COP28: Key outcomes for food, forests, land and nature at the UN climate talks in Dubai

§ Food, land and nature in COP28 texts

Global stocktake

Ahead of COP28, all eyes were on the first-ever global stocktake (GST). 

As part of the Paris Agreement, countries agreed to assess their progress towards climate goals every five years. The review also allows countries to identify gaps in the world’s collective climate action and take steps to correct the global trajectory. 

It is a key part of the Paris Agreement’s “ratchet mechanism” for increasing climate ambition.

The summit saw 8 iterations of texts relating to the GST.

The mention of food in the GST was a “landmark moment”, Clement Metivier, acting head of international advocacy at WWF-UK, told Carbon Brief. 

Not including food systems – which are responsible for nearly one-third of global emissions – would have been a “missed opportunity”, Metivier added. 

But the opportunity was nearly missed, with most mentions of food systems removed in the second set of GST “building blocks”, released on 5 December. Getting food back into the final text took a “true push” from both civil society and governments, Metivier said. 

The final text includes six mentions of “food” – two in the preamble and four in the section on adaptation.

However, food does not feature at all in the mitigation section of the GST. Patty Fong, programme manager at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, told Carbon Brief:

“It’s a missed opportunity, given all the focus on fossil fuels, that we didn’t progress as much as we should have [on mitigation in food systems].

“When you look at the specific texts, the ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ refers specifically to energy systems. So this means they’re not addressing where the real expansion is – and where they actually see the growth market – the expansion of oil and gas in the petrochemical sector.”

In addition to the references to food, the global stocktake text references “nature” eight times and “biodiversity” five times. 

It “underlines the urgent need” to address the “interlinked global crises of climate change and biodiversity loss”. This mirrors language included in the COP27 Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan.

The text also says that climate change and nature targets should be achieved “in line” with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, agreed at the COP15 nature summit in 2022. This is important, Fong said, because that framework contains stronger language around sustainable agriculture approaches than the GST. 

The global stocktake “emphasises” that halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030 will be key to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement – the first time such a pledge has garnered formal recognition under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 

It also “notes” the need for “enhanced support and investment, including through financial resources, technology transfer and capacity-building” in order to meet the deforestation goal.

Beyond forests, the GST notes the importance of “ensuring the integrity of all ecosystems”, including the ocean, mountains and the cryosphere. It was crucial that the text included all of those ecosystems, according to Manuel Pulgar Vidal, WWF’s global climate and energy lead.

Pulgar Vidal, who formerly served as Peru’s environment minister and president of COP20, told Carbon Brief:

“There’s a good reference to ecological integrity in the preamble of the current text.”

Rhiannon Niven, a global climate change policy coordinator at BirdLife International, celebrated the inclusion of that term in the GST’s preamble, but said that it should have been included in the operational part of the text as well. She told Carbon Brief:

 “That’s really critical to make sure that [the functionality of ecosystems] happens.”

Niven praised the rights-based approach the text takes towards ecosystem conservation and restoration, as well as its call for a monitoring system to track and evaluate implementation of adaptation measures by 2030. However, the lack of specific finance for these efforts – only a recognition of the “urgent need” to scale up such finance – concerns her, she said.

The final GST text also underlines the “vital importance of protecting, conserving, restoring and sustainably using nature and ecosystems for effective and sustainable climate action”, she added.

On 4 December, while GST negotiations were ongoing, ministers from Colombia, Germany and Granada were among the signatories of an open letter calling for the GST to lead to more collaboration on implementing nature-based solutions and/or ecosystem-based approaches. 

Nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based approaches are specifically mentioned in section 55 of the GST, which “encourages” their implementation, alongside other “solutions” such as sustainable agriculture and land-use management. 

They also feature under section 63, which “urges” countries to increase ambition and speed-up action to achieve a number of targets by 2030, including accelerating the use of ecosystem-based adaptation and nature-based solutions. (See Nature-based solutions for more on how they featured at COP28.)

The text contains nine mentions of Indigenous peoples – “but it doesn’t address direct financing for them”, Diego Casaes, campaign director for Indigenous rights at Avaaz, said. 

Casaes told Carbon Brief that having such language in the GST was important, but called it “very shallow”, noting that it did not adopt some of the language recommended by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 

For example, free, prior and informed consent – when Indigenous peoples engage as negotiators in projects impacting their lands and provide their consent – is crucial when implementing infrastructure and energy projects, expanding protected areas or operating carbon markets in Indigenous territories, Casaes told Carbon Brief:

“That right is not included in the text because it creates an obligation that parties very much do not want to see in a climate decision. They prefer to use language that’s much softer and weaker.”

During a Climate Action Network press briefing, Eriel Deranger, executive director of Indigenous Climate Action and member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in northern Alberta, Canada, agreed that the GST should use “a robust language to hold states accountable to meet their goals”. (See Indigenous recognition and rights.)

Helen Biangalen-Magata, Kadaclan Indigenous rights advocate of the Mountain province in the Philippines, explained:

“If we get legal recognition within the GST, [Indigenous peoples] could make it into national reports and plans and see financing flowing to the local level.”

On non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases, the final text calls for “accelerating and substantially reducing” emissions, “in particular methane emissions by 2030”. 

A previous GST draft, released on 8 December, had included an option calling upon countries to “take further actions” to reduce non-CO2 emissions “in order to reduce methane emissions globally by at least 30% by 2030 and 40% by 2035”.

It also mentioned reducing nitrous oxide emissions by at least 13% by 2030 and 18% by 2035, and cutting fluorinated gases by at least 81% by 2035. 

However, these numerical targets were all removed from the GST by the time the gavel fell. The final stocktake does not specifically mention other non-CO2 gases, aside from methane. (See Methane and non-CO2 gases.)

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Global goal on adaptation

Another main component of the COP28 talks was the global goal on adaptation (GGA).

The GGA is a “framework” that is meant to help guide parties in building resilience to climate change – long a priority for the most climate-vulnerable nations.

Established by the Paris Agreement, the GGA received little notice at UNFCCC negotiations until COP26 in Glasgow. There, it was given a two-year mandate to “jump-start” the goal.

Food, ecosystems and nature featured several times within the GGA. 

Section nine of the text “urges” parties to “increase ambition and enhance adaptation action” towards a series of targets, including reducing water scarcity, reducing the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and “increasing sustainable and regenerative production and equitable access to adequate food and nutrition for all”.

The language surrounding food in the adaptation section of the GST “basically mirrors” the language in the GGA, Fong pointed out. 

In the GGA, nature-based solutions appear twice in a broadly similar way to their inclusion in the global stocktake. 

Section nine calls for parties to accelerate the use of ecosystem-based adaptation and nature-based solutions. And section 14 emphasises that adaptation action should be continuous and guided by the “best available science”, alongside making use of ecosystem-based adaptation and nature-based solutions. 

Section 14 also recognises the contributions of traditional and Indigenous knowledge. The “worldviews and values” of Indigenous peoples are also referenced in section eight of the agreement. 

The GGA “does have good language” on Indigenous knowledge, equity and livelihoods, Fong said. Another section of the text “encourages the ethical and equitable engagement” with Indigenous peoples and “recognises” their roles as stewards of nature. 

The recognition of water and water-related ecosystems in the GST and the GGA was welcomed by Wetlands International, an international civil-society organisation dedicated to conserving and restoring wetlands. 

Francesca Antonelli, head of rivers and lakes at Wetlands International, told Carbon Brief:

“Historically, freshwater ecosystems have been quite neglected by these big conventions. This has been the very first [COP with a] focus also on water, which is something we very welcome.”

