Andrii Kitura on Ukraine's Climate Governance Challenges at COP30
On November 12, at the Ukraine Pavilion at COP30 in Belém, Andrii Kitura, Director of Development at DiXi Group and Head of the Green Transition Office under the Ministry of Economy, Environment and Agriculture of Ukraine, spoke at a panel discussion on "Building Effective Climate Governance to Mainstream Climate in Post-War Recovery." The speaker focused on institutional challenges and pathways to overcome them in climate policy implementation.
Ukraine has already adopted a framework climate law and set a climate neutrality target for 2050. The country has developed its second NDC and National Energy and Climate Plan, which includes over 140 specific policies and measures. The next step is building the institutional capacity to deliver on these ambitions.
Andrii Kitura candidly acknowledged the complexity of simultaneously reindustrializing and decarbonizing the economy. Historically, Ukraine's greenhouse gas emissions have declined primarily due to structural shocks, economic crises, and, unfortunately, Russian military aggression. Ukraine is working to develop a clear vision of how to combine economic growth with emissions reduction – a challenge relevant to many other countries worldwide.
The Green Transition Office team is developing a systematic approach to addressing these challenges. In particular, a draft Cabinet of Ministers resolution on climate policy monitoring is being prepared. The monitoring system will be built on a broader framework for tracking NECP implementation. This will ensure transparent reporting at multiple levels: annual reports to the Government on NECP and climate policy progress, biennial reporting to EU partners and UNFCCC, and annual policy effectiveness assessments from the Scientific Expert Council.
Responding to questions about international support priorities, the expert emphasized: "I believe the greatest support is needed for implementing specific policies. Yet another coordination system won't add value. We need to establish an emissions trading system, implement RED III, meet the conditions for market coupling in energy, and many other complex regulations. All of this means developing legislation, secondary acts, technical regulations, training civil servants and communities, preparing infrastructure – auditors, verifiers. What's needed is systematic, long-term work between government and partners."
Among the key barriers to climate governance development, the speaker identified two main challenges. First, the practice of having such independent advisory bodies is relatively new and somewhat unfamiliar for Ukraine. Second, Ukraine faces a critical shortage of qualified climate experts at all levels – in government, business, and civil society – particularly after 2022, when a significant number of specialists moved abroad.
Andrii Kitura shared an ambitious idea of engaging top-tier international experts to support Ukraine in tackling the unprecedented challenge of simultaneous reconstruction, reindustrialization, and achieving climate goals. From a professional standpoint, he noted, this is the greatest challenge any climate expert in the world could face – there simply is no more complex case. The Government of Ukraine is open to collaboration with experts at the level of Nobel laureates and top policymakers who have already achieved everything in their careers and are seeking new challenges.
The Green Transition Office is an independent advisory body under the Ministry of Economy, Environment and Agriculture of Ukraine that helps to implement reforms in the field of green transition, energy and climate policy of Ukraine. The Green Transition Office operates with the financial support of the UK Agency for International Development and is implemented by DiXi Group.
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