What Comes Next After COP28 - Shifting Gears Coming Out of Dubai

The 28th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai began with a flurry of high-profile pledges delivered with a lot of optimism and fanfare and ended with an historic cover decision that spoke to transitioning away from fossil fuel. A full-throated commitment to transitioning the global energy economy is an impressive milestone, but the language still leaves ample room for fossil fuel interests to dither and make excuses. It isn’t yet the clear and decisive call for a full phase out of fossil fuels we were all hoping for.

In assessing the first half of COP28, I noted the myriad of pledges being made by countries and companies around methane, energy efficiency, renewable energy deployment, financial support for a new loss and damage fund, and food systems. I also noted that the most essential thing for a successful cover decision would be to provide language that supports robust and decisive climate action including language explicitly stating that fossil fuels should be phased out.

What we got in this year’s text is a commitment to transition away from fossil fuels and a commitment to maintain the 1.5 degree global warming target. The commitment to transition is encouraging, and the agreed language is not as weak as some earlier proposals. Considering that so much of what plagues this final language derives from the need to be unanimously approved, the commitment to a transition is significant and a very fine start.

The Global Stocktake document likewise has promising elements -- a call to end deforestation and forest degradation by 2030 and other references to nature-based solutions and food systems, safeguards recognition aligned to the Global Biodiversity Framework, and recognition that emission reductions of 60% are necessary to maintain the 1.5 degree Celsius benchmark, which is imperative for the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

Climate-vulnerable states made some progress with the Loss and Damage Fund. On the first day of COP, the operationalization of the Loss and Damage fund was announced, paving the way for financial pledges ultimately totaling more than $700 million.

Overall, it’s a very good start. But after two weeks of twists and turns chasing an agreement in Dubai, where do we go now? What do we need to do now that we are on the road to Baku and COP29?

If the limitation of the UNFCCC COP process is the need for consensus, which means that ambition can only extend as far as the least brave among us, the genius of the Paris Agreement is the NDC process, where parties decide their own contribution in the execution on the overall goal. Because the only party that needs to agree to an NDC is the party making it, parties that have a mind can take an ambitious stance on their commitments to emissions reductions. In theory, at least, the only limits on a country’s commitment are its daring and imagination.

The point of the Global Stocktake is to provide an assessment to guide the next round of NDCs from parties, which are to embody commitments for reaching goals for 2035. Rather than lamenting what didn’t happen with the language of the cover decision or the Global Stocktake in Dubai, we must shift our focus to fostering ambition on a country-by-country basis during the NDC process. We must exhort every country as it engages in the NDC process to commit to making major, immediate course corrections. We must begin building the will to change how we generate energy, improve how we distribute it, reduce how much of it we use, and reinvent how we manage the processes around every aspect of our energy economy.

We need large scale plans that deliver maximum benefits in the least amount of time and with every effort to minimize negative impacts to communities and to nature. We need audacity – from companies, from institutions, from governments – the audacity to make big plans and transparent accountability as we follow through on them.

Transformation at the scope and level that we require to meet this moment isn’t easy. It isn’t cheap initially, though it has tremendous returns on investment in the long run. But it has to be fast, and it has to be equitable. Dubai needs to be the last COP where we quibble over the finer points of language. We need to make substantive progress on real projects that provide actual emissions reductions. Real change. Real fast. For real people. Right now.