UN climate meets are not just all talk – they can affect policies, industries and jobs

It is easy to dismiss the annual UN climate conferences – the next one being COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, from Nov 11 to 22 – as talk shops, where many gather, much is discussed and little implemented, despite the announcements of headline targets.

- Audrey Tan

But the multilateral negotiations at these events, though mired in jargon and sometimes glacial in progress, have real-world implications for many people.

Recent outcomes from the climate COPs have influenced national policies, changed industries and affected jobs worldwide, including in Singapore.

One of the clearest examples of this emerged after COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, when negotiations there yielded a framework that would enable nations to bank on international carbon markets to meet their climate change targets under the Paris Agreement.

This means that nations do not just have to rely on domestic mitigation strategies to decarbonise. They can also cooperate – such as when one country buys carbon credits from another – to achieve this.

According to the International Emissions Trading Association, a non-profit business group, international carbon market transactions under the Paris Agreement may surpass a value of US$100 billion (S$132 billion) per year by 2030.

Following that COP, Singapore went full steam ahead on its carbon credits sourcing journey, and has announced collaborations with more than 20 countries.

This has cascading impacts on the economy as well, with the green economy, carbon services and trading sector identified as new "sustainable" engines for jobs and growth.

In April, the Sustainable Finance Jobs Transformation Map was launched by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. It laid out the impact of sustainability trends on jobs in Singapore's financial sector and the emerging skills that the workforce will require to serve sustainable financing demand in the region.

The Jobs Transformation Map noted that the sustainable finance market in Asean is expected to total $4 trillion to $5 trillion in the next decade, with financial institutions playing a key role in the green transformation.