The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as the 29th Conference of the Parties, or COP29, is approaching, during which tens of thousands of world leaders and citizens will converge for two weeks of talks about climate change and how to slow it down.
For the past two years, these confabs have been hosted by petro-states — Egypt and Dubai. On November 11, a third will kick off in the capital of oil-rich Azerbaijan.
In late 2021, just before COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, President Isaac Herzog launched the Israeli Climate Forum. The idea was to bring together government and civil society representatives and use the president’s “soft power” to help push policy change.
Herzog appointed Dov Khenin, a former Knesset member of the left-wing, mainly Arab Hadash party and one of the most prominent environmental activists and experts, to run the forum.
Eight clusters on various subjects were set up, involving some 180 participants. The clusters focus on energy and industry; the urban space; food, agriculture, and nature; a green economy; education, culture, and spirit; reducing consumption and waste; regional cooperation and security; and health, welfare, and vulnerable populations.
Each cluster brings together experts from academia and nonprofit organizations to develop initiatives that can be packaged for politicians to submit as private members’ bills. Some 70 such initiatives have been completed so far.
COP conferences have earned a bad name because they usually end with what are widely perceived as weak decisions: The confabs must reach a consensus on climate-related issues between more than 190 countries with wildly different interests — from oil producers to islands facing submersion because of rising sea levels.
Furthermore, in the last two years, swaths of fossil fuel lobbyists have been allowed into the innermost halls of the event, while civic protests have been limited to peripheral areas.
In the run-up to COP29 in Baku, The Times of Israel spoke to Dov Khenin about the forum and COP29.
The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
The Times of Israel: So much has changed in three years. What does the Israeli Climate Forum look like today?
Dov Khenin: The clusters are still working. We continue holding quarterly conferences. During the first year, they produced around 70 initiatives, which we converted into legislation packs for Knesset members that included ready-made private members’ bills for submission. We tried to build political support for each proposal.
We had successes, for example, in education and higher education, and here I have good words for the former education minister Yifat Shasha-Biton and her director general, Dalit Stauber. They worked with us and incorporated climate into the school curriculum from first to 12th grade. This was very important, even though implementation is complex, requiring training of principals and teachers and textbook changes.
In the forum’s early days, the president invited the university presidents. We wanted to see higher education taking the lead on research and its impact on climate. Today, they all have climate centers. Successes such as these are the result of work by lots of partners. For example, the National Security Council decided that climate would be an important subject for academia. Calls for research funding have since gone out. In recent months, we’ve created an Israeli Climate Forum Council, which includes cluster leaders and ministry officials from the professional level who can help move things forward.
How responsive is the current government to your work?
The country’s deep political crisis started in 2023. [The right-wing coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was finalized on December 29, 2022, and embarked on a planned overhaul of the judiciary, which sparked widespread opposition.] That affected our ability to advance our initiatives in the Knesset and the government.
Because of that crisis, we’re now investing in local government, which has shown during the coronavirus epidemic and the war that it can respond to residents’ problems when the government disappears or is silent. [On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, kidnapped over 251 to the Gaza Strip, and sparked an ongoing war.] Elsewhere worldwide, local government leads on climate-related subjects even when the central government is less involved or obstructive. During Donald Trump’s presidency in the US, the states still advanced important initiatives.
How has the forum progressed with local government?
In Israel, the local government’s authority is weak compared with the central government. Also, 2023 was a local election year. Mayors tend not to take ambitious steps that might cost them votes. For example, they might not advance public transportation out of fear that private car drivers will be angry with them. We could only begin real work with the local authorities after these elections.
We are creating a group of mayors representing the full spectrum of Israeli society who are ambitious about climate and will act under the president. We hope they will be positive role models for others and show that we can make changes that contribute to quality of life and generate support.
How has the war impacted your work?
In November 2023, we issued a document stating that the war has made the issues we are dealing with even more relevant.
Take energy. Gas supplies 70 percent of the fuel for the electricity system. However, the wells and production platforms are in the sea and are very vulnerable. It’s not by chance that the Tamar gas platform [in southern Israel] was shut down for over a month [because of fighting in Gaza] and that the Leviathan platform [in northern Israel] temporarily stopped functioning when things escalated [with the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah] in Lebanon. We know these are major targets in war.
Our coal comes from countries such as Colombia. Colombia recently declared it was stopping exports to Israel. Israel can import from other countries, such as China, but in the current reality, this isn’t reliable either. Additionally, coal comes in tankers by sea, which are at risk during war. [Iran-backed Houthi rebels repeatedly attack tankers passing Yemen.] We have two coal ports that are also exposed — Ashkelon and Hadera. The Ashkelon terminal was damaged during a storm last year and is still supplied with truckloads of coal from Hadera.
The third source of our power is diesel. Oil from Azerjaiban flows through a pipe that crosses Turkey. Turkey still allows this, but we can’t be sure this will continue.
Our gas, coal, and diesel-driven power stations, and our centralized electricity grid, are all big and vulnerable too. If a high-voltage pylon falls, much of Israel will be without power. We must move quickly to a decentralized system of solar panels on hundreds of thousands of roofs backed up by storage, which can connect to the grid but also operate independently if the grid falls.
The same applies to food security. Our food infrastructure relies too heavily on imports. We can go through all the issues and show how the things we suggested before the war have become more urgent.
Where is the forum focusing?
We are concentrating on resilience in energy, food security, community, and transportation. Israel is one big traffic jam. We must break our dependence on private cars.
How is the government doing on environmental and climate issues?
Israel is lagging. The state comptroller, who issued two highly critical reports, says we have the lowest targets for cutting emissions in the developed world — which we won’t even meet. This governing coalition pledged to pass a climate law within six months to cut emissions by 50% by 2030. Instead, it has presented a weak bill to the Knesset that reflects the gap between words and action.
What are your expectations of COP29, and how important are COPs?
This COP takes place a week after the US elections. The results will significantly impact world climate policy. Donald Trump is very connected to the interests of the oil, coal, and gas industries, and if he’s elected, things will be more complicated.
I’d like to see a stronger international system. We have a weak one, but that’s what there is, and we can’t do without it. If COP meetings weren’t important, the fossil fuel companies wouldn’t send so many lobbyists and invest so much money to influence the decisions taken.
