Developing countries reject GGA draft, vote of support for rechanneling Special Drawing Rights

Subject: Environment

Sec: Int Conventions

Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA):

A draft text on the GGA was made available at the COP28 meeting.
The text around the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, means of implementation, particularly finance, financial targets, accountability mechanisms and closing of the adaptation finance gap were either missing from the text or were bracketed.
About GGA:
- It was established under the Paris Agreement to enhance climate change adaptation by increasing awareness of and funding towards countries’ adaptation needs in the context of the 5/2°C goal of the Paris Agreement.
- At COP26, Parties established the 2022-2023 Glasgow-Sharm el-Sheikh (GlaSS) Work Programme on the Global Goal on Adaptation to define the key elements of the goal, including the methodologies, indicators, metrics, and data sources to support the assessment of overall adaptation progress.
- Negotiations around the GGA currently focus on what metrics and indicators can be used at both global and local levels to effectively monitor collective progress, while incorporating and addressing outstanding concerns on bridging the gap between the local- and context- specificity of adaptation and the need to track it at a global scale.

Finance:

A roundtable on Leveraging Special Drawing Rights for climate was organised at COP28.
Developed countries like Spain supported the rechanneling of SDRs from developed to developing countries.
IMF has exceeded the target for the Resilience and Sustainability Trust to $41 billion, accessible to the poorest countries.
World Bank has started the five new initiatives such as targeting 45 per cent of their financing for climate by 2025, and tackling methane from rice, livestock and waste management.
Special Drawing Rights (SDR):
- The SDR is an international reserve asset created by the IMF to supplement the official reserves of its member countries.
- The SDR is not a currency. It is a potential claim on the freely usable currencies of IMF members. As such, SDRs can provide a country with liquidity.
- A basket of currencies defines the SDR: the US dollar, Euro, Chinese Yuan (Renminbi), Japanese Yen, and the British Pound.

Equitable fossil fuel phaseout:

The Civil Society Equity Review Report released at COP28 noted that Canada, the United States, Norway, Australia and the United Kingdom must end fossil fuel extraction by the very early 2030s.

Mitigation Work Programme (MWP):

First introduced by UNFCCC at COP26 in Glosgow.
Launched at- COP27 Sharm Al-Sheikh, Egypt
It aims to ”urgently scale up mitigation ambition and implementation” to help reach the 1.5DC goal.
At COP27, Parties further fleshed out the programme to be operationalised each between 2023-2026 via at least two annual global dialogues and investment-focused events.