Overall, Antonelli said that the fact that water-related ecosystems are in the GST and the GGA “creates a favourable condition for these ecosystems to be embedded” into national climate and biodiversity plans.

Both the GST and the GGA also recognise the risks of transboundary climate impacts in nature, while the GGA suggests a “climate-informed transboundary management” to prevent “cascading risks”.

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§ Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on agriculture and food security

The Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on implementation of climate action on agriculture and food security (SSJW), agreed at COP27 last year, is the only formal UNFCCC workstream to address agriculture and food systems. 

SSJW is the successor to the Koronivia joint work for agriculture, which was established at COP23 in Bonn, in 2017. 

The goal of the SSJW negotiations at COP28 was to establish a roadmap for the joint work. 

There were three main elements to this: to agree on a set of topics for the three mandated workshops to be held under the joint work; to establish the online portal for submissions under the workshops; and to determine how the work itself should be carried out and synthesised.

Under the SSJW, as with Koronivia before it, a series of workshops brings together a wide range of voices on a particular topic, with each workshop resulting in a synthesis report.
Such reports are “a form of recommendation”, said Marie Cosquer, co-coordinator of the Climate Action Network’s agriculture working group and advocacy analyst at Action against Hunger. She added:

“Even if it’s sometimes very top line, it’s still a political signal for countries to orient and define their food-systems policies.”

On the first day of the negotiations, some developed countries suggested that it would be more constructive to start with a clean sheet, having failed to come to a consensus at the last session of the subsidiary bodies in Bonn. But developing countries supported using the informal note prepared in Bonn in June as the basis of negotiations. 

As a result, the negotiations began “very blocked”, Cosquer said. She told Carbon Brief:

“We were really disappointed to see that nothing has moved since Bonn.”

Parties reportedly “lamented” the lack of progress in the negotiating rooms over the course of the first several days, with some noting that the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture (See: Food systems transformation) gave added weight and urgency to the work being done there. Both parties and observers said they lamented that one year of the SSJW mandate had already passed, with nothing to show for it. 

There were two elements “gluing up” the negotiations, said Teresa Anderson, global climate justice lead at ActionAid. She told Carbon Brief: 

“One is the process and the bureaucracy entailed in making outcomes. And one is the content – and, of course, we need the right bureaucracy, we need the right systems in place, in order to have the right conversations about the content.”

The G77 plus China negotiating bloc put forward a proposal for a “coordination group”, which would help facilitate implementation of the joint work. Developed countries expressed concerns over what that group would achieve and the costs it would incur to implement additional meetings. 

Anderson noted that it was clear that changes needed to be made in the process in order to begin to effectively implement the joint work, but “developing countries hadn’t proven to developed countries that this [coordination group] is really the right structure to solve the problem”.

As the negotiations progressed, the coordination group remained the major sticking point.

Million Belay, the general coordinator of Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa and a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, told Carbon Brief:

“The G77 plus China are saying: ‘No. [We have] coordination or there is no negotiation.’”

As the negotiations neared a “critical moment”, US negotiators attempted to bridge the gap between the G77 plus China and the EU, Belay said. He added that the US taking this role was “surprising, because mostly they are a bridge breaker, not a bridge maker”.

Negotiators met several times in both informal and “informal-informal” consultations on 5 December without moving forward. At the final consultation that night, both global north and global south countries expressed their disappointment over the failure to come to an agreement.

Ultimately, the SSJW negotiations ended with a procedural text. This “essentially means, ‘we talked, we’ll talk again’”, Anderson told Carbon Brief. She continued:

“There’s a long, bloated, confusing text now, with everybody’s pet pieces and pet hates all in there. That’s now being recorded as an informal note, which means that it can be picked up to be discussed again next year.”

The informal note that will be forwarded to Bonn next year has no legal status and may or may not be used as the basis of the next round of negotiations. 

Annex I of the informal note contains a still-bracketed decision to establish a coordination group to “facilitate the Sharm el-Sheikh joint work…for the duration of the mandate established” at COP27. 

Annex II lays out the seven proposed topics for the three workshops, with two options for each of the first two workshops and three for the final one: 

• Scaling up means of implementation, including finance, technology development and transfer and capacity-building.
• Risk management, including early-warning systems for food security.
• Approaches to sustainable agriculture and food security.
• Holistic approaches to agriculture and food security.
• Fisheries and aquaculture.
• Understanding sustainable food systems through climate action.
• Measuring, monitoring, reporting and verifying climate action for agriculture and food security.

Clement Metivier, acting head of international advocacy at WWF-UK, told Carbon Brief:

“Having a dedicated workstream on agriculture is great, to have some focused work on that specific topic. But now we need to build the connections between this workstream – that is obviously very different from all the others – and the rest of the climate process.

“The key word is implementation. And the big question is: how can the UNFCCC actually help with implementation at the national and even the local level? When we talk about agriculture and food security, this is very much about local issues and very concrete solutions. And, obviously, this [COP] process is very different from implementation on the ground.”

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§ Nature finance

Carbon markets and Article 6

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement covers carbon markets and other “cooperative approaches” that countries can use to meet their climate targets. 

“Voluntary” carbon markets – those that sit outside the UN climate regime – have long been viewed by some as a lawless “wild west”. This year, in particular, voluntary carbon markets and forest carbon offsets have been under intense scrutiny, courtesy of several high-profile investigations examining whether they deliver on their stated carbon-saving goals and their impacts on biodiversity and local communities.  

In the weeks leading up to COP28, for instance, a host of news outlets reported on a “new scramble for Africa”, in which a UAE sheikh with no previous nature conservation experience was striking carbon market deals across the continent. One of the deals reportedly covers one-fifth of Zimbabwe’s land mass.

Potential climate impacts on the ecosystems expected to remove this carbon have also brought to the fore fears that any carbon gains polluters are counting on could go up in smoke because of wildfire risks.

Some countries are opposed to the idea of carbon markets in principle, while offsetting is central to the climate policies of others. As a result, Article 6 negotiations are often contentious, reaching a head in Madrid at COP25, where countries failed to agree on rules that could “make or break” the entire Paris Agreement.

The following year, at COP26 in Glasgow, countries agreed on rules for bilateral carbon trading between countries under Article 6.2, on an international carbon market under Article 6.4 and on “non-market approaches” under Article 6.8.

With the rules written, the International Emissions Trading Agency (IETA) hoped that countries would put “politicised” bickering behind and operationalise the new market and 6.2 mechanism at COP28. 

In Dubai, however, countries failed to reach an agreement on Article 6.2 and Article 6.4. Both of those were subject to “rule 16”, meaning talks will resume next year. 

However, an agreement on Article 6.8 was reached and seen as a “victory” by some for ecosystem-based approaches that put local actors at their heart.

Many observers told Carbon Brief that “no deal was better than a bad deal” on Article 6.2 and 6.4. 

NGO Carbon Market Watch commented that, if the draft decisions at COP28 had passed, Article 6 would have “torpedo[ed]” the Paris Agreement.

However, not passing the deal or developing robust safeguard tools was also worrying to many. 

According to the IETA, 50 countries have already signed memoranda of understanding, implementation agreements or pilot projects related to Article 6. Over the last year, the first three deals to transfer emissions cuts under Article 6.2 have been authorised by Ghana, Thailand and Vanuatu to help Switzerland meet its climate targets.

