The 28th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP28, concluded on Wednesday with an agreement on “transitioning away from fossil fuels” in energy systems.
Soon after the summit’s last day began, host United Arab Emirates’ Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber brought to order the approval of a global stocktake that showed how far the world is off-track in its climate-fighting goals, reported the Associated Press. It also listed ways to get back on track.
The approved deal laid an eight-point plan to achieve the 2015 Paris accord’s internationally agreed-upon goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, reported PTI. So far the world has warmed 1.2 degrees since the mid-1800s.
According to the plan, the goal could be achieved by “transitioning away from fossil fuels” in energy systems in a “just, orderly and equitable manner” and accelerating action in this decade to achieve net zero (balance between greenhouse gases emitted and removed from the atmosphere) by 2050.
It also urged countries to accelerate efforts toward the phase-down of unabated coal power. However, the 21-page document does not mention oil and gas or fuels that rich countries continue to use even once.
“It is a plan that is led by the science,’’ al-Jaber said after adopting the agreement. “It is an enhanced, balanced but make no mistake, a historic package to accelerate climate action. It is the UAE consensus.”
Al-Jaber, the UAE’s minister of industry and head of the national oil company, added: “We have language on fossil fuel in our final agreement for the first time ever.”
Wopke Hoekstra, European Union commissioner for climate action, said that humanity “has finally done what is long, long, long overdue”.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a statement that “for the first time, the outcome recognises the need to transition away from fossil fuels”.
He added: “The era of fossil fuels must end – and it must end with justice and equity.”
United Nations Climate Secretary Simon Stiell told delegates their efforts were “needed to signal a hard stop to humanity’s core climate problem: fossil fuels and that planet-burning pollution. Whilst we didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end”.
However, several minutes after the adoption of the document, Samoa’s lead delegate Anne Rasmussen said that small island nations were not even in the room when al-Jaber said the deal was done.
She said that “the course correction that is needed has not been secured”, with the deal representing business-as-usual instead of exponential emissions-cutting efforts. She said the deal could “potentially take us backwards rather than forward”.
In addition, the Alliance of Small Island States said in a statement that there were “a litany of loopholes” in the document, reported Reuters.
“The text does not speak specifically to fossil fuel phaseout and mitigation in a way that is in fact ‘the step change that is needed’,” said the alliance. “It is incremental and not transformational.”
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