19 December 2023
COP28 hosted by the United Arab Emirates in Dubai in December 2023 has now come to a close after a contentious and politically fraught final 36 hours. While only one of close to 100 agenda items up for discussion at the COP, the “Global Stocktake” text now dubbed as the ‘UAE Consensus’ captured the attention of both delegates and those watching from around the world.
The Global Stocktake is an integral part of the architecture of the Paris Agreement agreed to by countries in 2015, requiring stakeholders to ‘take stock’ of progress to achieving collective climate goals. Taking place every five years, COP28 saw the conclusion of the first cycle. This process is seen as important to provide clear signals on how global climate action needs to ‘ratch up’ to put us on a sufficiently ambitious pathway to achieve our collective climate goals.
Given that COP28 took place in what has been dubbed a ‘petrostate’ and under the presidency of the CEO of the national fossil fuel company, expectations were initially low. Many were therefore surprised that from the start, the global stocktake text finally called out the ‘elephant’ often hiding in plain sight in the UNFCCC process: that further fossil fuel development is incompatible with climate goals. This issue was front and centre across the entire process thanks to its deft positioning by the so-called ‘high ambition coalition’ of countries in the draft text in week one of the COP calling for “an orderly and just phase out of fossil fuels.”
While the final ‘UAE Decision’ does not reflect the scope and scale of initial calls for a ‘phase out’ of fossil fuels, the consensus-based UNFCCC process has led to more ambiguous (if still notable) acceptable language for all countries to “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”. This new language – historic as for the first time all fossil fuels have been directly addressed in general in an agreement - has received praise from many as demonstrating a strong ‘consensus’ and a signal that the world must – and will - move away from fossil fuels. Furthermore, country actions in ‘transitioning away’ will now be “baked” into the next global stocktake cycle that will be launched in two years’ time at COP30 in Belém, Brazil.
Many left COP28 on a hopeful note as it appears that, while still exposed to pressure from the lowest common denominator, the ‘ratcheting up’ mechanism of the Paris Agreement via the global stocktake process has demonstrated that it can work in practice. However, a number of countries – in particular the Small Island Developing States – have flagged that the final text includes loopholes relating to interpretations of ‘national circumstance’ as well references to ‘low emission technologies’ (in particular CCS) that may allow some countries to continue with business as usual.
Beyond fossil fuels, the UAE Consensus text also calls for tripling renewable energy and a doubling of energy efficiency. This has also been welcomed, but the question of ‘how’ countries can achieve this is still far from answered. Given the lack of progress on climate finance-related discussions many countries (in particular those with currently high levels of debt) are asking how they can be expected to finance the rapid replacement of their existing fossil fuel-based infrastructure as well as scale up renewables.
Finance was unsurprisingly high on the agenda at COP28 with increasing recognition that mobilizing the volume of capital in both developing and developed countries could remain challenging.
Climate finance will continue to be a key issue in 2024 and hopes are high that the “COP28 Declaration on a Global Climate Finance Framework” proposed by 13 countries in week one of COP and it will be important for countries to continue to build trust and demonstrate that finance is truly ‘available, accessible and affordable’:
- While receiving less media attention at COP28, hard process was made to set the stage for negotiations on the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance;
- Lip service on the importance of resources to support adaptation must now be translated into concrete support (and preferably grant-based);
- and while announcements on Loss and Damage in the early stages of COP were lauded, work remains to see how countries will ‘grow’ the $700 million and whether the World Bank will be able to establish the disbursement channels necessary to be effective.
Alongside negotiations, Kenya, Columbia and France launched in week two a Global Expert Review on debt, nature and climate that will dig into these issues in an independent manner to attempt to find a pathway forward. This comes on the back of a second initiative launched in week one the “Task force on international taxation to scale up development, climate and nature action” to look at how more revenue and resources could be raised.
While COP28 will most likely not be grouped among the failures of the past 30 years of climate action, president Sultan al-Jaber himself stated in his closing remarks that “An agreement is only as good as its implementation.” In the run up to COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan and perhaps more importantly COP30 in Belem, Brazil, the world cannot afford to sit back and return to business as usual. Given that the day following COP his company ADNOC flagged that they will continue their fossil fuel investments ‘as planned’, just because we have named the elephant in the room does not mean we have truly shown it the door.
Photo caption: Author, Dr Ian Cochran, with MSc Climate Change Finance & Investment students at COP28. Credit: Axelle Bodwell.