Trishant Dev, climate change programme officer at the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, told Carbon Brief: 

“Countries have already begun drawing up activities and seeking out bilateral deals under Article 6.2 and will end up drawing guidelines from the voluntary carbon market, locking in bad decisions until UN-backed rules are in place.”

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Article 6.2

Article 6.2 discussions – which dealt with bilateral carbon-trading between countries – were deeply divisive at COP28, with countries disagreeing over whether – and how – to impose processes and controls on bilateral trading.

COP27 gave countries reporting on their use of Article 6.2 a free hand to mark information as confidential, with oversight limited to a review of reported information by a UN technical team. 

At COP28, some countries pushed to establish a clear process for “identifying, notifying and correcting inconsistencies” in data submitted by countries on the trades they make. Earlier draft texts at the summit included a lengthy section on this topic – but it was reduced to a single paragraph in the penultimate draft of the Article 6.2 text.

The same countries also wanted a more clearly defined sequence for the authorisation of carbon-cutting schemes and the subsequent issuing of carbon credits, as well as tightly limited rules on when the authorisation of carbon credits could be “revoked”.

Throughout the negotiations, observers warned that disclosure requirements and safeguards had become progressively weaker with each new iteration of text. On 10 December, two days before COP28 was slated to close, Isa Mulder at Carbon Market Watch told Carbon Brief:

“This text has lost all of the elements that added some bit of transparency and environmental integrity to Article 6.2. They’re all out now. It’s looking pretty bleak. States can basically do anything they want to.

“That was always the case, but it’s even more so now. They don’t have to follow reporting requirements; there’s no consequences. They can report whatever they want – or not report at all. They can decide whatever they want to be confidential. They don’t have to justify it.”

In the final draft of Article 6.2 produced at COP28, explicit references to human rights, Indigenous peoples and local communities and avoiding negative environmental impacts were removed. These lines were replaced with: “Other information relevant to the authorisation and cooperative approach.”

The US was the main proponent of looser rules, supported by many other countries, according to observers and news reports.

Reuters reported that the US and these countries argued that stricter rules “would be too onerous for many developing countries with limited means for overseeing and regulating projects”. 

On 9 December, Ecosystem Marketplace, a carbon and nature market news portal run by US NGO Forest Trends, reported that the US was arguing that Article 6.2 should be “a party-driven approach that should leave more rule-making to participating countries”. This was opposed by the EU, Mexico, Latin American countries and others, including the Alliance of Small Island States, who proposed more prescriptive language.  

Reflecting on the outcome, Mulder said that the Article 6.2 texts “outdid even our rock-bottom expectations” for standards for this market. She told Carbon Brief:

“Not that we dared to dream of actual climate ambition for this market, but it did not even deliver on many of the most elemental requests for transparency and clarity. While 6.2 deals can continue anyway, deal or no deal, no deal seems to at least avoid sending a message that this is the right way forward. We cannot compromise on climate and human rights.”

Meanwhile, the IETA said that “countries can and should implement international carbon markets under Article 6.2”.

In Sharm el-Sheikh last year, the final COP27 text on Article 6.2 deferred a decision on the use of “emissions avoidance” credits – which might include some REDD+ projects – until 2024.

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Article 6.4

At COP28, countries still had much business to agree before the international carbon market under Article 6.4 could be operationalised. 

Among the main points of contention, parties had to approve methodologies to define the “baselines” from which emission reductions or removals can be calculated to generate credits.  
Ahead of COP28, the Article 6.4 supervisory body had developed a set of recommendations that garnered broad support at COP28. But negotiations ran aground on rules for carbon credits generated via “removals” – meaning engineered or natural processes that suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Many of these removal techniques – such as tree-planting – are non-permanent and risk gains being reversed from natural hazards, such as droughts and fires, as well as due to political instability, corruption and litigation.

The draft guidance on removals – finalised in an exceptional virtual session before COP28 –  set out to address these issues through measures such as creating “buffer pools” of credits that could be held back as insurance if, say, a forestry-based project burned in a wildfire. However, it still left a variety of matters unfinished.

The unresolved measures include a reversal risk assessment tool, a carbon “leakage” tool and a timeline to monitor projects to see if gains were “permanent”. 

Crucially, ahead of the summit, parties were yet to fully develop a mandatory “sustainable development tool”, which contained crucial environmental and human-rights safeguards. Many countries intervened in the session saying that the tool should be up and running before any projects are registered.

Also missing was a crucial grievance procedure for disputes. This could result in a repetition of the Clean Development Mechanism, where projects were implemented without a grievance mechanism for 15 years of its existence, offering no remedy to impacted Indigenous peoples and local communities.

Parties had also asked the Article 6.4 supervisory body to consider the controversial concept of “tonne-year accounting”, which elevates the benefits of short-term carbon storage. The ECO newsletter by Climate Action Network likened this to “breath[ing] extremely fast for one minute and then stop[ping] breathing completely for the remaining five minutes”.

In a statement, Indigenous groups under the Pathways Alliance for Change and Transformation (PACT) called for a moratorium “on all forest carbon trade”. This called for a pause on current carbon-market policies that do not “explicitly, proactively and comprehensively require respect for Indigenous peoples and local communities’ carbon rights, whether or not they are recognised in formal, national legal or regulatory frameworks”. 

PACT also said that an “equitable implementation of Article 6 was impossible” unless Indigenous peoples and local communities were represented in all discussions and supervisory bodies. 

Bolivia, meanwhile, had advocated for a moratorium on Article 6.2 and 6.4 carbon markets, until similar progress was achieved under non-market approaches under Article 6.8.

The deferral of a decision on Article 6 based on “weak rules” was celebrated by many rights observers. Erika Lennon of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) called the deferral “a surprising bright spot” at COP28. In a statement, Lennon said:

“Following a year of carbon-market scandals demonstrating accounting failures and human rights harms, parties finally recognised that they cannot move a carbon market forward without ensuring protections for human rights, the rights of Indigenous peoples and the environment.”

In a post-COP statement, Andrea Bonzanni, international policy director at IETA, blamed the delay of the mechanism on “politicisation” of carbon markets. He also said that the Article 6.4 supervisory body “should not be micromanaged” by the subsidiary body on scientific and technological advice. Bonzanni added:

“We missed an opportunity to expedite the operationalisation of a crediting mechanism that would have set a high bar on environmental integrity, safeguards and human rights. The delay of the Article 6.4 mechanism is not a victory for environmental integrity, it is a victory for the anti-market agenda.”

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CDM Transition

At COP28, Brazil led a push to let legacy afforestation and reforestation projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) transition to the new carbon market under Article 6.4. 

Afforestation and reforestation activities under the CDM were previously barred from transitioning because they generate temporary units, rather than Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs). (Temporary units are based on the amount of carbon stock sequestered in a standing forest at a given date and are valid for use as carbon offsets for five years.)

They are also tied to areas that are at higher risk of “reversal” from carbon sinks to sources because of natural hazards or human-caused intervention, which is a risk that the CDM did not consider in its original methodologies.

With the Article 6.4 guidance on removals proposing ways to deal with “reversals”, Brazil argued that afforestation and reforestation “removal” projects should be allowed to transition to the new market.

Previously, only cookstove projects that generated credits were allowed to transition to the new market from 1 January 2024, because they were not contingent on reversals.

However, experts have pointed out that cookstove projects are also connected to deforestation and, therefore, should have been subject to reversal risk assessment.

If the text had been approved in its final format, afforestation and reforestation projects under old CDM methodologies would have been among the first to transition into the new market. If allowed, the amount of afforestation and reforestation units that could come into the new market is small enough to be negligible – just 2.2m tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions.  

