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UN
Global Climate Action
6
December
2023 | |
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Top
of the COP
High-Level
Champions' Newsletter for
COP28 | |
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Cities, buildings
and transport drive emission cuts and
resilience | |
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Cities
and high-emitting sectors such as buildings,
shipping, and transport are driving collaborative
efforts to electrify, decarbonize and build
resilience simultaneously, while new tools are
launched today to address this clear and present
“era of loss and damage”.
Loss
& damage
- In
memory of Saleemul Huq: The
High-Level Champions’ Action After Impacts Lab
today will celebrate the life of Professor
Saleemul Huq,
Ambassador for the High-Level Champions, who
passed away on 28 October. It will announce a
new loss and damage research fellowship and
prize programme in his name, as well as eight
tools and initiatives to address loss and
damage. As Huq notably said after the Champions’
last Action After Impacts
event, “we are living in an era of loss and
damage”. Watch a video about Saleem.
Race
to Zero
- Progress
report: Businesses,
investors, cities, regions and academic
institutions are reporting progress across all
aspects of the campaign, creating impact on the
real economy, according to the Race to Zero
campaign progress report
published today.
Built
environment
- Buildings
Breakthrough:
A new construction-focused Breakthrough will
launch today,
rallying 27 countries
under the shared goal to make “near-zero
emission and resilient buildings the new normal
by 2030.” The new Buildings Breakthrough is
co-led by France and the Kingdom of Morocco, and
the 27 countries represent a third of the
population and half of global emissions. It will
unlock collaboration on mitigation, climate
change adaptation and resilience in the sector.
- UAE
real estate: Top
UAE real estate developers will today deliver
their blueprint
for decarbonizing the built environment, with
support from the High-Level Champions. Today’s
launch event sees the formation of a working
group to support national ministries in
developing the enabling decarbonisation
policies.
Cities,
states & regions
- Major
subnational gathering: Over
50 ministers, plus mayors and subnational
officials, are gathering to launch a joint
outcome statement from the Local Climate Action
Summit
and today’s Urbanisation and Climate Change
Ministerial.
It will spur efforts to advance collaborative,
inclusive and ambitious multilevel climate
action in line with the Paris Agreement goals.
COP28’s focus on subnational engagement can help
drive momentum from local and regional
governments towards low-emissions,
climate-resilient development.
- Local
stocktakes: Over
25 cities and regions across six continents have
hosted “local stocktakes” under the banner of
#Stocktake4ClimateEmergency,
as subnational contributions to the first Global
Stocktake expected to conclude at COP28. The
local stocktakes will enable consultations
between national and subnational governments as
they prepare new Nationally Determined
Contributions (NDCs) by 2025.
- Local
ecosystem restoration: The
UN Environment Programme’s
Generation Restoration
(2023-2025)
project, which aims
to overcome barriers to large-scale ecosystem
restoration, will be showcased at an event
today – Local Ecosystem Restoration for
Nature-Positive Cities and Regions. It focuses
on the steps needed to restore local ecosystems
and create nature-positive and resilient cities
and regions by 2030.
- Urban
water resilience: The
COP28 Presidency and the High-Level Champions
are today launching the Sharm El-Sheikh Adaptation
Agenda
Working Group on Urban Water Resilience, in an
effort to advance work to ensure cities can
withstand and thrive in spite of droughts,
floods and other water shocks.
- Water
resilience in Africa: Partners
in the African Cities Water Adaptation
Platform
– including research institutions, civil
society, development agencies, governments, the
private sector – are working to implement US$20
million worth of donor funded projects to build
urban water resilience in three African
cities.
Adaptation
& Resilience
- Roof
Over Our Heads: Launched
a year ago in response to the urgent housing
needs of around 1 billion people living in
informal settlements, the Roof Over Our Heads
campaign addresses the challenges against the
backdrop of outdated urban development planning
and increased displacements, as detailed in a
book launched today. The campaign has so far
cultivated diverse partnerships with various
sectors, which have been vital in providing
financial support and expert knowledge. It has
established learning labs in 17 settlements in
nine Indian cities, which are experimenting with
new housing solutions.
- Adaptation
Finance Kuali Fund: Race to Resilience
partners launched the €300 million Kuali Fund on
Tuesday, raising investor capital through
innovative blended finance structures to make
smallholder farmers and small businesses more
resilient to climate change. Scale for
Resilience, GAWA Capital, the Spanish
development agency COFIDES, and the European
Commission support this effort to benefit
500,000 farmers and small businesses in Latin
America, the Caribbean and India while reducing
22 million tonnes of CO2. The EU pledged €17 million
earlier this year.
