Countries, corporations, and civil society convened in Dubai to jointly answer the question: is the global community on track to meet 1.5°C?
Attendees negotiated and collaborated to drive forward global impact, conscious actions, and sustainable innovations.
Because the time for ambition and change is now - to create lasting climate impact.
A climate policy glossary
Countries, corporations, and civil society come together yearly at COP to determine progress and regulate how to respond to the climate crisis.
The Paris Agreement regulates how countries act in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Most importantly, it tasks them with limiting global warming to 1.5°C with their NDCs.
The Paris Agreement sees countries setting national climate goals to achieve its targets: Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)
Article 6 defines the rules of engagement for international compliance carbon markets
What happened last year and what will be decided at COP28?
John Davis, who until recently served as South Pole's Commercial Director for Asia Pacific, has been with the company for eight years. During his initial four years in London, he played a pivotal role in leading and expanding the Sustainable Finance Team. His achievements include successfully scaling and selling South Pole's CNI business to ISS and establishing and developing the company's commercial teams in both New York and Singapore. Currently based in South Pole's Sydney office, John is responsible for running the APAC business and is an active member of the company's Executive Committee. His extensive experience in the environmental markets, accumulated prior to joining South Pole, spans over a decade, including roles at Spectron, an energy brokerage firm, and CF Partners, an energy and environmental trading company, where he contributed to building and managing the environmental trading desk.
Philip Moss is the Chairman of the NextGen CDR Facility, the world's largest diversified portfolio of certified carbon removals powered by Mitsubishi Corporation and South Pole, which plans to purchase 1MM tonnes of CDRs by 2025 on behalf of a growing list of buyers including Boston Consulting Group, LGT Group, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Swiss Re and UBS.
Philip is a leading authority on establishing new sustainability-linked markets, with particular focus on the use of innovative financing to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While at the World Economic Forum (WEF), Philip pioneered the concept of "blended finance", establishing a +$150 billion market and the Convergence network, while leading the SDIP alliance of 42 leading governments, development finance institutions and investors to mobilize sustainable private investment in developing and emerging markets.
Prior to joining WEF, Philip gained extensive experience in both the carbon and cleantech markets as Managing Partner for Mana Ventures, an Abu Dhabi-based cleantech investment advisory firm and as the Carbon Portfolio Manager for Masdar, where he managed the largest carbon portfolio in the MENA region. Philip founded the Blended Finance Group and has also held senior positions with 17 Asset Management, the Zayed Future Energy Prize, and the UNEP Finance Initiative.
Karolien is South Pole's Regional Director for Climate Policy, Finance and Carbon Markets in Asia. She oversees South Pole's advisory work for public and private sector clients relating to carbon policy, climate finance, Article 6 and quickly evolving compliance carbon markets in the region. She has 18 years of experience in climate and development finance, including with the Belgian Foreign Ministry, the United Nations and the Global Green Growth Institute. Karolien has lived and worked across Africa and Asia advising governments on policy and investment opportunities relating to clean energy, waste, transport, sustainable supply chains, NDCs and more. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Leuven with a Masters in Philosophy and holds a Masters in International Relations from Sciences Po Paris. Karolien speaks English, French, Dutch and German.
Martin Stadelmann, Executive Director, Climate Investments at South Pole, is a climate finance expert with more than 15 years of experience in developing, implementing and evaluating climate action projects, programmes and funds in developing countries, with a focus on clean energy and adaptation to climate change.
His experience spans contributions to innovative mechanisms under the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance, the Global Landscape of Climate Finance reports and the finance chapters of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report and the UNEP Adaptation Gap report 2014. Until 2009, he managed climate action projects in developing countries at myclimate. From 2009 to 2018, he advised governments, development banks and climate funds on international climate finance and represented the Swiss government in international climate negotiations, in addition to advising other governments on the same matter. Martin initiated several innovative climate action funds and platforms, including the Landscape Resilience Fund and the City Finance Lab. He holds a PhD in political science, and a MSc in geography.
Vladimir Litvak is the Global Director, of Methane Technologies Strategy at South Pole. He has 30 years of experience in financing and managing renewable and clean conventional energy, sustainable infrastructure, environmental and climate change mitigation projects, and investments, as well as in developing and implementing ESG, climate, energy, and environmental policies in the US, Russia, Central Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, South and East Asia. He is one of the early practitioners of carbon markets and carbon finance and participated in setting up and managing several carbon and green energy funds and finance facilities. Prior to his current role, Vladimir was an executive director and head of carbon markets and climate & sustainability finance at VTB Capital and Bank VTB. He also served as the head of new power and alternative energy project finance at Siberian Coal Energy Company (SUEК), regional energy and environment team leader for Europe and CIS at UNDP, senior manager at International Resources Group (IRG), and energy and environment specialist at the World Bank.