But this decision, like many others, will have to wait until next year.

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Article 6.8

Article 6.8 is the third part of Article 6 and covers cooperation via “non-market approaches”. The idea has long been ill-defined, but has been pushed by countries that object to market-based mechanisms on principle. 

In the negotiations, Bolivia and the group of like-minded developing countries both drew attention to the fact that non-market approaches were being neglected in the negotiations over market mechanisms, according to Down to Earth.

Disagreement over the meaning of non-market approaches continued at COP28. Draft texts “invite[d] parties to consider non-market approaches, including domestic fiscal measures [such as carbon pricing]”, proposed by the EU and opposed by many developing countries. Other blocs suggested non-market approaches that “enhanced the contribution of nature-based solutions in line with ecosystem-based approaches”. 

The final version of the Article 6.8 text that countries agreed on eschews specific examples of such approaches and simply “encourages parties to continue identifying opportunities” to use them.

The text asks the UNFCCC secretariat to complete a web-based platform before the next climate talks are held in Bonn next June and “encourages” countries to use it to submit information on non-market approaches.

Souparna Lahiri of the Global Forest Coalition described Article 6.8 as a “real alternative” to Article 6 markets “stuck in their own failed architecture”. Lahiri called the Article 6.8 agreement a victory not just for the global south, but a “recognition of communities as real climate actors”.

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Biodiversity and voluntary carbon markets

COP28 began against the backdrop of multiple investigations this year that exposed deep cracks in the voluntary carbon market (VCM) and its impacts on land and communities. 

At the same time, negotiators in Dubai had their work cut out to develop strong rules on UN-backed market mechanisms under Article 6.

Far before any Article 6 texts emerged, the summit was awash with a huge range of VCM-related announcements and events, with the COP28 presidency saying ahead of the talks that it “aim[ed] to restore credibility and confidence in VCM by convening the highest-level governmental and institutional leaders to publicly recognise high-integrity VCMs as catalysts for climate action”.

On 4 December, the presidency convened a high-level roundtable on high-integrity carbon markets led by COP28 president Dr Sultan Al Jaber, featuring World Bank president Ajay Banga, as well as Mark Carney – who is co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero and head of the taskforce on scaling up the VCM – and UNFCCC executive secretary Simon Stiell. 

At the event, US climate envoy John Kerry is reported as saying:

“I have become a firm believer in the power of carbon markets to drive increased climate ambition and action, and the VCM is a vital tool to keep 1.5C in reach. Let’s not waste any more time or let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Banga had earlier announced plans for 15 countries to earn revenue from the sale of World Bank carbon credits generated from forest conservation under its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. 

At the same event, Stiell offered a contrasting perspective while recognising that “no developing country that wants to utilise this tool should be left behind“. He said:

“Voluntary markets cannot substitute for robust internal emission cuts by the private sector – this means it is ensured that emissions reductions are not substituted with offsets or carbon credits, in any scope of emissions.

“This will require action to reverse deforestation and to expand carbon stocks in nature.”

On the same day, the six major voluntary standards signed a document to say they were “joining forces to amplify the impact of carbon markets…and supporting countries in implementing Article 6” and their national climate pledges. 

Actors from the voluntary marketplace reacted to the failure of Article 6 negotiations as an opportunity for the VCM, pointing to the fact that countries were pushing ahead with Article 6.2 deals and that investors would not wait “indefinitely.”

On 10 December, the governments of the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Finland, Belgium and Austria issued a joint statement proposing a framework to “prevent greenwashing and restore integrity” in voluntary carbon markets. The statement said that the guidelines in the framework “can be adopted immediately by the market”, adding: 

“In the long run, they serve as input for frameworks at the EU level.” 

Separately, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) proposed guidance for listing carbon credit contacts, the first by a US regulator specifically targeting the VCM.

Large conservation organisations, including Conservation International, Birdlife International,  the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund, signed a statement on 4 December endorsing “high-integrity” carbon markets and stating that companies purchasing carbon credits “are nearly twice as likely to decarbonise”, but “are more likely to be criticised than commended”.

According to Frederic Hache at the EU Green Finance Observatory, “there is so much at stake in trying to rehabilitate VCM’s image”. Hache told Carbon Brief:

“The industry’s game plan is fairly transparent: image clean-up via ‘high integrity’ certification, claiming Indigenous peoples’ support without truly taking into account their concerns, then a push for compliance markets, whether carbon or biodiversity. 

“But as the former French president Jacques Chirac famously said, promises only bind those who believe in them.”

Meanwhile, the new UNEP State of Finance for Nature 2023 report, released on 9 December, estimates that roughly $11.7bn was invested in biodiversity offsets and credits in 2022 – a sharp increase from $6bn last year thanks to “mandatory biodiversity-offsetting schemes”. 

Biodiversity offsets and credit accounted for a third of all private investments in nature ($35bn), while private finance flows that directly, negatively impacted nature are $5tn per year – 140 times larger. 

The figure below compares sources of public (green) and private (pink) finance for nature-based solutions.

The report states that “while there are concerns that biodiversity offsets…can provide disincentives to reduce the footprint of economic activities on nature, [t]his analysis includes biodiversity offsets, with the rationale that, in their absence, there would be a greater loss of biodiversity”.

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Debt-for-nature swaps

Debt-for-nature swaps are a financing mechanism that emerged in the late 1980s. Under such swaps, sovereign debt is relieved by developed countries, financial institutions or private investors in exchange for a developing country implementing conservation measures. 

The final stocktake does address the need for “financial sector reforms and the importance of providing more grants due to developing nations’ indebtedness”, the Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean noted in a COP28 press release. However, “there was no mention for debt cancellation and/or other innovative schemes such as swaps to expand fiscal space”. 

Several developing countries, including Colombia and Honduras, pushed for debt to be discussed in the negotiations and for debt relief itself.

Colombia was a particular leader in this call. Together with Kenya and France, it launched a global expert review on debt, climate and nature, which will gather an international group of experts to carry out an “exhaustive evaluation” on how external debt impacts efforts from developing countries to conserving, adapting and decarbonising economies.

The Colombian environment ministry said it expects that this initiative will help deliver recommendations to parties in order to address the relationship between debt, climate change and nature, as well as the obstacles that countries face to financing climate action. 

In another announcement at COP28, eight multilateral development banks, including the Green Climate Fund, the European Investment Bank and the Global Environment Facility, announced a task force to boost sustainability-linked sovereign financing for nature and climate, such as guarantees or debt-for-nature swaps. 

However, this financing mechanism raised several questions from civil society.

A recent report from the Latin American Network for Economic and Social Justice (Latindadd), a network of 24 institutions and NGOs from Latin America, cautioned that debt swaps have minimal positive impacts on countries transitioning into sustainable debt management systems. It also said that such swaps benefit creditors and corporations, are immersed in a lack of transparency and delay the split between debt and climate injustice.  

Carola Mejía, climate change advisor and consultant at Latindadd, told Carbon Brief:

“For us, debt swaps are a quick response to a problem that would need more systemic solutions.”

For debt-for-nature swaps to be functional, they require an equity- and principles-based framework where the debtor and creditor negotiate a more robust debt relief, Mejía underlined.

She stressed that a reform of financing systems and debt relief in the form of renegotiation, restructuring or cancellation of debt, and the issuing of financing without conditions or debt, would deliver better outcomes.

