Patience, many say, is the greatest virtue. And for those awaiting the Global Goal on Adaptation, there has been plenty of practice. It may be good for the soul, but ECO is slowly losing it while waiting for an ever-elusive text in the scorching Dubai sun. Even the secretariat is worried about us. Last night they sent out a wellbeing bulletin telling us to get some sleep. Be patient, they said. Mid-afternoon, still hot, and finally a text appears. And it is fiercely opposed by one and all.
Eight years since its conception and two years of workshop-hopping later, the promise of an immediate operationalisation of the GGA brought us to COP28 with a spring in our step. But nearly a week in with a text that came too late, and rejected by Parties with a single stroke of the pen, ECO’s hopes are fading like a mirage in the desert.
The issues are complex and perspectives, many, but ultimately it is quite simple. We need a GGA framework that is comprehensive and guides countries in meeting the GGA objectives of the Paris Agreement: reduce vulnerability, strengthen resilience, and enhance adaptive capacity. We need clarity on how developing countries will be supported to implement the framework and do their local and national adaptation assessments. That’s it!
Testing ECO’s patience further, the devil is in the detail. For ECO, the long-awaited text, given the time pressure, is a good start for negotiations: global targets, provisions for dimensions, themes, cross-cutting opportunities, means of implementation, links to GST and a standing agenda item on the GGA are all there, for now. Parties want to add more, and so they should.
Although elaboration of principles have been excluded from the draft (and ECO wonders what drives some Parties to insist on this), an operational and effective GGA must be principled. ECO insists that, spoken or not, any decision should be founded on climate, social, environmental, and intergenerational justice; locally-led adaptation; and, no harm principle applicable to both people and nature. The decision from COP28 should reflect these throughout.
ECO has had enough of being patient. We can’t go home without a framework and our virtue.