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Lindsey Hall: I'm Lindsey Hall, Head of thought leadership at S&P Global Sustainable1.   

Esther Whieldon: And I'm Esther Whieldon, a senior writer on the Sustainable1 Thought Leadership Team.

Lindsey Hall: If you've been following this podcast recently, you know we've been on the ground covering the UN's big annual Climate Change Conference, known as COP28. This conference of the parties brings together world leaders, along with civil society, business, Indigenous Peoples, youth philanthropy and international organizations for 2 weeks, and it just wrapped up in Dubai earlier this week.

Esther Whieldon: Lindsey, I understand you just got back. Welcome back.

Lindsey Hall: Oh, thank you. I'm still totally jet lagged, but it's been really thrilling to watch as deliberations came down to the wire in the early morning hours of December 13, and negotiators right up to the end were struggling to reach consensus on whether the Summit's global stocktake text would include an explicit phaseout of fossil fuels.

As we've covered in past episodes, this was the first ever global stocktake, and that's a process for countries and stakeholders to assess progress towards meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Nations finally settled on a stocktake outcome that includes transitioning away from fossil fuels and working toward the phase down of unabated coal.

While this language was not as strong as some negotiators push for, it's the first time the COP has resulted in a formal agreement among all Paris Agreement signatories to take action on fossil fuels. Countries agreed to contribute to “Transitioning away from fossil fuels and energy systems in a just orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade so as to achieve Net-Zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.” And that's according to the final draft text of the global stocktake.

The text also recognized that emissions need to be cut by 43% by 2030 to achieve the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. And it encourages all parties to set ambitious emission reduction targets in their national climate plans by 2025. The global stocktake also calls on parties to triple renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency improvement by 2030.

Esther Whieldon: The stocktake also urges parties to take action on several other topics, ranging from sustainable food and agriculture, to climate change and health, as well as reducing climate impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity. We saw several agreements announced on COP28 related to Climate Finance as well.

For example, on day 1, parties reached an agreement on a new loss and damage fund to assist countries particularly vulnerable to the effects requirement change. To date, countries have committed more than US$700 million to the fund. We recently did an episode with the Green Climate Fund on this topic. And during COP28, the fund received new funding commitments and now bring total pledges to $12.8 billion. As of recording this episode, the COP28 climate finance commitment countertallied more than $85 billion committed so far.

But the global stocktake highlights that these and other financial pledges that came out of COP are far short of the trillions of dollars that will be needed to support developing countries with clean energy transitions, implementing their national climate plans and adaptation efforts. Closing that gap, the global stocktake says, will require reforming the multilateral financial architecture and accelerating the ongoing establishment of new and innovative sources of finance.

Lindsey Hall: The global stocktake also underlined the urgent need to address the interlinked global crisis of climate change and biodiversity loss. And I heard in many of my conversations that nature was on the agenda in a much bigger way at this climate comp than in the past.

Esther Whieldon: So that's a lot of headlines upfront. So Lindsey, what's the overall sense now coming out of COP28? Do you think it was a success or not?

Lindsey Hall: That's a good question, and I'm still hearing mixed views on this front. I think it's fair to say that nobody got everything they wanted in the negotiations. There was progress and there were setbacks. To learn more, we're going to hear from several guests from many different industries and parts of the world in today's episode, starting with the CEO of the nonprofit Planet Tracker, Robin Millington. She starts by explaining how this COP has evolved from previous years.

Robin Millington: I'm the CEO of Planet Tracker and I helped found the organization in 2018 as a sister organization to a group called Carbon Tracker who came up with the term stranded asset, unburnable carbon, carbon bubble, which became part of the financial lexicon in the carbon and climate change space.

So Planet Tracker is aiming to help bring the biodiversity, nature, natural capital issues into the valuations for the financial community, much as Carbon Tracker did in the carbon and climate change. We're thrilled that COP has finally brought nature into the discussions. We have a food day this year, which is a huge step forward.

It is, on one hand, 30% of the emissions, and it is a solution for the climate change issue. But food, in of itself, is a major system in the world, which, in my opinion, is as important as just looking at the climate and emissions. Food is being impacted by the problems with climate change, but food is also impacted by other things like the intensification of agriculture. And if we don't start looking at this more holistically, we may be solving for climate change and maybe we'll be getting emissions down, but we may still have problems producing enough food for a growing population. 

