The international climate crystal ball for 2024 calls for increased action and leadership

The year 2024 contains four crucial actions that must be taken to maintain the hope of creating a climate-proof future for all.

Four initiatives that should be at the top of every government's to-do list, regardless of political affiliation and geopolitical orientation. And that we should all hold our national political leadership to account, but also expect leadership from business, investors, philanthropy, local government and civil society. All actors have critically important roles to play in 2024 if we are to succeed in the level shift in action that remains after COP28 in Dubai.

The four key things that need to happen in 2024 are to:

1. Keep the 1.5 degree target alive in the development of new ambitious national climate plans
2. Creating local visions of the better future that awaits us all with ambitious climate action
3. Ensure full integration of climate and the global sustainable development agenda
4. Catalyze an effective multiplication of global investments for a climate-resilient future

The four initiatives are fundamental prerequisites for timely fulfillment of the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and each is a pillar in the foundation on which future hope must, should and can rest. COP28 sharpened an operational focus on an integrated agenda, and with the opportunities and needs that are now emerging, the year 2024 is the most important climate year since the adoption of both the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. It requires significantly increased action and leadership.

New round of ambitious climate plans to be drawn up 

Thirteen months. This is the time the countries of the world have to develop and submit new updated national climate plans to the UNFCCC. The climate plans must ensure that, in the period from 2025, we strengthen our climate efforts sufficiently to achieve the Paris Agreement's temperature targets and thus ensure a climate-resilient and global net zero by 2050 at the latest.  This is no small task.

This will require a 28% reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to reach the 2 degree target, and 42% to reach the 1.5 degree target. This is based on an increase in global greenhouse gas emissions of 1.2% from 2021 to 2022. The requirement for the new climate plans to be developed in 2024 is that they must enable an immediate global peak and an annual reduction of approx. 5.3% by 2030 to keep the 2 degree target alive, and as much as 8.7% annually to keep the 1.5 degree target alive. In comparison, global emissions fell 4.7% in the COVID year 2020. 

In particular, the efforts of the G20 countries (including the EU) will be crucial here, as they account for about 76% of global emissions and it is among these countries that the most ambitious plans must emerge. Currently, the EU's target is a 55% reduction by 2030 and net zero by 2050. The EU's Climate Council has proposed a new climate target of 90-95% reduction by 2040, and this has already been backed by Danish Minister for Climate Lars Aagaard. However, in line with this, Denmark should also work towards a supporting 65% reduction target in 2035. In addition, in light of the COP28 outcome, Denmark should revisit its own climate targets and, for example, aim for a stricter net-zero target covering our global consumption emissions and value chains, an accelerated phase-out of fossil fuels and oil/gas extraction in the North Sea, and significantly accelerate the agricultural transition as the primary means of tightening targets in light of the broader societal benefits involved.

Creating local visions for the benefits of a climate-resilient future

The burning platform of the climate crisis, along with other planetary and development crises, is a unique agenda of opportunity to ground a new global vision balanced between people, climate, and nature. As has been said in the context of our own Nordic Stocktake and Visions project, "If you can't see the goal, why run"? all countries and societies need to establish narratives and visions of the better world that awaits us in a green, sustainable, and resilient world. It is through this that citizens can be made the spearheads of the transition and not someone that politicians fear having to 'burden' or 'bother' in the green transition. When action is demanded by citizens, it will help reduce the political risks and financial costs of the transition. This realization is missing.

Politicians - regardless of country and level - also win elections on agendas closely linked to the basic needs of citizens. Therefore, climate plans do not win elections on their own, but only in interaction with the benefits that can be linked to the successful transition. This is especially true for the Global South, where benefits must be measured in terms of sustainable development, growth, and poverty reduction. Thus, there is a need for a 'localization' of the global visions reflected in the Paris Agreement and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Visions that are present for politicians and citizens in the context they find themselves in, and they must be able to be translated into credible and relevant objectives, plans, funding, and regulation that people can see the benefits of in their daily lives. This 'localized benefits approach' is crystal clear in the text from COP28 in the section on the preparation of new national climate plans by February 2025, and reflected in the stream of new initiatives launched in the margins of COP28, as well as in the significant role that cities came to fill at COP28.

There is a huge task ahead for our politicians to involve local populations in identifying and pursuing the benefits that the transition can bring. They have a primary responsibility to ensure that a socially supported vision and contract is linked to an accelerated climate agenda, and this effort is still pending in most countries - also in Denmark, where we still lack sufficient behavior-oriented initiatives, government support for municipalities' efforts as evidenced by the DK2020 initiative, and the creation of a green social contract with citizens.  