To Frédéric Hache at the Green Finance Observatory, debt-for-nature swaps remain “controversial instruments” that typically “free up little money for conservation while providing high fees for bankers, often involve a loss of sovereignty over conservation decisions for the host country, and replace potential debt cancellation negotiations”. 

He told Carbon Brief:

“The push for debt-for-nature swaps in the global south, as well as the massive carbon land deals in Africa that took place ahead of the COP also raise the question of whether green private finance is being increasingly used not only as a way to privatise environmental policies but also as a geopolitical tool to increase control over land and resources.”

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§ Biodiversity and the road to COP16

COP28 hosted an unprecedented number of high-level events on the links between climate change and nature loss.

This round of climate talks was the first to take place since countries agreed to a landmark new nature deal at the COP15 biodiversity summit, known as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), in December 2022.

Because of this, many of the new initiatives and pledges announced were focused on how countries can better integrate actions to meet the goals of both the GBF and the Paris Agreement.
In a first-of-its-kind initiative, COP28 president UAE and COP15 president China released a Joint Statement on Climate, Nature and People.

It was initially signed by Belize, Brazil, Cape Verde, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Egypt, France, Germany, Ghana, Indonesia, Norway, Palau, Rwanda, Samoa, Senegal, Seychelles, Spain, the UK and the US, according to a statement emailed to Carbon Brief.

The statement “recognised” that climate change poses a large threat to biodiversity and “noted” that the “continued loss and degradation of nature increases climate vulnerability”. (See Carbon Brief’s in-depth piece on the links between climate change and nature loss.)

The countries also pledged to ensure “comprehensiveness and coherence” between their next national climate pledges (“nationally determined contributions” or “NDCs”), due to be submitted before COP30 in 2025, and their next national nature plans (“national biodiversity strategies and action plans” or “NBSAPs”), due to be submitted before COP16 next year.

Rita El Zaghloul, a former biodiversity negotiator for Costa Rica who now directs the secretariat for the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HACN&P), a group of 118 nations that have pledged to protect 30% of Earth by 2030 (“30 by 30”), told Carbon Brief that this commitment could lead to more countries including nature in their NDCs. She said:

“Some countries are already doing that. In the case of Costa Rica, they already include nature goals in their NDCs. The goal is that more and more NDCs and NBSAPs talk to each other.”

The joint statement was launched at a ministerial event attended by more than 15 country ministers. This was one of several high-level events on the summit’s “nature day” on 9 December, El Zaghloul noted:

“This was the first time we were engaging on 30 by 30 within a UNFCCC COP. Last year, there were conversations happening, but we didn’t have any ministerial or high-level events. Here we saw a lot of interest from ministers and they took time to be at the events. I think this is testament to the importance of nature – even if we are at a UNFCCC COP.” 

Elsewhere on nature day, China surprised delegates by announcing that it was joining the HACN&P. The announcement came from COP15 president and China environment minister Huang Runqiu via videolink at a high-level session on 30 by 30. 

El Zaghloul told Carbon Brief that the announcement came after more than two years of talks with China, who were initially reluctant to join the initiative while still maintaining the “neutral” role of COP15 president. She added:

“It’s extremely important. It’s one of the most megadiverse countries and the role of China in the adoption of the GBF was extremely important.”

Nature day also saw El Zaghloul launch a new “30 by 30 solutions toolkit” and a financial and technical “matchmaking” service, with the aim of giving all countries the help they need to protect 30% of their land and seas by 2030. El Zaghloul explained:

“Because it was HACN&P that started the 30 by 30 movement, it is also our responsibility to ensure that countries have the sufficient support and tools to meet the target. We know that it is an ambitious target, because we have to move from approximately 17% on land and 8% on oceans [that is currently protected] to 30% on both. Many of the megadiverse countries are developing countries and small island developing states, so we need to provide them with the tools.”

Near the end of the summit, Colombia surprised delegates by announcing it intends to host the next biodiversity summit, COP16, in 2024. (Previous host Turkey was forced to withdraw following the economic impact of earthquakes in the country.)

It came after Colombia sought to carve itself out as a high-ambition leader on both climate and biodiversity issues at the summit. For example, it became the first major oil producer to sign the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty and co-launched a global review of how sovereign debt is stymying climate and nature progress.

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§ Food systems transformations

The World Climate Action Summit on 1 December kicked off with the release of the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action, signed by 134 parties. (By 14 December, the declaration had garnered an additional 24 signatures and two further endorsements.)

At the release event, UAE climate and environment minister Mariam Almheiri noted that those signatories collectively represent more than three-quarters of the world’s total food systems emissions.

The headline of the declaration was a commitment to include agriculture and food systems into countries’ NDCs and other national plans “before the convening of COP30”. Many observers, NGOs and food-systems experts told Carbon Brief that the pledge to integrate food into national policy was a welcome one – as long as there was follow-through from governments. 

But some rued the lack of attention paid in the declaration to the links between fossil fuels and agriculture, plus the pressing need to phase out fossil fuels. Marie Cosquer, co-coordinator of the Climate Action Network’s agriculture working group and advocacy analyst at Action against Hunger, told Carbon Brief: 

“All the declarations, all this flurry of engagements, it’s diverting attention from the actual multilateral process and the fact that we need a strong GST [global stocktake] at the end of the next week, and a fossil-fuel phase-out.”

Million Belay, the general coordinator of Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa and a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, told Carbon Brief: 

“There are some good elements there – it’s about transformation…But there’s heavy reliance on ‘technology will solve the problem’ kind of thinking…What kind of technology? Who owns the technology?”

At the same time, the lack of specific elements in the declaration was necessary for it to garner such wide support, said Ed Davey, partnerships director at the Food and Land Use Coalition. He told Carbon Brief:

“[These declarations] are not as important as the negotiated outcome and they never will be…[But] they are a way of signalling that something is important.”

Prof Tim Benton, research director at Chatham House, added that “to get 100-and-something countries to sign up, you can’t be too demanding of the hurdles that they have to go over”.

More than 200 non-state actors, such as research institutions, farmers’ groups and philanthropies, signed an accompanying Call to Action for Food-Systems Transformation, released on the same day. That document included a call for “transitioning away from fossil fuel use within food systems”.

Several financial pledges accompanied the food-systems announcements, including $890m to the research consortium CGIAR, $57m from the Bezos Earth Fund for food systems transformation and approximately $47m from Norway towards adaptation, largely for smallholder farmers. 

COP28’s thematic food day, 10 December, saw the launch of the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation, akin to the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance. Co-chairs Brazil, Norway and Sierra Leone were joined by Cambodia and Rwanda as the founding members of the alliance.

The five governments that make up the alliance have committed to “reorienting policies, practices and investment priorities to deliver better food systems outcomes for people, nature and climate”, according to a press release. 

Benton described the Alliance of Champions as “raising the ceiling” on food systems transformation, whereas the Emirates Declaration “raise[d] the floor of ambition”. He told Carbon Brief: 

“It’s not just the countries developing their own plans for food-systems transition, but it is also the ability of a group of countries to change the political space and change the political dynamics at negotiations such as this.”

Also on food day, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released a “global roadmap” for achieving food security without crossing the 1.5C threshold. The roadmap is the first in a series of three, with one set to be released at each of the two subsequent COPs.

The creation of such a roadmap – akin to the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero Roadmap – was a “good step forward”, said Patty Fong, programme manager at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. But, she added, the roadmap is “problematic for many reasons”, including promotion of bioenergy and a lack of attention to the links between fossil fuels and agriculture. She told Carbon Brief:

“[The roadmap is] basically promoting efficiency first, rather than wholesale transformation. And, if we’re trying to look at trying to get to the Paris Agreement, just a series of incremental steps that prioritises efficiency won’t get us to 1.5C.”

