The world’s governments will arrive in Addis Ababa in late 2027 for COP32, the first African-hosted climate summit in five years. Ethiopia’s presidency is on behalf of the African Union, the continental body. Addis Ababa has the chance to show what a Conference of Parties (COP) can deliver. But for that to happen the work needs to begin now.
At the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, we work with governments, multilateral institutions and coalitions of financiers on the planning, investment, policy and financial architecture that climate and development goals require. What we’ve learnt from this collaborative effort provides insights into what’s required to organise a successful COP32.
The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the annual meeting of the 198 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted in 1992. The conventional approach to these conferences is for the member states to prepare negotiating texts, review commitments, make pledges and agree to new decisions. There is near universal commitment to address climate change. Nevertheless, three decades of COPs have not achieved global action at the scale or speed required.
The reason is that the Convention and the COPs have structural limits. These explain the persistent gap between what the science demands, what is achievable, and what has been delivered.
Understanding these limits is a precondition to hosting an effective COP. It puts Africa in a position to host a conference that has impact. It can do so by redefining what a host COP is for. A presentation of solutions Africa has built, with willing partners, that the world is invited to endorse and scale.
The solutions should include how to:
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build and finance integrated regional energy systems
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reform risk assessment and lower the cost of capital
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finance resilient food systems
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restore nature at nature at scale.
Each can be advanced by coalitions of institutions with the mandates, capabilities and instruments to deliver.
If Africa can get this work done before leaders gather in Addis Ababa, COP32 will be the moment that work is recognised, financed and scaled.
Why the COP matters
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its annual COP remain essential because the COP meetings:
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bring every country to the same table on climate
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anchor the international response in the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities
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give vulnerable nations a recognised voice in international policymaking.
Through the climate convention and its COPs, the international community has secured genuine achievements. The Paris Agreement is the first universal, legally binding treaty on climate change. It commits nearly every country to limit global warming. The Loss and Damage Fund is the first dedicated multilateral mechanism to compensate vulnerable countries for climate harms they did not cause. The Global Stocktake is the only forum in which the world takes collective stock of progress toward the Paris goals.
For Africa, the COP is particularly valuable. It is also the only space in which Africa’s priorities on adaptation, loss and damage, and finance carry the same weight as the emissions and market priorities of major economies.
Nevertheless, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change mandates remain unmet. The convention’s architecture has produced participation, treaties and the creation of funds. It has not produced the response the planetary and human crises demand. Emissions continue to rise despite universal pledges to reduce them. Warming is on track to breach 1.5°C despite universal agreement that it must not. Adaptation finance remains a small fraction of assessed needs. This despite decades of commitment to help vulnerable countries adapt.
Three structural limits account for this.
The limitations
The first is that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change treats a global challenge as the sum of national commitments. Nationally determined contributions, each country’s commitments to reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts, fragment the response into national pledges. This is on the premise that if each country pledges enough, the total will deliver what is needed. Carbon markets go further, treating emissions as fungible: a reduction claimed in one country purports to cancel an emission in another.
But the sum of national pledges has never matched what the science demands. And carbon markets credit reductions across jurisdictions while the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases continues to rise. Emissions in one country are not cancelled by reductions in another. Every ton emitted adds to the total, and every sector and economy, everywhere, has to decarbonise.
Decarbonising global systems and reducing the total concentration of greenhouse gasses both emitted and trapped in the atmosphere requires coordinated global, regional and sectoral planning, not planning within entities or national boundaries. The UNFCCC’s architecture is not oriented around globally coordinated solutions to a global challenge.
The second limitation is that negotiated decisions reflect what the most reluctant major parties will accept. On the questions of greatest consequence, they have consistently fallen short of what the science and assessed needs require.
Every landmark decision of the past decade bears the marks of this compromise:
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fossil fuel commitments watered down at the insistence of major producers
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adaptation finance targets weakened or reversed
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mitigation programmes stalled by disagreement over scope
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loss and damage funding pledged at a fraction of assessed needs.
The third limitation is that many of the institutions that determine whether plans can be implemented sit outside the convention and the COP processes. The cost of capital is set by credit rating agencies, multilateral development banks and private financiers. Sovereign debt is treated by the International Monetary Fund, the Paris Club and private creditors. Industrial and trade systems are shaped by the World Trade Organization and sectoral bodies. Decarbonised energy systems require planning by regional power pools, informed by analysis from the International Renewable Energy Agency and the International Energy Agency.
These institutions hold the expertise, technical depth, mandates and instruments to both design and implement effective approaches. Negotiators at the COP do not. Reform therefore requires the direct engagement with each of these institutions, in both the design and implementation of solutions.
A helpful approach
Article 4.19 of the Paris Agreement encourages states to formulate long-term low-emission development strategies. This makes more sense than nationally determined contributions. It orients action towards outcomes that are truly decarbonised and consistent with national development objectives.
But doing this properly requires technical scenario modelling. Even nationally optimised energy system planning most often requires regional planning and coordination. These long-term regional scenarios provide the analytical foundation for informed planning and decision-making, both regionally and nationally. These scenarios can specify the least-cost decarbonisation pathway, including the energy generation mix, transmission corridors, and policies for energy demand management, on the basis of specific assumptions, for instance about technology and fuel costs.
These scenarios show what investments are possible, what they will cost and what difference they could make. They show how increased energy demand, for instance as a result of transport electrification, data centres, or industrialisation, can shape and are shaped by energy system planning. They specify which investments are most decisive, in what sequence they should be built and with what technical specifications. They support analysis of investment costs, to governments, investors and citizens, and how those are shaped by financing and regulatory considerations.
The same rigorous process, understanding what is needed, planning for it, and addressing the barriers that prevent it, applies across adaptation, industrial transformation, critical minerals, just transition and nature. None of it succeeds without informed planning and collaboration among the entities that shape those outcomes.
Concrete reforms can move now. Regional institutions can advance integrated energy planning across borders. Regional adaptation facilities can identify priority areas for intervention. Continental coordination on minerals value chains can accelerate regional manufacturing capabilities.
Multilateral development banks, credit rating institutions and the reformed international financial institutional architecture can advance technical work to lower the cost of capital. This includes reforming rating methodologies and debt sustainability frameworks and scaling the use of guarantees.
The UN Industrial Development Organisation can advance industrial decarbonisation pathways for steel, cement and chemicals. It can integrate its work with regional energy system planning, innovative financing mechanisms that allocate risks across the parties best able to bear them, demand-side commitments and the policy frameworks each requires.
None of this requires the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change consensus. It requires technically informed solutions and coordination among pragmatic institutions.
Addis Ababa as a moment of African leadership
As the continent that contributes least to global emissions and bears the greatest costs, Africa needs a framework that translates a global problem into a commensurate global response. The solutions are well within reach; the barrier is neither the capital nor the technology, but the architecture for implementation.
Ahead of COP32, African countries should focus on building demonstrable and replicable solutions across these areas and others where conventional approaches have stalled. Ethiopia’s presidency, on behalf of the continent, has the chance to convene that work, organise it, and present it to the world.
If Africa arrives at Addis Ababa with the plans in place, the coalitions formed, and the specific reforms already advancing, COP32 becomes the moment of recognition, financing and scale. The work starts now.
