Highlights and images for 2 December 2023

Over 120 countries signed onto the UAE Climate and Health Declaration. The Declaration urges governments to act to protect communities and prepare health systems for climate impacts, such as extreme heat stress and increased spread of infectious diseases. As Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization, stressed: “The climate crisis is a health crisis.”

The last day of the World Climate Action Summit included a myriad of events. Heads of State and Government from the Group of 77 and China (G-77/China) formally met for the first time at a climate COP. Several stressed the importance of collaboration among G-77/China members.

Want to dig deeper into today's talks? Read the full Earth Negotiations Bulletin daily report.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres used the opportunity to announce a new Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals. The Panel will aim to support developing countries that are home to much of the minerals needed for the energy transition.

The political phase of the Global Stocktake (GST) concluded the high-level engagement with leaders discussing mitigation and support to developing countries. A roundtable on mountains rallied calls for greater consideration of the climate vulnerability of mountain ecosystems in the climate negotiations. This sentiment was echoed by the leaders discussing landlocked developing countries’ challenges.

The Global Climate Action high-level event opened, bringing together world leaders and non-state actors with a range of perspectives. In a fireside chat and opening speeches, delegates spoke of scalable solutions for enhancing resilience, addressing the adaptation gap, mobilizing finance, and keeping 1.5°C in reach.

Much of the negotiations focused on adaptation. It was the main issue for the GST, with countries offering differing views on a wide range of adaptation issues, from whether to include maladaptation, to how to track a future doubling of adaptation finance. Several delegates called for speeding up the negotiations, but the talks on the Global Goal on Adaptation yielded little agreement on whether to start drafting a decision text.

Other discussions on carbon markets showed more progress: delegates are already considering decision text in the consultations on the Paris Agreement Article 6.2 on cooperative approaches and some convergence seems to be in sight for the Article 6.4 mechanism. Some characterized the finance discussions on the Standing Committee on Finance as “constructive.” Given the full slate of issues tasked to these finance talks, it could signal a positive step forward.