What is COP28?

COP28 is the 28th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 

Governments, NGOs, trade unions, businesses, and everyone else with any interest in climate change will meet in Dubai, UAE between 30th November - December 12th, to review and negotiate global action.
 

Why is COP28 important? 

Enormous speed and scale of climate action is required to stay anywhere close to our collective 1.5 °C threshold. For governments, industry, and civil society actors, COP28 presents a milestone opportunity for the first-ever Global Stocktake of progress on climate action, eight years after global climate goals were laid out in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The host of every COP is responsible for setting the annual summit’s goals. The UAE Presidency of COP28 has set out 4 main goals for this year’s conference to: 

• Fast-track the energy transition before 2030: Push for a strong mitigation outcome to significantly reduce emissions and accelerate decarbonisation in a just and equitable way.

• Set the framework for a new deal on finance: Affordable climate finance is crucial for emerging and developing countries to scale up delivery of climate goals by 2030. 

• Centre nature, people, lives and livelihoods at the heart of climate action: Focus on adaptation finance to advance resilience building and sustainable development; and operationalising the loss and damage fund to support communities facing the unadaptable impacts of climate change.

• Mobilise the “most inclusive” COP ever: Convening a diverse range of stakeholders, including frontline communities, indigenous peoples, youth to ensure their contribution in achieving ambitious outcomes.

How are human rights connected to climate change?

“[Climate change is] the greatest threat to human rights of the 21st century.”

–  Mary Robinson 

All human rights are interdependent, indivisible and inalienable. The right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is necessary for the full enjoyment of all human rights, including the rights to life, health, food, water and sanitation, and development, among others.

As affirmed by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) the impacts of the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution go well beyond the right to a healthy environment, jeopardising the effective enjoyment of all human rights everywhere.

Because of this, humanity needs the 2020s to be the decade of immediate and massive clean energy expansion. However, this requires enormous speed and scale in the rollout of adaptation and resilience measures, clean energy production, and the phase down and out of fossil fuel exploration and production, particularly coal. This massive industrial systems change therefore presents a range of significant risks and opportunities for a wide range of people - workers, indigenous groups, communities, land and environmental defenders, amongst others. How well this process is managed, and whether it delivers “just” and equitable outcomes, is a concept referred to as “just transitions”.
 

What is the ‘just transition’ and how is it related to COP?

The concept of “just transition” is a whole-of-society approach to decarbonisation that respects human rights while promoting sustainable development, the eradication of poverty, and the creation of decent work and quality jobs.

'Just transition' has come increasingly centre stage in national and international discussions on finance, energy, agriculture, and other key industrial transitions to net-zero. While there is no universal definition of the term, the 2015 Paris Agreement, the 2015 ILO Just Transition Guidelines, and the 2018 Silesia Declaration, and 2026 Glasgow Pact provide high-level reference points for public and private policy makers now working to implement just transitions in practice. 

COP28 is an important milestone for these deliberations for a number of reasons. It will feature negotiations around the formation of a new UNFCCC Just Transitions Work Programme, building on initial discussions at the Bonn Climate Change Conference (SB58) in June 2023.

Likewise other UNFCCC workstreams also must consider the justice, equity, and human rights dimensions of their policy work. Article 2.1c deliberations on climate finance, and negotiations around Loss & Damage facilities to provide funding for countries and communities hit hardest by global warming and climate shocks.

 

What just transitions discussions is IHRB having at COP28?

 

IHRB will be co-hosting and participating in a series of engagements at this year’s COP28 related to the just transitions agenda across energy, finance, and food systems, and the built environment. Within this agenda, our focus includes:

Just Transition finance: COP27 saw the agreement of the need for a “transformation of the financial system” and the agreement to develop a just transition work programme. To deliver on these dual requirements would involve embedding consideration of justice through the international financial architecture (e.g. transition plans, disclosure requirements, reform of MDBs, etc). 

IHRB is co-hosting an event with the LSE Grantham Research Institute to review the role of different types of capital (public finance, blended and market finance) and how it can support the delivery of the just transition: 

• Workshop on the Spectrum of Just Transitions Finance [Wed 6th Dec, 2 - 4pm]
   

Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETP) are an important emerging climate finance model for national-level decarbonisation initiatives. Depending on their transition contexts, countries embarking on these and other emerging climate finance models will have different approaches and challenges to delivering on their just transition commitments. However, successful models will be defined by a mixture of emission reductions, political settlement accords, and the attendant capacity to deal with a variety of justice claims.

