At COP28, Penn Delegation Shares Wide-Ranging Knowledge and Builds Connections

Descending on Dubai for the world’s largest climate change conference, more than two dozen delegates from Penn shared their expertise on topics ranging from the energy transition to urban climate finance to health—and returned to Philadelphia with new knowledge and connections.

Dubai was the host city for COP28, the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference, held Nov. 30 to Dec. 12 with more than 70,000 attendees. COP, or Conference of Parties, refers to the 198 states that have signed onto the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since the treaty’s negotiation in 1992.

“For the first time, all countries have agreed to transition away from fossil fuels,” notes Perry World House (PWH) interim director Michael Weisberg, one of two people from Penn involved in negotiations, in addition to the 24 who traveled on a Penn badge with observer status. “This decision was joined by statements from all geopolitical actors calling for a new course to the future that does not include fossil fuels in energy, with most also expressing their solidarity with small island states and all vulnerable people.”

It was a contentious issue at the conference, held at the tail end of the hottest year in recorded history. Cory Colijn, executive director of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, noted that prior to COP28, small island nations had been calling for an end to all fossil fuel production, whereas groups in the European Union had been taking a more incremental approach, different from the Saudi push for reducing greenhouse gases instead of phasing out fossil fuels.

The commitment to transition away from fossil fuels was included in the final draft of the first-ever “global stocktake,” a process for UNFCCC signatories to assess their progress toward the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5° Celsius. The bottom line is countries are not on track, which Colijn called “a reality check for the globe about the real harm of taking small steps on climate change.”

The Kleinman Center and PWH led the Penn delegation, which also included attendees from the Penn Institute for Urban Research (Penn IUR), Stuart Weitzman School of Design, Penn Global, Penn Carey Law, Penn Medicine, the College of Liberal and Professional Studies, and the School of Arts & Sciences. Penn Dental Medicine remotely joined COP28 conversations through a panel discussion on oral health and climate action.

“Because the Kleinman Center focuses on policy, COP is the perfect venue for sharing our research with international policymakers, practitioners, and other scholars,” says Sanya Carley, co-director of the Kleinman Center. “It’s also a place where we listen and learn, continually improve our understanding of the complex challenges of climate governance, and expand our networks.”

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Bringing cities into the fold

Genie Birch, co-director of Penn IUR and Nussdorf Professor of Urban Research at Weitzman, was excited to see a larger presence for cities at COP this year. Bloomberg Philanthropies and the COP Presidency hosted the first-ever Local Climate Action Summit, attended by 200 mayors and governors from six continents. “So much of the work has to be done at the city level, particularly when you talk about 70% of the greenhouse gases being created by cities,” Birch says.

Penn IUR is the Secretariat for the new SDSN Global Commission for Urban SDG Finance, which is the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s group tasked with developing ideas to increase finance for cities to meet the Sustainable Development Goals member states adopted in 2015. Birch co-directs the Secretariat with Penn Carey Law professor Bill Burke-White and Mauricio Rodas, a visiting scholar at Penn IUR, the Kleinman Center, and PWH. Rodas—former mayor of Quito, Ecuador—and Burke-White also attended COP28.

Rodas says the commission is pleased the Loss and Damage Fund has been operationalized “with the mandate of providing subnational governments with direct access to resources from the Fund. This is an important milestone. Now we need to make sure cities participate in the negotiation of the Loss and Damage Fund Operational Guidelines to ensure urban needs are duly considered.”

Birch, Rodas, and Burke-White noted in a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed that according to the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance, cities will need $5.4 trillion annually through 2030 to adapt to climate change but are now only receiving 1% of that. Birch says three of the commission’s six task forces are focused on three potential finance mechanisms: multilateral development banks, existing or new funds, and the private sector. 

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Listening to Indigenous voices

Catherine Seavitt, Meyerson Professor of Urbanism and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture in the Weitzman School of Design, came to COP28 with a focus on equitable adaptation of cities with nature-based solutions. She has been interested in traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), meaning Indigenous and intergenerational knowledge of nature and land management practices, and the role this can play in decarbonization. 

She attended several sessions from the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform, hearing testimony on the interconnectedness of water, energy, and the conservation of indigenous food systems, and listened to people indigenous to the Amazon basin, a recent focus of her writing and research on Brazil. 

Seavitt says she left COP28 feeling inspired by seeing so many knowledge holders from the Arctic and Amazon, and by young people, both the Indigenous activists and female climate activists on Gender Equality Day. “We need to embrace shared biomes, watersheds, and atmospheres, as well as recognize the interconnectedness of the equator and the poles,” she says. “Melting ice has a lot do with burning rainforests.”

Read the full story at Penn Today.