If we think that we'll have 2 billion more people by 2050, that means we need 2 billion more mouths to feed and the food for that. And it is drastically impacted by the climate catastrophes, if you will, massive rainstorms, massive droughts, massive fires, all of that is impacting food production. So it is here because the climate community has recognized that getting the emissions out of the system has to also be looking at how those emissions come out of the food system. But I hope that this will be a backdoor into the community looking at this more holistically as a system in and of itself.

Lindsey Hall: Okay. And what are some of the conversations that you or that Planet Tracker is having here in Dubai?

Robin Millington: We're looking at financial mechanisms that can help support transition. We're talking about issues like methane, the food system, and things like alternative proteins because the methane coming from the cattle production is a major, major problem in the greenhouse gas space.

We're also just talking about other things to do with natural capital that people don't think about like oceans, for example. The community here is very focused on the electrification as a solution to the fossil fuel use. However, electrification requires critical minerals. There is a huge move now to try and do deep sea mining to get critical minerals from the deep sea, except if you start going into the deep sea for those minerals, you have a whole food column that goes up to the top of the ocean.

Right now, 35% of our commercial fishery stocks are overfished. The remaining 60-something percent to get us to about 92% are fully stressed. They're at full limitations. If we start disturbing that food chain from the bottom of the sea to the top of the ocean, we are putting more of our seafood at risk. So I do look at it as a concern about how are we going to feed the world.

Lindsey Hall: And so presumably, having the right data points would be kind of a key component here.

Robin Millington: Absolutely, absolutely.

Lindsey Hall: So you were on a panel that I moderated earlier today, where you were talking about how you've seen the conversation about data shift just over the past year. Can you share that with our audience now?

Robin Millington: It's been interesting. So working in the finance world. I mean it's very data-driven. You need data points to do the analytics. And I was on many panels last year in 2022 where the whole theme of the panel would be where are we going to get the data? Do we have data? Well, there's a plethora of data. We are not lacking data.

What it is -- the real problem is it's just not consensus yet. We haven't really reached that point where everybody agrees these are the right data points. But you can't let perfection be the enemy of progress. We have to put these down. We'll play with them. We'll see if they work. If they don't, we'll do something else. But if we don't get started on it now, we can't wait 5 years for a perfect set of data points.

Lindsey Hall: We just heard Robin talk about the role of data, and this is a topic that came up repeatedly in my conversations at COP. During the conference, I moderated a panel on the topic of water with IBM's Chief Impact Officer, Justina Nixon-Saintil. Here's what she said about data in our conversation about solutions to the water and climate crisis.

Justina Nixon-Saintil: We know that technology and data and AI can really make a difference on how you accelerate progress against your sustainability goals. Not having access to the right data can actually be one of the biggest challenges for companies for nonprofit organizations.

The other big challenge is not having access to the expertise again, nonprofit organizations, community partners, they understand the community, they understand the challenges, but they don't always have access to the technology, the platforms and the data. So that's a huge part of what we bring. And again, the skill in making sure they understand how to use the data, how do you get insights from it? How do you make sure you have the digital skills so that you can embrace it and really make a difference.

One example I'll give is a project that we have with Texas A&M, where we are working with small holds of farmers, and we've given them access to data so that they can make decisions about when to water, when to plant, right? It's very basic to us, but even understanding how do you access this information? How do you make sure you have the right technical skills to be able to interpret the information and then how do you put it in action, right? How do you turn the insights that you have to actually make progress. And we are seeing just over the last 2 years, we've been working with them that they have increased yields because of having access to the data, to the expertise.

Lindsey Hall: Justina was a guest on a recent water-focused episode we did at this podcast and will include a link in our show notes to that. We just heard her talking about the importance of inclusivity and addressing the needs of diverse stakeholders. Inclusion was a cross-cutting theme on the COP28 agenda. And the other speaker on this panel I moderated talked about how to address the impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities. As you'll hear him say, a lot of it comes down to improving infrastructure.

Gary White: So I'm Gary White. I'm CEO and Co-Founder of Water.org at Water Equity, and we focus on bringing financial solutions to low-income populations so that they can get access to the water and sanitation services that they need around the world. And with Water Equity, we work jointly to deliver impact investing capital so that investors can get targeted financial returns as well as social impact, focusing on water and sanitation in low-income countries.

Right now, today, 771 million people, when they woke up, didn't have access to a safe water supply and about 1.7 billion didn't have access to safe sanitation. And so we see this as a tremendous challenge. It's a huge drag on populations in terms of girls collecting water, so they're not in school, health implications, financial implications. A lot of people who don't have access to a water tap, have to buy water at very exorbitant prices from water vendors. So it has an economic impact on them as well. 

