The Climate and Energy Transition Nest was pleased to organise a discussion titled: “COP30 in Brazil – a Critical Milestone for Climate Diplomacy”, with Professor James HENDERSON, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
As COP30 takes place in Brazil, a number of vital questions needed to be answered at the end of the negotiations:
- Will countries commit to new NDCs which allow the world to remain on track to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5o above pre-industrial levels?
- Will sufficient funds be promised by developed countries to allow the developing world to invest in energy transition?
- How much focus will there be on adaptation and payment for loss and damage that has already occurred?
- Will there be a commitment to save the world’s rain forests, which is one of the Brazil presidency’s major objectives?
- Will there be a renewed commitment to phasing out fossil fuels, or will hydrocarbon lobby groups once again prevent a unanimous vote on the issue? And perhaps most critically, how will geopolitics affect the negotiations?
- With the US government absent (although some US politicians have turned up), will China take up the mantle of climate leadership?
- And how will the EU and its member states be regarded at the COP, as the proposal for a CBAM has created huge controversy in the developing world and some member states are seen as backtracking from the net zero objective?
Together with Dr HENDERSON, students discussed these questions, debated the overall value of the COP process and tried to predict whether it will survive much longer as the main vehicle for climate diplomacy.
About the speaker:
Dr James HENDERSON is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES) and an Honorary Professor at Warwick University. He is also a Visiting Professor at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic and at the College of Europe in Natolin and has lectured on energy economics and security of supply at a number of universities in Europe and the US.
He has worked in the oil and gas sector for US company Amerada Hess, as well as spending time as a consultant and investment banker. He obtained a PhD in Social Sciences from London University in 2010. His current areas of research include the Russian energy economy and politics, the geopolitics of energy, global environmental diplomacy and the COP process, the role of hydrocarbon producing countries and companies in the energy transition, the future of nuclear energy as a source of decarbonisation and the geopolitics of the energy transition.
Photo credit of the background photo: COP30 Brasil Amazônia - English