Fong said she hopes the FAO will “integrate an iterative process” and engage with a wide range of stakeholders in producing the next report, which is set to cover implementation pathways.

Overall, there was a lack of attention paid to the demand side of food systems due to the economic implications of reducing consumption, Benton said. He told Carbon Brief: 

“Ultimately, you get to the point where it’s bloody obvious that the [growth in consumption demand] can’t carry on forever in a world that’s becoming increasingly limiting in terms of climate impacts, as well as biodiversity loss, and so on. But there is still this internal ideological logic that the future is about economic growth.”

The final text of the global stocktake does reference the need to transition to sustainable patterns of consumption, which Fong described as an “inroad” into addressing diets and the consumption side of food systems. But, she added, “it doesn’t mention it specifically”. 

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§ Methane and non-CO2 gases

Methane – the short-lived but potent greenhouse gas – featured heavily in pledges and voluntary finance pushes at COP28.

However, most announcements focused on methane from fossil-fuel production, rather than food systems and agriculture.

Vox noted that few of the COP28 methane actions “include the largest driver of methane pollution: the food we eat”. (See: Food systems transformations for more details on how food featured at COP28.) 

The US, China and UAE held a summit on methane and other non-CO2 gases on 2 December in Dubai. At the event, the host nation called for countries to submit their next round of national climate plans (“nationally determined contributions”, or “NDCs”) and to ensure they are economy-wide and cover all greenhouse gases. 

Speaking to reporters at the UAE pavilion on 8 December, the US agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, told Carbon Brief that there are a lot of “economic reasons” for US agriculture to embrace methane reduction.

Investing in new technologies, tackling food waste and providing resources to help reduce agricultural methane are all important parts of wider methane-reduction efforts, he added. 

Agriculture accounts for more human-caused methane emissions than the energy sector, according to the International Energy Agency. 

On 5 December at COP28, six major food companies, including Danone, Nestlé and Kraft Heinz, alongside the US nonprofit the Environmental Defense Fund launched the Dairy Methane Action Alliance.

Under this, the companies committed to report on – and reduce – their methane emissions.

They pledged to release information on methane emissions within their dairy supply chains and to put in place a methane action plan by the end of 2024. 

On the funding side, governments and the private sector pledged more than $1bn in recent grant funding for methane reduction “in support” of a “methane finance sprint” launched by US president Joe Biden earlier this year, according to the US government. 

The US says that this more than triples the current level of yearly methane grant funding. It will be used to slash methane emissions around the world across all sectors, with a particular focus on lower-income countries. 

Philanthropies such as the Bezos Earth Fund will also invest $450m over the next three years to target methane emissions, Reuters reported. 

Further funding was announced through the Global Methane Hub, which said that more than $200m in public and private funds will be put towards research into reducing methane from livestock. The money came from public and private funders, including Danone. 

Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and three other countries signed up to the Global Methane Pledge, which commits to reducing methane emissions worldwide by 30% by 2030. This has now been signed by 155 countries since it was first announced at COP26 in 2021.

Dozens of companies also signed up to the Oil and Gas Decarbonisation Charter, flagged months in advance, to speed up decarbonisation of the oil and gas industry, to end routine flaring and to “zero-out” methane emissions by 2030. 

Dr Stephen Cornelius, the deputy global climate and energy lead at WWF, told Carbon Brief that action to reduce flaring in particular is “the sort of thing [companies] should be doing anyway” for environmental and economic reasons. 

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§ Indigenous recognition and rights

Indigenous representatives from across the world raised their voices at COP28 to demand the protection of their rights within the climate negotiations and, in particular, the global stocktake.

At a Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) press briefing, Indigenous women called for urgent action to protect the Amazon rainforest. They said the rainforest is in a “dire crisis” due to the combination of deforestation, biodiversity loss, “devastating assaults” on their rights committed by government leaders and gender violence caused by extractive industries.

Célia Xakriabák, an Indigenous activist and member of the legislature in Minas Gerais, Brazil, denounced the burning alive of Indigenous people in Guaraní-Kaiowá territory weeks ago. In the Yanomami territory, young women suffer physical and sexual violence, she said. Xakriabák told the press:

“The Amazon is a woman, all of our biomes are women, and so the healing [of the planet] also takes place through us.”

At the briefing, the women urged global leaders to stop the assassinations of Indigenous environmental defenders and to halt mining and oil extraction in Indigenous territories.

Elsewhere at COP28, Indigenous representatives from North America noted that climate change has driven “exacerbated impacts” in their territories. They also took a stand against Article 6 and what they termed “false solutions” to climate change, such as carbon dioxide removal and carbon capture and storage. 

Eriel Deranger, executive director of Indigenous Climate Action and member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in northern Alberta, Canada, said species can no longer thrive in her Arctic community. She said: 

“We are part of those species. We cannot tolerate weak policies.”

At that press conference, Indigenous peoples organisations expressed “serious concerns” about Article 6, since carbon markets have “far-reaching negative effects”, such as double-counting and pollution. (See: Carbon markets and Article 6.)

They also questioned the use of non-market-based approaches, which could allow the private sector to finance environmental services, debt-for-nature swaps and technology transfers.

In an opening statement, the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change – the caucus for Indigenous peoples in the UNFCCC – warned that carbon markets and offsets “do not cut emissions” and “instead create new forms of colonisation, militarisation, criminalisation and land loss”. The forum instead called for parties to commit to the 1.5C target and a phase-out of fossil fuels. 

Alongside nine Pacific Island nations, including Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Tonga and Fiji, Indigenous peoples called for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty to end coal, oil and gas expansion. 

For Indigenous peoples, it was important that the negotiations at COP28 took a human-rights approach, Deranger said during a Climate Action Network briefing. 

Only eight countries, including Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nepal and Panama, directly recognised Indigenous peoples’ rights within the second submission of their NDCs.

Moreover, reports have revealed the lack of climate finance flowing to these communities. Only 2.1% of the $1.7bn pledged to Indigenous peoples at COP26 in Glasgow reached them directly, according to the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities. Meanwhile, the UN Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Peoples could only finance the participation of 15 Indigenous leaders at COP28 – out of 700 applications. 

Helen Biangalen-Magata, Kadaclan Indigenous rights advocate of the Mountain Province in the Philippines, said that Indigenous peoples welcomed the new pledges to scale up climate finance, including the loss-and-damage fund and the adaptation fund, but she cautioned that those resources have not made it to Indigenous peoples and called on financial operating entities to be transparent about how the money is being invested.

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§ Deforestation pledges

Several new measures to tackle deforestation were announced by countries at COP28.

Brazil, which will host COP30 as the “tropical forests COP” in 2025, turned heads by announcing a new “tropical forests forever” fund proposal on 1 December.

Launched by environment minister Marina Silva and finance minister Fernando Haddad, the proposal aims to provide 80 tropical countries with finance to help maintain trees, with annual payments based on hectares conserved or restored, according to Reuters.

The newswire added that Brazil hopes to raise $250bn for the fund from sovereign wealth funds and other investors, including the oil industry. 

According to Deutsche Welle, Silva said when announcing the initiative:

“It’s a very creative proposal. We want to create conditions for developed countries to protect the forest without it being charity. They will get a return.”