The people that now do have access, who have access in a very tenuous way, were going to lose that access as floods and droughts imperil that more. It's been said that if climate crisis is a shark, then water are the teeth, and that's what we're seeing as people lose access to their water supplies because of climate change.

Lindsey Hall: So it's a lot of different problems. It's access to clean water, it's water scarcity, it's droughts, floods, it's a whole gamut of issues.

Gary White: Exactly, exactly. And I think that's the key to -- like how do we pay as much attention to adaptation as we do to mitigation and try to bring that into balance a little bit more. But we also see opportunities for mitigation as we improve water supply infrastructure as well.

This crisis that we have, it's going to take about $1.7 trillion to address water and sanitation services for populations that don't have it now. And typically, we think of helping people in poverty through charity to get access to water and sanitation. There's literally 1,000 different kind of water NGOs out there that are raising charity dollars to kind of go and attack this. And that's good. We need all hands on deck.

But what we said is like, look, we're never going to solve this problem if we're just applying philanthropy to this. We've got to animate the markets. We've got to bring in end market capital. And what we recognize is that people are already paying for water, low-income people are paying in terms of their time, they're paying cash through water vendors.

And so we said, what if we can get them access to small affordable loans so that they can get the solutions that were best for them based on their own needs. And that was our water credit program. This has been more than a decade ago now that we launched this, and we then worked with micro finance partners around the world to now mobilize about $4.5 billion in loan capital to help more than 60 million people get access to water and sanitation, not through charities, but through finance.

And so that's what we see as the key to this. And as we then look towards the infrastructure from the top down, which also needs a lot of financial investment, people who now are able to connect to the utilities because they can pay the connection fee with their small loan, what if the utility doesn't have the pipes in the ground to do that? And so we've launched an infrastructure fund now that is going to allow us to invest to get more pipes in the ground to fix the existing infrastructure. 

What we see in terms of mitigation potential here, bringing this from finance back to climate is that over 1/3 of the water that goes out into the infrastructure is lost.

And so what we see is this water pumping in from remote locations, treating and distributing has a huge climate impact, a huge carbon footprint. And if you're losing a third of that, and it provides nobody -- any economic good whatsoever, that's the place to start to try to reign in some of the mitigation impact of the infrastructure. So we're working in those areas too.

Lindsey Hall: And just to make sure I understand, when you talk about losing that water, what does that mean?

Gary White: So what we see is that the infrastructure is under-invested in. So you have leaky pipes, you have meters that are broken that are not metering for water. And when you're not metering for water, you're not getting customers to pay for it. And if they're not paying for it, you're not investing in the infrastructure. And so it's a vicious circle that you see. And so that water is lost.

When we think about our carbon footprint, we all got on an airplane to get here, right? That had a carbon footprint. But we got here. We're doing things. We're generating economic activity. But when you're treating water and have that carbon footprint and it leaks into the ground, it does nothing for anyone. And so that, to me, is a way that we should really be focused on looking at how do we fix the infrastructure first in terms of addressing climate change.

Lindsey Hall: We just heard Gary talking about the importance of investing in basic infrastructure like pipes to address elements of the climate crisis. And infrastructure came up in other ways in my conversations during COP too, including the need to develop market infrastructure. This is one of the key takeaways that my next guest had from COP28. Here's Kristen Sullivan, a partner at Deloitte, who leads sustainability and ESG services.

Kristen Sullivan: We've seen tremendous progress in establishing a common baseline, a global baseline of standards for reporting, starting with climate that are so absolutely critical to drive that trust and confidence in the market. We've seen that the policy makers really look to this, increasingly look to the standards infrastructure to endorse and really look to put that emphasis and moves towards adoption to really create the infrastructure so that organizations are communicating on performance that truly will give insight into future prospects and value creation potential and a number of other actions, in particular related to the carbon markets and some commitments to really re-instill some integrity to that concept. 

It all comes down to the data — the quality, the integrity, the access — and a number of announcements around how we're going to start seeing greater access to more consistent comparable and relevant data to really inform the decision making. And then finally, a big focus on capacity building in a way that is so incredibly important at this point in time in the market, a recognition that we need to build the capacity of all actors in this space to understand the new ways of understanding risk, measuring risk, how the standards really need to be applied so that it promotes the consistency and transparency and ultimately the accountability that we're looking for in the market.

