COP27: African bloc unhappy; says agreement on framework for adaptation goal being delayed

The African Group of Negotiators (AGN) is not happy with the way negotiations on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) are going at the 27th Conference of Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Ephraim Mwepya Shitima, the chair of the AGN bloc, made a statement at the informal stocktaking plenary on November 18, 2022:

COP27 is referred to as the implementation COP, the adaptation COP; therefore, we need to deliver on adaptation. We have to advance the work on substantive elements of the GGA, including agreeing on a framework for the goal. Also, we must reach a decision that guides the work on the GGA.

This comes after a new draft text on GGA was released by the COP presidency late on the night of November 17, which looked almost final.

In the text, parties have already decided to initiate the development of a framework for GGA that would have a structured approach and will be considered and adopted in 2023.

This could be one of the points of contention for AGN as it wants an agreement on the framework at COP27 rather than stalling it for one year.

“Unfortunately, when the African Group stressed the urgency to engage on substance and work on a textual proposal and draft decision text that works for all as usual practice, some partners chose to only display text without any concrete input to be provided to the co-facilitators,” Mariam Allam, advisor to the AGN chair on adaptation and loss and damage, said.

Shitima had been calling for a concrete decision on the GGA even before the COP. “We will continue calling for global goal for adaptation to be operationalised and guide the adaptation efforts of countries at COP27,” he had said in an article on the United Nations website.

It was also decided as part of the text that the framework will have two functions — enhancing action and support for achieving the GGA and reviewing progress on GGA as part of the Global Stocktake (GST) in 2023.

The Parties also decided on four steps of an iterative adaptation cycle under the structured approach: Risk and impact assessment; planning; implementation; and monitoring, evaluation and learning.

Parties further decided on the various elements, approaches and sources of information to be considered under the structured approach. The framework would be reviewed before the GST.

References to a special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the GGA, which had been considered under one of the options in the text earlier, have been removed.

AGN had been pushing for the invitation of the IPCC special report on GGA as part of the text which would help in updating the impacts and adaptation guidelines from 1994.

Sandeep Chamlin Rai, senior advisor, Global Climate Adaptation Policy, World Wide Fund for Nature told Down To Earth that “this could be because IPCC would take at least five to six years to come up with the report”. That would mean a further stalling on agreement on GGA which countries would not want.

“IPCC was also asked to refine the methodology and give the global targets and indicators. But this is now part of one of the workshops for next year under the Glasgow Sharm El-Sheikh Work Programme on GGA. Therefore, they may not have wanted to pre-judge the outcome of the workshops,” Rai added.

Instead, the outcome of that particular workshop could be to make a recommendation to the IPCC to come up with guidelines to establish global targets and indicators.

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