies would be a big mistake. Europeans will need to devise creative solutions to subsidize the production and adoption of clean technologies. Electricity-market reforms that reward low-carbon power generation and thereby pass lower solar-power prices on to consumers are a good start. On EVs, heat pumps, and other more efficient products, targeted transition schedules ought to be part of the package. They provide investment certainty and balance carrots and sticks.

New York State, for example, has banned gas connections to most new buildings (a measure that Germany has yet to pass), thus gradually reducing its reliance on a fossil-fuel source while stopping short of taxing it. Minnesota, under the leadership of Governor Tim Walz, now the Democratic candidate for the vice presidency, has similarly passed a law requiring utilities to achieve 60-80% carbon-free electricity by 2030, and 100% by 2040, up from around 50% today. The law is implemented with a flexible renewable portfolio standard, but it is still largely a stick. The carrot: $2 billion in clean-energy subsidies, as part of the state’s comprehensive action plan.

Not all goes so smoothly. Though New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s long-awaited plan to introduce congestion pricing in New York City would have funded much-needed public-transit investments, it was seen as putting the stick before the carrot. In the event, she bowed to political pressure and abandoned the plan at the last minute.

The US is facing broader sequencing questions. Now that many of the IRA subsidies have proven to be wildly popular, when is the right time to follow up the carrot with a stick? The expiration of the Trump tax cuts for the rich next year could be seen as an opportunity finally to start pricing carbon. Of course, all will depend on the outcome of November’s presidential election.

By Monika Schnitzer, Chair of Comparative Economics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and Chair of the German Council of Economic Experts & Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School.

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August 8, 2024 0 comments

Opinion Policy & Finance

What Does the EU Election Mean for European Climate Policy?

by Madaline Dunn June 25, 2024

written by Madaline Dunn

It has been a difficult few weeks for those of us committed to achieving a greener, more progressive Europe. In the European Parliament election, far-right parties won some 20% of the vote and secured nearly one-fifth of all seats. In my own country, France, National Rally finished in first place, and may soon be able to form a far-right government, should it manage to repeat the performance in the upcoming snap election.

While far-right parties’ positions on immigration and cost-of-living issues account for most of their gains, many also are openly hostile to climate policies. Yet fatalism would be the worst possible response. The election results were not a repudiation of ambitious green policies, and it would be a historic mistake for our leaders to interpret them that way. Opinion polls consistently show that Europeans support stronger action on climate change, with a vast majority (77%) regarding it as a very serious problem.

Contrary to some headlines, pro-EU parties held their ground in the overall composition of the European Parliament. The center-right European People’s Party (EPP) remains the largest grouping and will be at the heart of any coalition that is formed. In its 2024 campaign program, it committed to continuing and further developing the European Union’s landmark Green Deal.

Nor was the far-right “wave” felt across Europe. In Slovakia, the centrist Progressive Slovakia party beat the populist incumbent party on the back of record voter turnout. In the Nordic countries, progressive pro-climate parties made advances, and far-right populist parties actually lost support. The rest of Europe could learn a lot from Finland, where a serious, multi-pronged strategy of countering misinformation has made it less susceptible than any other EU country to fake news.

That said, there is no denying that far-right gains will have negative implications for progressive policy goals. Ambitious climate action will not have the same full-throated support that it did over the past five years, when there was a broad consensus for it. Issues like security, competitiveness, and migration featured heavily in the election campaign and will surely take priority over reducing emissions. Policymaking will be more transactional, with political horse-trading leading to a less ideologically consistent climate program.

How should those of us who want the EU to maintain its climate leadership respond to these new realities? In part, we face a communications challenge. We must demonstrate the wider benefits of the green transition: how it will help people lead healthier, safer, more prosperous and dignified lives. It is not enough to complain that the right has cynically exploited voters’ grievances and worries. We need to offer a more appealing, positive vision of the alternative. Political polarization can be addressed only with fairer policies and by listening to citizens – many of whom feel ignored and marginalized.

Green campaigners must also convince a more rightward-leaning EU leadership that Europe’s problems are interlinked and cannot be addressed in isolation. Since climate change contributes to other challenges like geopolitical instability and migration, climate action must be an integral part of Europe’s approach to security.

These election results further confirm that we need to emphasize the social dimension of policymaking, both at the EU and the national level. We must get serious about addressing major inequalities in wealth and emissions, together with regional disparities. These have increasingly come to define European society, creating ripe conditions for the far right and the broader backlash against climate policies.

Consider that, in both the United States and the EU, the wealthiest decile emits 3-5 times more than the median individual, and around 16 times more than the poorest decile. This injustice is not lost on voters. In France, 76% of people agree that “energy sobriety is imposed only on the people, but not on the elites,” and 79% agree that “it is the poorest who pay for the climate and energy crisis while it is the richest who are responsible for it.”

The public’s justified sense of unfairness will be a persistent obstacle to climate progress for as long as these disparities are left unaddressed. We need a radical change of approach to put social justice and equity at the center of policymaking, and to defend and improve democracy itself. In many European countries, progressive campaigners and NGOs are under growing pressure and facing new legal restrictions as part of a wider rollback of democratic freedoms. In some cases, we are witnessing a brazen effort to squeeze civil society.