Speaking to Carbon Brief, Fran Price, global forest lead at WWF, said the initiative, while lacking detail, is “the kind of thinking we need”. She added:

“We need new finance mechanisms. Existing [climate finance] mechanisms aren’t well-suited for protecting forests. And we need more mechanisms that are being designed in global-south governments.”

Elsewhere, French president Emmanuel Macron used his appearance at the summit on 1 and 2 December to confirm funding for three forest finance packages, including $100m for Papua New Guinea, $60m for the Democratic Republic of Congo and $50m for the Republic of Congo, according to the COP28 presidency.

At least some of this funding will come from “verifiable carbon credit transactions”. (Read Carbon Brief’s recent in-depth explainer on the current risks and pitfalls associated with carbon offsets.)

The UK pledged an additional $38m to Brazil’s Amazon fund on 2 December. According to the South Atlantic newswire MercoPress, this makes the UK one of the top three contributors to the fund.

Later on, UK environment secretary Steve Barclay arrived to tout the country’s pledge to ban the sale of products with illegal deforestation in their supply chains. At the summit, his department announced that the rules would apply to palm oil, cocoa, beef, leather and soya.

Reacting to the news, Clare Oxborrow, forests campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said:

“It’s certainly positive that some of the biggest drivers of deforestation, such as beef, soya, palm oil and cocoa, are covered by the new law. But products linked to illegal deforestation won’t be eradicated from UK supermarkets completely unless all high-risk commodities, including coffee, rubber and maize, are captured by the legislation.

“What’s more, the proposed law only accounts for illegal deforestation, which is notoriously difficult to determine and could see some countries weakening their own protections to reduce the number of products impacted by the ban.”

On Twitter, Prof Simon Lewis, a global change scientist from the University of Leeds and University College London, noted that there was a “striking contrast” between the ambition of Brazil’s tropical forests forever initiative and the smaller packages announced by individual countries.

On COP28’s “nature day”, the presidency held an event to showcase progress from the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership, an alliance of 26 countries pledging to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030 that was launched at COP27.

(The initiative is designed to build on the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, made the previous year at COP26. However, as Climate Home News noted during COP27, the initial agreement had the backing of 145 nations representing over 90% of the world’s forests – suggesting most nations declined to up their deforestation commitments by signing on to the new initiative.)

This event saw a number of new small announcements and updates.

This included a coalition of 17 countries committing to advancing policies to support “low-carbon construction and increase the use of wood from sustainably managed forests in the built environment”.

The coalition includes Australia, Canada, the Republic of Congo, Costa Rica, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, Norway, Pakistan, Sweden, the UK and US.

The event also saw 15 governments launch a “roadmap” for scaling investment in forest carbon offsets. 

Speaking at a press conference on 10 December, Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, said that “carbon markets have failed to deliver” for Indigenous people and local communities, adding:

“We do not have time for faulty expansions.” 

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§ Ecosystem restoration

Experts and civil-society groups at COP28 pushed for the global stocktake to recognise the role of ecosystems in addressing climate change. 

Conservation of around 30 to 50% of land, freshwater and ocean ecosystems will help protect biodiversity, reduce disaster risk and maintain ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, according to the sixth assessment report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (See: Biodiversity and the road to COP16.)

Although fossil fuel phase-out was central to the negotiations, protecting and restoring ecosystems is just as important in addressing climate change, Rhiannon Niven, global climate change policy coordinator at BirdLife International, told Carbon Brief. 

Several political pledges on ecosystem restoration were made at COP28. 

On nature day, 18 countries, including Belize, Costa Rica, Germany, the UK and US, issued a Joint Statement on Climate, Nature and People to support the use of ecosystem-based approaches and the implementation of land-restoration plans. 

COP28 also saw updates of two global commitments to restoring ecosystems: the Mangrove Breakthrough and the Freshwater Challenge, which focuses on rivers and wetlands. 

The Mangrove Breakthrough – a global pledge made at COP27 to restore and protect 15m hectares of mangroves by 2030 – released a financial roadmap towards fulfilling the pledge. It estimated that around $4bn is needed by 2030 to “secure the future” of mangroves.

The Freshwater Challenge announced that another 30 countries, including the UK, Canada, the US and UAE, had joined the initiative. The Freshwater Challenge is a call to restore 30% of Earth’s degraded freshwater ecosystems by 2030 and was launched by six countries, including Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mexico, at the UN Water Conference earlier this year.

At a side event on high-carbon ecosystems, Femke Tonneijck, from Wetlands International, called for a “global peatland push” to similarly conserve and finance peatlands.

On 2 December, Siaosi ‘Ofakivahafolau Sovaleni, the prime minister of Tonga, announced the Unlocking Blue Pacific Prosperity initiative. The goal of the initiative is to protect 30% of the “Blue Pacific Continent” by 2030. 

The announcement was accompanied by up to $100m of finance from the Bezos Earth Fund for marine conservation in Pacific small island developing states. The Global Environment Facility also “offered” $125m towards implementing marine protected areas in the Pacific, Bloomberg reported.

That same day, several philanthropies announced $250m of new funding for the Ocean Climate Resilience Alliance, focused on protecting “vulnerable marine areas, ocean-based mitigation efforts and research on climate impacts”.

At a WWF press conference on 8 December, Dr Stephanie Roe, global climate and energy lead scientist at WWF International and a lead author on the IPCC AR6 report on mitigation, noted that there is a gap in finance for nature. She added that there needs to be funding mechanisms from different stakeholders for conservation, sustainable management and restoration. She also called for removing harmful subsidies to nature.

Francesca Antonelli, head of rivers and lakes at Wetlands International, told Carbon Brief that since the political pledges announced at COP28 are not legally binding, countries will require “a bit of time” to create plans for how they will implement their measures to restore and conserve ecosystems. 

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§ Nature-based solutions

At COP27 last year, for the first time, the COP “cover decision” mentioned nature-based solutions – referring to the use of nature and ecosystems to help mitigate climate change and adapt to its impacts. 

The controversial concept was also a dividing issue for many countries at the UN biodiversity summit COP15, held in Montreal last December. 

At COP28, Carbon Brief understands that while some countries preferred the term “ecosystem-based approaches” over “nature-based solutions”, or vice versa, few were staunchly against the concept in principle. 

Leila Yassine, a global advocacy manager for nature at the global nonprofit the Rainforest Alliance, said that while nature-based solutions are “good for mitigation [and] adaptation”, their value for biodiversity and people can often be overlooked at climate COPs. She told Carbon Brief: 

“It’s great to look at ecosystems and nature-based solutions from a climate perspective as well, but we shouldn’t forget that within there, there’s nature. And nature is also biodiversity and it’s also land.

“Nature-based solutions are always looked into as a tool, like nature is a tool for mitigation. But it’s not only this…We want to preserve ecosystems because they have multiple benefits [and] I think sometimes this doesn’t transpire enough in the global stocktake and the final text.” 

Nature-based solutions are often a key component in countries’ plans for climate adaptation and mitigation, featuring in 57 countries’ national climate pledges under the Paris Agreement, according to data from ClimateWatch. 

On 30 November, Honduras’ opening statement at COP, issued on behalf of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations, “reiterated the importance” of nature-based solutions and called for a consistent reporting methodology across industries, according to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin. 

As part of a raft of nature announcements at COP28, more than 150 companies and financial institutions said they would increase investments in nature-based solutions.

Speaking to a small group of reporters in Dubai, including Carbon Brief, Rhiannon Niven, global climate change policy coordinator at BirdLife International, said that it is a “massive win” to see these approaches included in the global stocktake. (See: Global stocktake.)