Vladimir Litvak holds an M.S. degree in Paleogeography from the Lomonosov Moscow State University. He also studied Finance and Economics at the World Bank Institute.
Ab Kasmi is an accomplished executive with over 15 years of experience in the carbon, renewables, and environmental markets. As the Head of Global Sales & Portfolio Management, Ab leads South Pole's group-wide sales and commercial strategies across its global offering and global project portfolio.
Previously, he held senior leadership roles at a large renewable energy company, where he supported and steered the development of new environmental markets, helping clients reach their decarbonization goals. Ab has extensive expertise in structuring renewable energy and carbon certificate transactions, business development, and managing client relationships, from local producers to large global corporations – driving impactful changes in environmental markets.
Renat is a pioneer and social entrepreneur in the field of sustainability, climate change and renewable energies, where he is engaged since 1999. As a founding partner and CEO of South Pole, he coordinated the set-up of the company's global sustainability solutions business, and steered South Pole into becoming one of the leading players in global carbon markets. Before founding South Pole, Renat was co-founder and CEO of the myclimate foundation, one of the world's first players on the voluntary carbon markets.
Renat has been elected "Social Entrepreneur of Switzerland" by the World Economic Forum's Schwab foundation, and he serves as a member of the Global Agenda Council on Climate Change of the WEF. He is a board member of Climate-KIC, Europe's largest public-private innovation partnership focused on climate change and of Perenia Pty Ltd. He is a member of the advisory board of HUB Zurich, a platform for social entrepreneurship and MyNewEnergy, a company launching the first-ever platform to compare power products in Switzerland.
Renat holds a master degree in environmental sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and has completed executive education programs at INSEAD and the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS).
It stands for Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Established in 1994, it is the first international treaty governing the global response to climate change. Every year all countries that signed it come together to review and/or update, taking forms of the Paris Agreement for example.
The first legally binding global treaty on climate change, the Paris Agreement, was agreed at COP21 in Paris in 2015. Since then, almost all countries in the world have committed to its goal of limiting global average temperature rise to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and strengthening everyone's ability to adapt and build resilience to the growing effects of climate change.
The Paris Agreement sees countries setting national targets (so-called NDCs - see below) to achieve this goal, as well as setting up mechanisms for countries to cooperate across the globe (see section on Art. 6)
Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are a key feature of the Paris Agreement and will be an important subject for discussion at COP28. NDCs are a type of pledge: they represent the climate actions that countries will take to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming to 1.5°C. As current pledges are insufficient, more ambitious ones – accompanied by policies and actions to drive measurable impact – are urgently needed.
To achieve these national climate commitments, countries can voluntarily cooperate using the mechanisms defined under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement (please see above for an explanation). Discussing how this should work in detail will be part of the discussions in Dubai.
The Paris Agreement recognises that countries can – and should – cooperate to meet their national climate targets (NDCs). But some countries emit more, and others emit less, so Article 6 creates an international carbon market to trade 'mitigation outcomes,' making it easier to foster impact on a global scale.
It works like this: Countries that can achieve emission reductions at a lower cost, can sell these "mitigation outcomes" to the countries that face much higher costs to reduce their emissions. Here are some examples of Article 6 pilot projects in action.
Another factor that makes Article 6 uniquely important is that it harnesses the power of the private sector to transform the global economy and lower emissions in the long term. Decarbonization projects, new climate technologies, and integral innovations are primed for investment from both the public and the private sectors - channeling finance for climate mitigation and adaptation.
More implementation, more collaboration, and more systems.
At COP28, we can expect to see more discussion around the details of implementing Article 6 what will shape the collaboration between the voluntary carbon markets and NDCs, and which systems need to be put in place to enable robust international carbon market(s) that work for everyone.
The focus of COP28 will be on fine-tuning Article 6 rules to accelerate global collaboration on reaching global goals, act on the outcomes of the first global stocktake, and review just transition mechanisms. Lawmakers will also likely decide on the amount for the Loss & Damage fund, established at COP27, which provides for the most vulnerable countries to climate change.