Climate-smart and sustainable development efforts must be integrated at all levels.

Neither our current climate efforts nor our development aid efforts are currently 'fit for purpose' when measured against the scale, speed, and approach that the transition towards a sustainable future for all requires. The challenge is that climate and development efforts today are typically pursued as parallel efforts due to sharp divisions of responsibility in ministries in both donor and partner countries, and a multilateral system reflecting this. As a result, efforts in both areas in many places today appear fragmented and insufficiently coordinated at all levels.

There has been a strong emerging recognition of this in recent years, culminating at COP 28 with, for example, the recommendations from the High-level Expert Group on Climate Finance for an integrated financing approach, and from Brazil, which launched a proposal for the world to come together in a community of destiny in pursuit of the 1.5 degree target by COP30 in 2025 through a strengthened integrated approach to fulfilling the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

At COP 28, we saw climate and development efforts merge into an integrated agenda: The greening of energy systems linked to urban transformation, health interventions and energy access, the demand for a just transition linked to poverty reduction, the linkage of climate adaptation to water and food security, migration prevention, loss and damage management, and the overall linkage to forest interventions and nature conservation on land and at sea, were recognized to an unprecedented degree as crucial stepping stones and guideposts for integrated climate and development action in the coming years to ensure a just green transition, sustainable development and poverty reduction everywhere. And the logic is clear: inadequate climate action will make sustainable development goals impossible forever, and inadequate development action will make realizing a climate-safe and nature-rich future impossible forever.

Denmark itself is well underway with a coupled climate and development portfolio under Dan Jørgensen, a service review of our national foreign and development policy strategies, through the capitalization and transformation of IFU - the Investment Fund for Developing Countries, and a growing cooperation portfolio with governments in the Global South, all of which increasingly reflect integrated approaches. But also in Denmark, there is a need for a strengthened transition of our global consumption footprint and value chains, greater scale in our global climate, nature, and development aid efforts, and in securing access to far more venture capital and climate support for the integrated climate and development initiatives of the Global South.

Catalyzing an effective multiplication of global investments in a climate-resilient future

In the run-up to COP29, the issue of scaling up investments in the Global South will be a major issue and crucial to ensure the momentum needed to realize both climate and development goals in time. The scale of the support provided, whether it is called development aid, climate aid, loss and damage financing, or private sector investment, needs to be scaled up dramatically. New innovative sources of funding must be identified, including from, for example, a tax on international shipping. Fossil fuel subsidies must be redirected to support a green development path, debt forgiveness must be increased, and countries in the Global South must strengthen their own national resource mobilization.

The investment needs in the Global South - minus China - are around $2.4 trillion annually from 2030 if the global transition is to be achieved in accordance with the Paris Agreement. The transformation of the energy system alone will require $1.5 trillion annually from 2030. Of this, countries are expected to finance around 2/3 through national resource mobilization, while the remaining 1/3 - i.e. around $800 billion - will need to be financed from international private sources, i.e. primarily private investors. Public funds will be used to catalyze and partially hedge such private investments to ensure sufficient scale and speed of investment programs.

COP29 will of course set a new global target for climate finance under the UNFCCC, which is expected to be raised from the current level of $100 billion by 2020, to perhaps a few hundred billion from both public and private sources, but the new collective commitment will fall far short of the real investment needs. A systemic change in international investment flows is required to meet the necessary investment needs. And this discussion was very much a part of COP28, both inside and outside the negotiation rooms. Many new investment initiatives were launched and major contributions to the global climate funds were announced, and the whole debate on reforming the international financial system to better meet the needs of the global south took off, with a focus on reforming the development banks, taxing international maritime and air transport, debt forgiveness and the possibility of increasing the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in providing capital. Everything is on the table but has not yet resulted in concrete decisions.

The main task for the EU and Danish efforts in 2024 is therefore to push the momentum that has been created on these issues. Denmark has launched several new risk-hedging investment and guarantee instruments at COP28 and initiated a reform process in IFU, but efforts and scale must be significantly increased to reflect needs, responsibility, and self-interest. And here, the Danish pension sector must know its visiting hours in light of the fivefold increase in private investments in the global south that is needed to ensure sufficient capital. Today, the total Danish climate and development aid amounts to just 0.7% of GNI and is far from the level we have previously been at, namely between 1 and 1.5% of GNI in development aid and environmental aid.

There is room for higher ambitions and stakes this year in the middle of a crucial decade.