Wednesday, May 8th, 2024 4.15—5.45 pm
Seminar room SG2, Sensengasse 3, 1090 Vienna
Chair: Fabian Pfeiffer (University of Vienna)
The Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement in Dubai hosted the first global stocktake, which officially evaluated progress on the 2015 Paris Agreement. In the light of a massive “emissions gap”, new action in the field of renewable energy and energy efficiency was agreed upon as well as a “transitioning away” from fossil fuels.
This ie.talk focuses on financing for Loss & Damage, the second big agenda item at COP28 in Dubai. The ie.talk is based on a joint research paper with Marie Fischer and Rasmus Noeske which asks: How can we make sense of the speedy establishment and operationalization of the Loss & Damage (L&D) fund and funding arrangements from a discourse analytical perspective? It traces which understandings of climate justice were re-iterated or lost in the negotiations on financing for L&D.
The preliminary findings suggest the dominance of two opposing climate justice discourses: polluter-pays versus capacity-based. It is argued that the final decision text on the L&D fund and funding arrangements is a setback for climate justice understood as historic responsibility (polluterpays). The fact that contributions to the L&D Fund are voluntary reduces L&D payments to charity. It is the prevalence of the capacity-based understanding of climate justice that made the speedy establishment and operationalization of the L&D fund and funding arrangements possible.