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§ Biofuels

While the COP28 presidency promised that food would be at the heart of negotiations, biofuels were expected to get considerable attention at COP28, driven partly by a Global Biofuels Alliance launched by India at the G20 summit in September and backed by the US, Brazil and the UAE.

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi referred to the alliance in his speech at the COP28 opening ceremony on 1 December, highlighting the country’s contributions to global climate action. The country’s climate minister, Bhupendra Yadav, also referenced the alliance in India’s national statement to COP28.

Yesterday, the spotlight on the Global Biofuels Alliance at COP28, culminated in a spectacular display on the Burj Khalifa at 8:40pm#GlobalBiofuelsAllianceAtCOP28 #GBAatCOP28 pic.twitter.com/y7gUSDp327

— Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (@PetroleumMin) December 4, 2023

Although low-carbon fuels, including biofuels, are cited in the mitigation section of the stocktake as part of the solution towards reducing emissions in “this critical decade”, many experts caution that emissions from biofuels underestimate their land-use footprint.

One recent study found that CO2 emissions from biofuels exceed those of fossil diesel, under current land-regulation policies. Heated debates on using food as fuel have also continued in the face of war and record levels of hunger around the world. 

Undaunted, the biofuel industry had a significant footprint at COP28. 

In an interview with the Financial Times at COP28, ExxonMobil chief executive Darren Woods said that UN climate talks “have focused on renewable energy for too long”, neglecting the role to be played by biofuels, hydrogen and carbon capture. COP28 marked the first known time an ExxonMobil chief executive attended a COP. 

Carbon Brief analysed the COP28 participant lists and found that Brazil, Libya, Slovakia and Madagascar all sent delegates involved in work on biofuels. 

Executives with the Brazilian Biofuels Producers Association and Acelen Renewables were registered as part of Brazil’s “party overflow”, NNPC Equity Biofuels Company with Nigeria’s, MHP with Ukraine’s and lobby group Ethanol Europe with Hungary’s.

At a special “Majlis” – an Arabic word for a sitting room – convened on 10 December to resolve the negotiating logjams between parties, COP president Al Jaber also spoke of the need to “increas[e] the availability of biofuels” in order to keep 1.5C within reach. 

In a press briefing that Carbon Brief attended on 10 December, US agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack said that the aviation industry wanted an “acceleration of the production of biofuels” derived from a variety of feedstocks. He added: 

“It’s not just the farmers who are asking for this, the airlines are asking for it. The reality is as great as electric vehicles are, we’re not likely to have battery-powered planes or hydrogen-powered planes flying long-distance in the foreseeable future.

“If the aviation industry in the US is going to be competitive and sustainable, they have to have low-carbon fuels and low-carbon feedstocks.”

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§ Mountain ecosystems

Small island states threatened by sea level rise and Least Developed Countries have long fought to have their special circumstances and unique vulnerability to climate impacts explicitly recognised in climate negotiations and, therefore, receive dedicated support for their adaptation efforts.

At COP28, mountain states argued that they should join them.

As early as March this year, the environment minister of Andorra, Silvia Armengol, wrote to UNFCCC executive secretary Simon Stiell asking for mountains to be included as an item on the COP28 agenda “to give mountains the importance they deserve under the process”. 

Armengol’s letter noted that Andorra is “entirely mountainous” and said that “people living in mountains are among the world’s most vulnerable”.

In the letter, Armengol drew attention to the IPCC’s sixth assessment report and its cross-chapter paper on mountains, as well as the IPCC’s special report on the oceans and cryosphere, to highlight “upcoming irreversible impacts and adaptation limits of mountain regions and their severe consequences for people, infrastructure and economy”.

In its September submission, Nepal asked that the global stocktake recognise the risks to  “rising temperatures affecting the cryosphere, considering the consequences of fast-rising temperatures in mountainous areas”.

At the opening ceremony, the COP28 president read out parts of Andorra’s letter, but did not push mountains on to the official agenda.

Seconding Andorra, Kyrgyzstan, supported by Bhutan, called for an urgent dialogue on mountains and climate to commence at COP28.

UN secretary general António Guterres, fresh from a visit to Nepal, told world leaders on 2 December that “the mountains are issuing a distress call” and that “COP28 must respond with a rescue plan”. Guterres added:

“It is deeply shocking to learn how fast the Himalayan glaciers are melting. And deeply distressing to hear first-hand from local communities about the terrible impact on their lives. Nepal, and other vulnerable mountain countries, are being pounded by a crisis that is not of their making.”

At a High-Level Roundtable on Mountains and Climate Change moderated by Nepali prime minister Kamal Dahal, participants said that “mountain countries must collaborate to incorporate mountain-related issues into all UNFCCC’s negotiation processes” and ensure “the loss-and-damage fund is accessible for the most vulnerable mountain regions and least developed countries”, the Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported.

At the dialogue, Bhutan’s state secretary said that mountain states had made the call to include mountains and the cryosphere in the global stocktake, and “mountain ecosystems”, as a separate target under the global goal on adaptation.

Despite not being included on the COP28 agenda, mountains are mentioned in the preamble of the global stocktake. Additionally, the stocktake “requests” the chair of the subsidiary body on scientific and technological advice to hold an expert dialogue on mountains at its next session in June 2024. 

The final agreed draft of the global goal on adaptation, meanwhile, “urges states” to reduce their impacts on mountain ecosystems by 2030. 

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§ Greenwashing and lobbying by ‘big ag’

Claims about greenwashing and over-exaggerated solutions to climate change always rear their heads during COPs – and Dubai was no exception. 

Many of this year’s complaints centred around fossil fuels (See: the ‘oil-and-gas influence and greenwashing’ section of Carbon Brief’s main COP28 key outcomes piece). But other aspects, such as lobbying by food and agriculture companies, were also reported at the Dubai summit. 

There were three times as many meat and dairy delegates at COP28 compared to last year’s summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, according to analysis by DeSmog and the Guardian. 

Before the summit began, the two outlets also reported that major meat companies and industry lobbyists planned a “large presence” in Dubai. 

Documents produced by the industry group the Global Meat Alliance showed the sector’s desire to promote “our scientific evidence” at the summit, the outlets said. 

In response, a Global Meat Alliance spokesperson said the organisation “works to simplify and distil public information around these events, which is largely complex, to ensure industry understand how and where to engage, having equal opportunity to be heard”. 

In Paraguay, agribusiness groups allegedly “modified” the guidance document for the country’s stance on talks at COP28, El Surtidor reported. 

Another El Surtidor piece said Paraguay agribusiness “deploys disinformation tactics and questionable lobbying” at COP28. 

An Lambrechts, a senior campaign strategist at Greenpeace International, told Carbon Brief that food, agriculture and carbon-offsetting greenwashing were all out in force at this year’s COP summit. 

She said she noticed a stronger focus on technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and marine geoengineering. She said: 

“We’ve seen a lot more proponents and promotion of that approach than we’ve seen previously.”

CCS – the process where CO2 is “captured” and held in a storage site, such as a deep rock reservoir beneath the sea – featured in the global stocktake text. 

US climate envoy John Kerry spoke out against overreliance on CCS at COP28, Politico reported, and EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said that sectors that are more difficult to decarbonise will not be able to “get away with CCS-ing themselves out of the problem”. 

The global stocktake text also invited countries to scale up “as appropriate, ocean-based mitigation action”. 
Mongabay reported that this could “include techniques that pump carbon dioxide into the ocean in an attempt to decrease carbon levels in the atmosphere” – a form of the controversial concept of marine geoengineering.

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