November 30th 2023.
Sultan Al Jaber, the President of COP28, addressed the COP28’s opening plenary session on Thursday and said that the talks are about improving lives and that nothing is off the table. The global push for a phase-out of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and gas, has been met with resistance from fossil fuel-producing countries and companies.
However, findings from the 2023 Production Gap Report reveal that governments are planning to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels than is consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The Emissions Gap Report 2023, released November 20, warns that the world is heading for a nearly 3-degree-Celsius of warming if governments do not agree to and implement more ambitious targets.
At COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, countries were called on to phase down unabated coal power. Around 80 developed and developing countries supported India’s call to phase out all fossil fuels, not just coal, at last year’s COP27. This momentum has only grown since then, and COP28 presents an opportunity for governments to correct course. The challenge is that countries in the Global South heavily rely on coal and oil and do not have enough means to shift to cleaner fuels or renewables.
Al Jaber urged delegates to work together to maximize the momentum on mitigation, and said that no issue is left off the table, including the role of fossil fuels. He also called for proactive engagement with oil and gas companies and emphasised the importance of decarbonizing the existing energy system. The COP28 President then urged governments to bridge the global adaptation finance gap and ensure operationalization of the Loss and Damage fund.
UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell also addressed the talks, recounting watching his son as a baby and saying, “We must teach climate action to run. Because this has been the hottest year ever for humanity. So many terrifying records were broken. We are paying with people’s lives and livelihoods.”
He continued, “If we do not signal the terminal decline of the fossil fuel era as we know it, we welcome our own terminal decline. And we choose to pay with people’s lives.”
At the COP27 in Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh last year, rich countries agreed to establish a loss-and-damage fund to compensate developing and poor countries that bear the brunt of the climate crisis despite contributing little to it.
The UN Climate talks opened with a bang with an agreement being clinched on the operationalization of the Loss And Damage Fund. A draft agreement on the fund was arrived at earlier this month and a revised agreement released a day ago. The draft agreement had asked the developed countries to contribute to the fund but said other countries and private parties can also make contributions.
The climate talks will continue until December 12 and is anticipated to involve intense negotiations on compensation from rich countries to developing ones for climate impacts, fossil fuel usage, methane emissions, and financial aid for reducing planet-warming emissions and adapting to climate change.
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