And really, the really strong commitment that we've seen from stock exchanges, as an example, really committing to helping to scale the capacity building efforts with companies who operate within their jurisdiction through the profession bodies, through the standard setters. So a real sort of all hands on deck approach to really drive capacity building with corporates, with financial institutions, even regulators and broader market actors.

Lindsey Hall: Capacity-building, that term is actually something I heard come up quite a bit at COP. And I wonder if you could help just make that a little more concrete for our listeners who might not be so familiar with the idea.

Kristen Sullivan: Sure. Well, one of them, again, kind of getting back to my particular focus in all of my time at COP was really around this market infrastructure. So you think about we now have an authoritative sustainability standards body sitting side by side with the financial accounting and reporting standards body. And there is such a need to upskill professionals in this area within corporates to really understand these standards, how to apply them so that truly we can accelerate progress to this consistent comparable timely financially relevant information.

So the ISSB, the International Sustainability Standards Board, launched their Sustainability knowledge hub committed to working with the Sustainable Stock Exchange Initiatives. In particular, around the depth of understanding, upskilling around the standards, the criteria, the purpose, the application so that we can really see the value of these standards in action.

Lindsey Hall: I asked Kristen if she would consider COP28 as success.

Kristen Sullivan: I would say as the ever optimist that I am, that the success is in the engagement and the venue that brought together perhaps the not so usual suspects. And so I think from that perspective, it's a tremendous success that we are continuing to accelerate the attention to this absolute need to scale our progress around climate action.

It's clear, right, that the private sector is moving. There is the shift, I think, from this compliance mindset and sort of anticipating and/or starting to prepare for compliance with regulation to a much clearer recognition that regulation really signals opportunity. And so with organizations really leaning into how to capture that opportunity through a strategic lens.

And so I think that momentum is happening outside of where policy and regulation land. I did have a number of conversations with the clients and others, in particular, from the financial services industry, who very clearly indicated in a way that I hadn't heard sort of a strong position of -- we need clear regulation. We need standards that will help level the playing field that will help create those incentives, economic incentives, to make some bold moves. And there's got to be a common baseline of information that is used to really drive certain decisions and meaningful allocation of capital.

Lindsey Hall: We heard Kristen just talking about the key role finance role play in finding solutions to the climate crisis. And this is an idea I heard repeated in many different forums throughout COP. We've covered this some in our recent interviews with the leaders from Global Ethical Finance Initiative, or GEFI, and the largest bank in the UAE, First Abu Dhabi Bank.

We’ll include links to those episodes in our show notes. It was notable to me just what a large presence the financial sector had at COP28, some of the world's largest banks were present and not just from the region hosting COP28. For example, I moderated panels with some of the biggest banks from the U.S. and from Asia.

I sat down after one of those discussions to talk more with Masa Takanashi, the Group Chief Sustainability Officer at Tokyo-based SMBC Group. That a company with global operations that is also one of the largest banks in Japan. I asked Masa about the role banks have to play at a climate gathering like COP28. What is SMBC Group hoping to achieve in Dubai?

Masa Takanashi: The main objective of us is to exchange information and ideas with other leaders and stakeholders and reflect that into our strategies and priorities as well. I think it's a great place to meet a lot of people in the sustainability arena. You can't do that just staying in Japan. I think it's a very good annual event for us as well. One of the other objectives is to be kind of vocal on what we are doing in terms of sustainability. Hopefully, we'll be able to get some feedback from our various stakeholders so that we can, again, reflect that into our strategy as well.

Lindsey Hall: What conversations are you still hoping to have? Can you take us a little behind the scenes? And like what you have planned for the days ahead in Dubai?

Masa Takanashi: I do want to talk a little bit more about opportunities and how business can promote this. I think if we turn this agenda into more businesses, I think that actually increases the pace of business decarbonization. So I think it's very, very important that we see opportunities, many business opportunities to kind of change the world. Just forcing or having regulations to kind of push this agenda is not enough. I think having business pushing this is very, very important.

Lindsey Hall: From your perspective, what would make this COP28 a success?

Masa Takanashi: I think, first of all, on the overall discussions, coordination between developed countries and developing countries, which was advanced earlier in a loss and damage funding, I think, again, send a good signal, putting things holistically into consideration beyond carbonization such as nature. Just transition is also, I think, is very important, health care, human rights. I think we have in discussion -- a lot of discussions in this call, but I think that's very, very important as well.