The European election results ought to remind us that the European Green Deal and European democracy are preconditions for climate action and any other progressive causes. Let’s not give up. I have spent enough of my life campaigning on climate change to know that progress is not linear. The onus is on us to regroup and renew our commitment to a fairer, greener future.

By Laurence Tubiana, a former French ambassador to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a professor at Sciences Po, Paris.

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June 25, 2024 0 comments

Environment Latest News Politics

UAE: Global Dignitaries Honoured for Contributions to COP28 Outcome

by Madaline Dunn May 23, 2024

written by Madaline Dunn

This week, an honouring ceremony was held in Abu Dhabi to recognise the contributions of politicians, former heads of state, policymakers, and indigenous people to COP28 and its outcome. There, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Abu Dhabi, awarded international officials the First Class Order of Zayed II medal.

At the ceremony, His Highness thanked recipients for their efforts towards the climate summit, which resulted in the UAE Consensus, an agreement to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in “a just, orderly and equitable manner.”

The ceremony was attended by H.H. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan; Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad bin Tahnoun Al Nahyan, Adviser for Special Affairs at the Presidential Court; Dr. Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and COP28 President; Sheikh Abdulla bin Mohammed Al Hamed, Chairman of the National Media Office (NMO), and a number of officials.

Honorees included:

Dan Jørgensen, Minister for Development Cooperation and Global Climate Policy, Denmark, who was part of the Global Stocktake ministerial pair, which contributed to consultations with Negotiating Groups and Parties.
Yasmine Fouad, Minister of Environment, Egypt, who was highlighted as a “vocal advocate” of the UAE and COP28 Presidency, as well as part of the finance ministerial pair, which contributed to consultations with Negotiating Groups and Parties.
Dr. Muawieh Radaideh, Minister of Environment, Jordan, a COP28 Presidency Advisory Committee member who reportedly advocated for COP28 among parties.
Alioune Ndoye, Former Minister of Environment, Sustainable Development, and Ecology Transition, Senegal, and Chair of the Least Developed Countries Negotiating Group, who supported in garnering inputs and support among the most climate-vulnerable countries on the UAE Consensus outcomes.
Ruslan Edelgeriev, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, Russia, who reportedly provided “key support” in driving consensus on the Global Stocktake and negotiated outcomes.
Ambassador Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta, former Chairman of G77 and China, Cuba, who was a “strong supporter” of COP28 and played a key role in unifying the G77 and China around COP28 draft negotiated outcomes, especially the Global Stocktake.
Ambassador Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr. Pa’olelei Luteru, Permanent Representative to UN, Samoa, and Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, who helped to ensure small island developing states’ input and support in the final decisions, particularly on mitigation and Loss and Damage.
Mark Carney, UN Special Envoy for Climate Action, who was called a “supportive partner” to the UAE, particularly concerning the delivery of key Presidential Action Agenda outcomes across climate finance and energy.
Jennifer Jordan-Saifi, CEO, Sustainable Markets Initiative, who was a firm advocate of COP28 and facilitated the engagement of senior government leaders.
Kate Hampton, CEO, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, a COP28 Presidency Advisory Committee member who provided valuable advice in the lead-up to and during the climate summit.
Badr Jafar, CEO, Crescent Enterprises, a dedicated COP28 Presidency Advisory Committee member and Special Representative for Business and Philanthropy who mobilised multistakeholder engagement at the Business & Philanthropy Climate Forum to advance net zero and nature-positive goals.
Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank Group, who was a “firm advocate” for the UAE in the lead-up to the climate conference, especially on advancing climate finance outcomes and reform of the international financial system.
Larry Fink, Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, a COP28 Presidency Advisory Committee member who provided counsel to COP28 in the run-up to the conference and beyond.
Dr. Vera Songwe, Chair and Founder of the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility, who was highlighted as “instrumental” in helping COP28 deliver the Global Climate Finance Framework and climate finance outcomes.
Hindou Ibrahim, President of the Association for Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad, who was a committed member of the COP28 Presidency Advisory Committee.
Prof. Carlos Lopes, Chair of the African Climate Foundation Board, a member of the COP28 Presidency Advisory Committee who lent his support and guidance to COP28.
Dr. Agnes Kalibata, President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, who provided expertise on food systems transformation and supported the delivery of the COP28 UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action.
Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, who was a “supportive partner to COP28” and mobilised global cooperation and co-convened four high-level energy dialogues in the lead-up to COP28.
Prof. Saleemul Huq, who was a “passionate advocate” for addressing climate challenges affecting the world’s most vulnerable, and was posthumously honoured. He passed away at 71 in October 2023, with his wife, son and daughter accepting the award from His Highness the President.
Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, former President of Iceland, who provided “political guidance and counsel” as a COP28 Presidency Advisory Committee Member.
John Kerry, former US Presidential Climate Envoy, who was described as an “active and loyal” partner to the UAE in the lead-up to and during COP28 by enhancing global cooperation and advocating for COP28.

May 23, 2024 0 comments