COP 28 in Dubai was the largest COP ever. With about 100,000 registered participants it was more than twice as large as last year's COP in Sharm-el-Sheikh, which was the largest by then. According to EfD Director Gunnar Köhlin, "it was the most amazing arena for networking since 'everyone' was there".
EfD was featured in two events. At a side event "Towards the establishment of a standardized carbon credit market for ECOWAS" a new IDRC-funded EfD project "Exploring the Potential and Challenges of Voluntary Carbon Markets in the Global South" was launched. This project will carry out actor, institutional, and potential impact analyses of voluntary carbon market offsets in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, and for the ECOWAS region.
The main event for EfD was a joint side-event with MCC that launched the Carbon Pricing Incidence Calculator.
"Participating in COP28 was an exhilarating experience. Never before have I met so many people relevant for EfD's work in such a short time," says Gunnar Köhlin.
"It was very productive and led to a series of deepened collaborations. The most exciting of these was the deepened dialogue with the African Development Bank on the opportunity to now push for increased valuation of natural capital in Africa that could lead to a 'green' adjustment of the GDP of African States."