Lindsey Hall: We just heard Masa talking about the importance of the just transition. This is something that comes up several times in the global stocktake. The text underlines that just transitions can support more robust and equitable mitigation outcomes. And the text talks quite a bit about the importance of including many different stakeholders in the solutions to the climate crisis, including Indigenous Peoples, local communities and governments, women and youth and children. The global stocktake encourages parties to implement climate policy and action that is gender responsive, fully respects human rights and empowers youth and children.

And I'd like to end today's episode on that note, focusing on the youth role at COP28. Now the COP28 agenda included a flagship youth day, including the first-ever youth stocktake. As we'll hear in today's final interview, this was led by YOUNGO. That's the official children and youth constituency of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, and the youth stocktake provides a comprehensive analysis of youth inclusion, engagement, best practices and strategies for amplifying youth participation and decision-making.

This year, the UAE also created the role of the Youth Climate Champion to amplify the work of youth-led, youth-focused organizations within the COP process. And this is a flagship youth role within the COP presidency leadership team. To learn more, I sat down with a member of the young European leadership delegation, who was on the ground at COP.

Ana Voicilă: My name is Ana Voicila, on my day-to-day life, I'm working as a resource manager for Coalition Greenwich, which is one of the divisions of Crisil and S&P Company. However, today, at COP, I am a youth presentative, I am part of the Young European Leadership Delegation, and we are trying to voice some of the concerns and some of the demands coming from the European youth. It's important to youth to be part of the conversation and actually to be in negotiations and to proactively participate in the decision-making process.

At the end of the day, this is a plan that we have inherited, and it is our duty to make sure that the Planet is still going to be here and it's going to offer a good quality life for the future generations. All the youth, they are actually organized in a constituency. This constituency is called YOUNGO and is part of the UNFCCC, it's formally recognized by the UN. It includes young activists. It includes nongovernment organization representing youth voices.

It literally presents and gives youth so people with less than 35 years old, a platform to actually express their interest. It's a very flat organization, meaning that every single member of the organization actually has the opportunity to raise some concerns and to say that, look, things need to be done differently. Just because at the end of the day, youth is bringing a different voice to the conversation, a different perspective, maybe some new skills and we are here just to make sure that we are building a more sustainable future overall. 

YOUNGO has been founded in December 2005. It's a growing voice. Obviously, it's been a long journey until youth actually got a voice and a place at the table. However, what is truly different for COP28 is the fact that we have something which is called the YCC, so a Youth Climate Champion, she is part of the leadership of the presidency team.

So she is truly out there with the leaders of the world, which leaders from the business sector with the entire presidency team to actually express our voices and make sure that we have an active seat at the table and our voice is actually heard by the different parties and taken into consideration in the overall negotiations.

YOUNGO also came with something which is called GYS, Global Youth Statement. This was presented and handed over to the presidency, of course, in all the pre-COP activities. And it's truly amazing because this year's statement was actually taking into consideration, different collaborations for about -- different contributions from about 750,000 people and constituencies and NGOs around the world.

In the last year, and especially at COP28, our voices are a lot more heard. And we are making progress to actually become more and more vocal as time passes. So trying to be in this negotiation, making sure that our agendas are heard, again, representing in my case, representing the European youth, but in many other cases, representing different minorities or different segments of population, which generally speaking, they were not previously represented at COP such as minorities, people with disabilities, people from frontline communities, indigenous communities. So it's very important that all of those people are coming together, exchanging ideas and trying to make a true difference for the future.

Lindsey Hall: Esther, I wanted to end on that note because ultimately, what motivates me is trying to help find solutions that are going to make the planet a better place for my kids. You know when they ask me, why are you traveling? I want them to understand that I'm trying to create a better future for them.

Esther Whieldon: Yes, I understand that. Trying to explain to them that this goes beyond just the job that this is really important to their future.

Lindsey Hall: Yeah. And I think that's true for a lot of people, and we haven't really had a lot of youth voices on the podcast in the past. So I'm hoping we can change that going forward.

Esther Whieldon: Yeah absolutely, I would love that. And we heard a lot of themes in today's episode that will be driving sustainability discussions in the year ahead. This includes the role of data and technology and finding solutions to the climate crisis, the need for innovative financing solutions, as well as the importance of including a range of diverse voices — like we just talked about — in conversations, both about adaptation and mitigation.

Lindsey Hall: Yes. And just so much more. So we hope you'll please stay tuned as we continue tracking the big developments driving the sustainability space.

Lindsey Hall: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ESG Insider and a special thanks to our producer, Kyle Cangialosi. Please be sure to subscribe to our podcast and sign up for our weekly newsletter, ESG Insider. See you next time.

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