Shipping
- Green
hydrogen for shipping: Around
30 organizations including green hydrogen
producers, cargo owners, ship operators, ports,
and equipment manufacturers have signed a joint
commitment, released
today, to enable the use of renewable
hydrogen-derived shipping fuel this decade. This
will help to meet the International Maritime
Organization’s 2023 emissions targets,
including
commitments for fuel use, fleet development and
port infrastructure needed to get the nascent
green hydrogen industry to scale.
- Clean
cargoes: 10
companies are joining the
Cargo Owners for Zero Emission
Vessels,
the collaborative platform announced during
COP28, bringing the total to over 35 freight
buyers working to drive ambition and action
toward zero-emissions ocean transport.
- Green
pioneer: Fortescue’s
Green Pioneer
ship, the world’s first vessel to run on green
ammonia, arrived in Dubai this week from
Singapore, where it was recently converted from
running on fossil fuels.
Land
transport
- Road
Transport Breakthrough: 28
countries have adopted binding zero-emissions
policies for light duty vehicles and 33 have set
voluntary targets for medium and heavy duty
vehicles — including six new signatories on
Tuesday — according to the Accelerating to Zero
Coalition’s COP28 progress report.
The report looks at work across seven transport
initiatives to develop coordinated signals on
the pace of the transition to zero-emissions
vehicles and to support implementing
actions.
- Transport-energy
ministerial round-table: Transport
and energy ministers met international
organizations on Tuesday to discuss how to
integrate the shift to low-emissions transport
fuels and electricity with the energy
transition, focusing on the need for green
hydrogen and electric land transport.
- Finance
for electric land transport: Countries,
financiers and businesses on Monday confirmed
their alignment on plans to fast-track
investment in zero-emissions vehicle projects.
In addressing the challenge of high initial
costs and policy barriers through innovative
finance tools, such as payment security
mechanisms,
zero-emissions vehicle deployment can be scaled
to the thousands. Among the participants are the
UAE, UK, Netherlands, World Bank, Amazon, DHL,
and C40.
- Transforming
land transport:
Recognizing that electrification alone is not
enough to decarbonize road transport, the
High-Level Champions have proposed
three measures to help reduce the need for
travel, shift towards active and public
transport, and reduce mobility-related energy
use. More comprehensive sector breakthroughs at
COP29 support developing NDC policies and
delivering walkability,
active mobility
and public transport measures.
- Resilient
land transport:
Race to Resilience
and Sharm El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda (SAA)
partners are publishing a report
today looking at public and private efforts to
make land transport
infrastructure
resilient to climate change impacts. The report
sets out eight calls to action to advance this
work, such as setting global standards, targets,
and taxonomy, and increasing finance. The SAA
can spur these changes by 2030 by encouraging
the adoption of new technology, design and
materials.
Global
Stocktake high-level events
- The
High-Level Committee of the first Global
Stocktake: Discussions
at the World Climate Action Summit centred
around adaptation, means of implementation, and
mitigation, facilitated by the High-Level
Champions for COP28, COP27, and COP26, according
to a summary
of the COP28 opening event. Participants
included 29 heads of state and government, 21
ministers, and three UN system organizations.
World leaders recognized that the private
sector, subnational governments, women, youth,
Indigenous Peoples, local communities and others
have an important role to play in implementing
climate action.
- Accountability
and implementation dialogue: Learn
about the major voluntary initiatives that are
helping provide the foundation and momentum for
businesses, investors, cities, regions and civil
society to collaborate with governments, at an
event
today on accountability and
implementation.
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About the High-Level
Champions | |
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Created
under the Paris Agreement, the UN Climate Change
High-Level Champions have a mandate to connect the
work of national governments with voluntary and
collaborative action taken by cities, regions,
businesses, investors and civil society worldwide.
Through the Race to Zero
and Race to Resilience
campaigns, the Champions are mobilizing robust,
science-based commitments and actions to reduce
emissions, build resilience and end nature loss in
line with limiting global warming to
1.5C.
For
more news from COP28, visit climatechampions.unfccc.int. | |
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Call
for major climate action announcements: Global
Climate Action
| |
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The
secretariat is tracking major climate action
announcements made at COP 28 – including the
launch of initiatives and declarations and the
reporting of progress information on existing
initiatives and declarations.
The
announcements will be featured on the COP 28 Event
page of the UNFCCC’s Global Climate Action Portal
and will help inform the global climate action
outcomes at COP 28. You can notify us of your
announcements using this form. | |
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