The COP28 has opened in Dubai but what is the significance?
Governments meet once a year to negotiate a coordinated global response to climate change. This year is the 28th iteration of those meetings: The COP28
The UN’s annual climate conference kicked off in Expo City, Dubai, at a time when the fragility of the global climate is very much exposed, and time is running out to correct the course and steer safely into the future.?
What is the COP28?
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was established just over three decades ago in Rio. Under this framework, nations are treaty-bound to avoid ‘dangerous’ climate change.
The UNFCCC has 198 ‘parties’ and puts the onus on developed countries to take the lead in significant changes to their emissions.?
The treaty, signed in 1992, called for ongoing scientific research and regular meetings, negotiations, and future policy agreements designed to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.
COP stands for ‘Conference of the Parties’. The COP is the supreme governing body of an international convention. Composed of representatives of the member states, they ensure?
effective implementation of the convention - The decision-making body.?
The 28th meeting of the COP comes after almost thirty years of highs and lows, drama and genuine diplomatic success.??
The Key Asks of Dubai
Going into the conference, there are four key things to look at
Commitments
2023 marks the conclusion of the first UN Global Stocktake, the primary mechanism to review, assess and improve global commitments on reducing emissions and the other goals of the Paris Agreement.
These ‘stocktakes’ assess progress made every five years and consist of three phases: information, assessment and political
The political phase and conclusion is COP28.
The main objective of the COP28 and the global stocktake is to ‘course correct’ before it’s too late.?
Course correcting involves governmental actions to become more comprehensive and there commitments made should get progressively bolder over time - these are known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)
As outlined in the Paris Agreement, potential temperature pathways were set out, to outline the impact of various levels of emission reduction based on currently established climate policy and recommended policy.?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC’s) reporting reiterates that the world is not on track to achieve either of the Paris Agreement’s temperature pathways – 1.5C and 2C – with stated policies likely to result in a 2.8C trajectory even if delivered in full.
Finance
At this level of warming, many places will not be “liveable”, the IPCC has stated, warning of increasing risks such as coastal flooding and food and water insecurity that would? put up to 3.3 billion livelihoods at risk
These concerns were addressed during the COP27 with the creation of a ‘loss and damage’ fund to help provide financial aid to countries that have suffered due to climate disasters. The countries including UK, USA and UAE all pledged various levels of aid on the opening day of this year's conference totalling ￡332m
The USA however only pledged ￡13.8m, significantly less than the UK’s? ￡60m and the UAE’s ￡79m. As one of the larger pollutants, questions will continue to be asked of why can’t more be contributed.?
Renewables
The tripling of global renewable generation capacity to around 11 TW by 2030 has become a key target along with double energy efficiency. In the UK, infrastructure needs to be vastly upgraded, The UK's electrical grid suffering from the longest queue for connections in Europe. Over 200GW worth of electricity projects are waiting - the National Grid has laid out plans for a ￡54bn upgrade to the UK’s electricity grid - but will it come too late.
The improved economic case for renewables is a large factor with many being already cheaper than fossil fuels, and they’re getting even cheaper.
领英推荐
Between 2010 and 2022, the cost of electricity generated by onshore wind swung from being 95% more expensive than the cheapest fossil fuel to being 52% lower.
Fossil Fuels
All eyes will be on the petrostate as it attempts to navigate the climate conference and the language it will use when talking about the very substances causing the climate crisis. Leading up to the COP28, there has been criticism using the term ‘phase down’ rather than ‘phasing out’ high carbon fuel sources.?
Al Jaber, COP28 president has been quoted as claiming there is a future for fossil fuels, backing and committing to this phase down rather than phase out approach.?
Mr Jaber said
‘“(We) need to come to terms with some realities” and embrace an energy transition that includes “all sources of energy.”
Controversial Settings?
Aside from the worsening climate and the language surrounding fossil fuels - most of the conversation leading up to the COP28 has been its location and president. The UAE is one of the world's top 10 oil-producing nations, with oil accounting for one third of the country's GDP. Al Jaber also commands the post of CEO of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), one of the world's biggest oil and gas exporters.
Mr Jaber is set to oversee expansion to produce oil and gas equivalent to 7.5bn barrels of oil.. 90% of which would have to remain in the ground to meet the net zero scenarios set out by the International Energy Agency.
In the weeks leading up to the conference, further documents were leaked suggesting the UAE planned to use its role as host to strike oil and gas deals in addition to the UAE breaking its own laws on gas flaring.?
Mr Jaber has previously argued that he is uniquely well-placed to push for action from the oil and gas industry, and that as chairman of renewable energy firm Masdar, he has also overseen the expansion of clean technologies like wind and solar power, but suspicion still remains.?
A recent letter to the UN from 133 US and EU politicians co-authored by French MEP Manon Aubry calling for the removal of Al Jaber?
?“The Cop28 office has lost all credibility. If we care more about preventing a climate disaster than protecting the profits and influence of fossil fuel companies, we need to react now.”
Highs and Lows
In the previous 28 meetings between the nations there have been moments of significance for both the right and wrong reasons - ultimately leading to Dubai, battered, bruised but with some slither of hope still in-tact.?
Kyoto 1997
At the COP3, held in Tokyo, the first treaty was signed. Dubbed the Kyoto Protocol, it then ran from 2005 to 2020, implementing measures under the UNFCCC. It set out legally binding emission-reducing targets for developed countries. National emission targets specified in the Kyoto Protocol however excluded international aviation and shipping. The Kyoto Protocol was superseded by the Paris Agreement, which entered into force in 2016
Copenhagen 2009
At the COP15, the parties sought to provide a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, as it only bound developed nations into curbing their emissions and only a few dozen ones at that. The main sticking point at Copenhagen was focused on the positions of developed and developing nations over future emissions reductions and past responsibility.?
This led to the richer nations, pledging to provide ￡100bn per year to the poorest to adapt to climate change and help reduce emissions (a figure that was only hit in 2023)
Major developing nations rejected any specific reduction targets on their emissions and on a whole the outcome was adapting a non binding goal to ‘reduce global emissions so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2C’?
Paris 2015
The Paris Agreement is the most successful climate treaty achieved by the COP. Every nation pledged to constrain their emissions and limit global warming to 1.5C.?
192 nations formally approved it into domestic law. The UK being one of these.?
The UK is legally bound to reach net zero by 2050.
Paris was also the birth of NDC’s and the idea of the global stocktake - and seemingly the first time collective responsibility towards the seriousness of climate change was taken on board.
Nations are falling behind on their commitments and the effects of climate change are becoming increasingly visible. 2023 has been the hottest year ever recorded and according to scientists the hottest the earth has been in over 100,000 years. If that isn’t enough for the COP28 to be a success, then there is no hope.