After two years of fraught negotiations, parties at the UN Climate Conference (known as COP28) in Dubai have reached a consensus on the Global Goal on Adaptation. The framework intends to improve global resilience to increasing floods, droughts, heatwaves and sea level rise. Featuring prominently in the newly adopted text is the need for climate-resilient water and sanitation – a major win for the water sector.
Sanitation and Water for All sat down with Jose Gesti, the COP28 Water Pavilion Envoy for the GGA to find out what the new framework hopes to achieve and how water and sanitation factored into the negotiations.
A portion of this interview originally appeared in Smart Water Magazine.
What is the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA)?
The GGA originates from Article 7 of the Paris Agreement, which calls for enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change.
Adaptation means that we recognize that climate change is having adverse effects on our planet and will continue to do so. Therefore, we need to take action to prevent or minimize climate impacts.
Why is water critical to adaptation discussions?
According to the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, every 1°C of global mean temperature rise adds about 7% of moisture to the atmosphere, supercharging the water cycle and making rainfall more erratic. Since 2000, flood-related disasters have increased by 134%, and the number and duration of droughts also increased by 29%. Meanwhile, more than 2 billion people are living in countries under water stress and 3.6 billion people face inadequate access to water at least one month per year.
For example, over the past few weeks, heavy rains and flash floods have devastated communities in East Africa, killing hundreds of people and displacing over 1 million across Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. Scientists confirmed that human-caused climate change has made the rain up to two times more intense.
Climate-triggered disasters will continue to happen in the short and medium term even if we get greenhouse gas emissions under control. Therefore, we need to strongly focus on reducing vulnerability and increasing resiliency to the immediate and predicted impacts of climate change. Climate-resilient water supply and sanitation services are key to adapting to climate change.
How long have negotiators been working on the GGA?
Negotiations on the GGA have been taking place for more than two years, which were intended to culminate at COP28 with a final framework. Delegations, especially those from least developed countries, have been pushing for a position that supports targets for priority themes such as water, health, and food security.
Negotiation teams have disagreed about how to establish ambitious and measurable targets for adaptation and find the funding needed to achieve them.
Over the past two years of the GGA work programme, Water Pavilion partners have provided potential water targets to be included in the final framework. For example, a submission by 13 SWA partners emphasized the need to:
- Reduce vulnerability in areas with high climate risk exposure and insufficient water and sanitation services.
- Ensure that progress towards the achievement of universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene contributes to climate adaptation.
- Ensure that existing water, sanitation and hygiene systems in areas highly exposed to climate risks embrace risk-based management and are retrofitted and upgraded.
- Foster water conservation, efficiency and reuse throughout existing water, sanitation and hygiene systems.
The negotiations at COP28 carried on until December 13th, one day after the conference was supposed to end. Negotiators thankfully announced a consensus and adopted a draft framework.
What is the COP28 Water Pavilion and how did water feature in the GGA negotiations?
The COP28 Water Pavilion was made up of over 60 partners. Many of us have been offering our expertise, not just at COP, but at climate meetings throughout the year. We’ve been working closely with the negotiators to help them understand the urgency of including water and sanitation in adaptation policies.
After months of hard work, we were overjoyed to see that the GGA’s first thematic target is dedicated to water and sanitation. It calls for “Significantly reducing climate-induced water scarcity and enhancing climate-resilience to water-related hazards towards a climate-resilient water supply, climate-resilient sanitation and universal access to safe and affordable potable water.” This is a major win for the water sector.
Having strong water and sanitation targets in the GGA will help us translate adaptation into national policies and action on the ground, helping us improve the lives of the most vulnerable and those most impacted by climate change.
We are also excited to see that the water target is well aligned with the Green Climate Fund’s Water Security Guidelines. Parties to the Paris Agreement have existing guidance for how to contribute to global adaptation, now coupled with a strong climate rationale to boost adaptation funding for water and sanitation.
What are the challenges around securing climate finance for adaptation and how will the GGA framework help address those?
At COP28, world leaders again faced tough decisions over the financial responsibility for climate change. Officials have warned that resources needed for adaptation could be diverted instead to the new “loss and damage” fund. Wealthy countries have only offered about $160 million in contributions to the Adaptation Fund—about half of the $300 million goal.
The UN’s Adaptation Gap report estimates funding needs now stand between $194 billion and $366 billion per year. Yet finance flows to developing countries are 10-18 times below estimated needs, and the gap is widening. The UNFCCC’s Adaptation Fund has only received $1.3 billion from 26 countries, according to the Climate Fund Pledge Tracker.
While adaptation finance flows are nowhere near the levels we need to see, the critical role of water as a key component of climate resiliency is well recognized. The sector received a substantial share of committed public adaptation-related finance with funding standing at $11 billion USD in 2018 for water and wastewater management.
While this is relatively good news, we need to understand that water programs still only receive less than 3 per cent of global climate finance.
How do we ensure that water and sanitation continue to play a key role in adaptation funding and implementation?
There’s a lot of emphasis on the impact that climate change has on water as a resource. However, we aren’t paying as much attention to the impact it has on basic services, like water supply, sanitation and hygiene. The impacts of climate change on sanitation, in particular, are not obvious to those outside the sector.
Additionally, there is a lack of understanding of how the water and sanitation sector contributes to community resilience and the mitigation agenda. We can’t blame climate stakeholders for not including water and sanitation in national climate plans. Instead, the sector needs to support climate stakeholders to understand the problems and find the solutions. We do that by continually working with the climate community, offering our expertise through partnerships like the Water Pavilion, and participating in the negotiation processes.