IHRB is co-hosting two events on JETPs:

• Safeguarding the “Just” in Just Energy Transition Partnerships: Unpacking Progress from South Africa and Indonesia -  with the Ford Foundation, Climate Policy Initiative, Laudes Foundation
• Private Sector Standards and South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) - with the African Climate Foundation, Ford Foundation 

 

Just transitions in the built environment: From material extraction to construction, operation, and demolition, the built environment is responsible for 37% of global energy-related climate emissions. Climate action in the built environment is necessary, but it does not impact everyone equally, and a singular focus on the green transition risks exacerbating global inequality. Strategies in the built environment grounded in human rights can ensure that those most impacted are not left behind.

With the International Labour Organisation (ILO), IHRB is co-hosting an event to discuss decarbonisation in six global cities and the lessons learned from the initiatives for a just transition in each city. IHRB will also be presenting the work of six young artists from around the world who depict what the built environment can look like in a just transition: 

• Balancing Beams: Shaping a Fair and Sustainable Future for Construction Workers, Housing, and the Climate

• One size fits no one: rethinking the just transition from forests to cities – with Bauhaus Earth, IHRB, ICC, WBCSD, in partnership with BuildChange, Yale CEA, ICLEI, BWI

 

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For more information about IHRB’s COP28 activities and events, and to connect with our team attending, visit our COP28 webpage.

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How do just transitions impact workers, indigenous groups, and communities?

Significant social risks face a wide range of people if transitions are not rolled out well. For example: 

• Workers: the ILO estimates that in the shift to a climate-neutral and circular economy 80million jobs will be lost. At the same time, 100million new jobs will be created. This highlights the varying ways employment can be impacted: (i) new jobs will be created; (ii) some jobs might be substituted; (iii) certain jobs will be eliminated; and (iv) almost all jobs will be transformed in some way.

• Indigenous Peoples are overlooked both in terms of the impacts that can occur, but also the importance of their role in driving solutions. Around half of the world’s land is governed by indigenous peoples, and this land contains around 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. One in three people on earth is dependent on these lands for their wellbeing and livelihood. Despite the majority of these lands being managed sustainably and providing highly valuable ecosystem services, only 10% of indigenous land tenure is recognised under national law. Indigenous peoples are estimated to receive just 1% of climate finance currently, putting at least 290 GT of carbon stored in their collective lands at risk - equivalent to five times the total global emissions for 2021.
  
  Cases of resistance to poorly designed renewable projects are increasing. For example, in Mexico, the Gunaa Sicarú wind project is a 300 MW wind power plant developed by the French multinational company Électricité de France S.A. (EDF), aimed to become one of the largest wind farms in Latin America, providing electricity to 473,000 residents. However, conflicts with indigenous communities due to failures in the consultation process led to the cancellation of the electric supply contract after over a decade of EDF's investment in the project.

• Land and environmental defenders: Environmental defenders, many of whom are indigenous peoples, also face intolerable risks as they champion sustainable solutions or raise concerns about harms associated with poorly planned transitions or irresponsible business operations. They are vital leaders of a just transition, yet trackers counted 177 killings of land and environmental defenders around the world last year, over 415 violent attacks, and also an increasing number of defenders subject to criminalisation as a silencing strategy.

 

Further reading

• Just Transitions for All: Business, Human Rights, and Climate Action

• Working Through a Just Transition - APEC Economic Leaders’ Week

• Meeting Report: Just Transitions Dialogue: Four Elements of a Just Transition

• Podcast: What does one of the first corporate just transition strategies look like?

• Podcast: Halina Ward on Just Transitions

• Podcast: Mairead Lavery on Export Finance and Just Transitions

• Report: Just Transactions – A White Paper on Just Transition in the Banking Sector

• Commentary: Just Transitions: Exploring the Need for International Rules Based on Local Realities

• Briefing: Connecting the Just Transitions and Business & Human Rights Agendas

• Video: COP26 High-Level Dialogue on Business and Human Rights in the Just Transition

• Video: Financing the Just Transition - Exploring the Human Rights Value Add

• Advancing a Just Transition in the Built Environment – Building for today and the future

• One Year On – 5 Takeaways from South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP)

 

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For more information about our work on just transitions, visit this page.

If you are a journalist who has an enquiry, would like to arrange an interview with IHRB staff, or wish to attend IHRB’s events, please get in touch with [email protected]