This thematic day at COP28 will focus on three key aspects: scaling up efforts, improving access, and enhancing affordability. This will involve reforms to the international financial system, the delivery of enhanced concessional support, the development of sustainable finance markets, and strengthening voluntary carbon markets. Additionally, COP28 will introduce trade as a means for climate-smart, equitable growth, including supply chain decarbonization, transition, and resilience.

We must also address the challenges that hinder financial support for women, girls, and marginalized groups. This includes ensuring a fair transition and finding solutions to broaden access to finance. The program will also examine accountability mechanisms to turn promises and ambition into tangible results.

The main objectives for this day are:

1. Showcase a coherent and ambitious action agenda on finance with a range of public, private, and blended finance solutions to accelerate action and close the climate finance gap. These solutions will involve actions in financial and carbon markets by UAE institutions and international partners, IFIs, and Philanthropies, building on efforts taking place both inside and outside the UNFCCC process, and generate new financing resources for climate transition, and specifically for developing economies. The initiatives are designed to highlight how climate finance must be structured moving forward to achieve real transformation.

 

2. Promote a gender-just transition by advocating for equal opportunities for decent work in impacted and emerging green sectors, supported by gender-disaggregated data and gender-responsive finance.

 

3. Establish accountability by reinforcing accountability measures at COPs. This includes defining common standards and creating a foundation for greater accountability, especially for the private sector, including a high-integrity net-zero accountability and recognition system.

 

4. Elevate the potential of international trade as a lever in climate action bysetting the stage for the international trade community to step up their role in the design and delivery of solutions around climate action, especially around supporting a just transition and enabling market access policies for MSMEs to engage meaningfully with global supply chains and governments.

Key topics in the energy and industry track will include massive deployment of renewable energy, greater energy efficiency, innovation and action for heavy-emitting sectors (including steel, cement, and aluminum), unlocking the potential of hydrogen, and decarbonization of oil and gas supplies, including through methane abatement and carbon management technologies.
The day will also address universal energy access and the needs of workers across the energy sector transition and will have an additional special focus on cooling as a critical mitigation and adaptation factor.

Indigenous Peoples Day will recognize the importance of Indigenous Peoples’ intergenerational knowledge, practices, and leadership in climate action and in stewarding planetary health, as well as mechanisms to improve their direct access to finance. The day will notably strengthen the role of Indigenous Peoples - and reinforce the urgency of a fully inclusive, all-of-society approach - in the just transition.

Specific food and agriculture focuses include innovation investment, regenerative agriculture, and national transformation pathways, underpinned by financing mechanisms and project preparation. Water programming will also look at freshwater restoration and conservation, infrastructure for urban water resilience, and integrated governance and management of water-food systems.