Dear John,
In recent months, unprecedented heatwaves, droughts, floods and wildfires have wreaked havoc on people’s lives, especially in climate-vulnerable countries. These extreme weather events reinforce just how urgent it is for the world to tackle the climate crisis.
The COP28 climate summit in Dubai offers an historic opportunity to correct course through the first-ever “Global Stocktake” under the Paris Agreement. Countries, cities, businesses and financial institutions should rally behind a rapid response plan at COP28 that transforms economies, improves people’s lives and livelihoods and advances climate justice.
I’m pleased to share with you WRI’s priorities for COP28, our resources, and events where we hope you will join us.
Our priorities
WRI experts will be on-the-ground demanding that negotiators make major progress in three key areas:
- Accelerating systems transformation – including signaling the end of the fossil fuel era. Addressing the climate crisis will require rapid changes across every sector, from the way the world produces and consumes food and energy to the way it designs its cities. At COP28, countries can adopt concrete targets across sectors that ramp up action by the end of this decade.
- Responding to increasingly severe climate impacts – including by operationalizing the Loss and Damage Fund. The human, economic and environmental toll of climate change is already massive and only destined to get worse, so it is imperative that developed countries help vulnerable communities adapt to climate impacts and offer support to those who lose their homes, livelihoods and much more.
- Paving the way for delivering much greater climate finance. To keep global climate goals within reach, the world needs to reach $4.3 trillion in annual climate finance flows by 2030. Countries can set the stage for new climate finance targets that deliver a step-change in ambition.
Please read our in-depth article outlining WRI’s benchmarks for success for COP28.
Visit our COP28 Resource Hub to learn more about what the negotiations must deliver, as well as discover our recent articles, publications and upcoming events.
Join our events
I encourage you to take advantage of our events leading up to the summit, including the launch of our flagship report State of Climate Action 2023 (on Nov. 15) and watching the recording of a high-level webinar laying out how COP28 can meet the needs of vulnerable countries.
WRI is supporting high-level gatherings at COP28 with national and local leaders, including the Food Systems Pavilion, the NDC Partnership Pavilion, the Local Climate Action Summit and much more.
We will also host dozens of events on-site at the summit.
Here’s just a sampling:
