The COP28 Climate Agreement (UAE)

At COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, nearly 200 countries have agreed to a deal that calls for 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". Is this the beginning of the end for coal, oil and gas – the climate-damaging fuels which still supply roughly 80% of the world's energy? Or is this another empty promise that is too little and too late to make a difference? They scrutinised the text agreed today in Dubai for the sorts of loopholes that might permit fossil fuel burning in excess of what the climate can sustain. In their view, the key omission concerns "abatement". That is, the use of carbon capture and storage technology to remove CO₂ emissions before they leave furnaces and engines for the atmosphere. With no clear definition of this term in the text, COP28 has produced "a broad and easily abused interpretation" of what "abated" fossil fuel burning entails, they say. "Will capturing 30% or 60% of CO₂ emissions from burning a quantity of coal, oil or gas be sufficient? Or will fossil fuel use only be considered 'abated' if 90% or more of these emissions are captured and stored permanently along with low leakage of "fugitive" emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane, which can escape from oil and gas infrastructure?" they ask. Our collective fate hangs on this interpretation. In its 2022 mitigation report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that almost all coal emissions and up to two-thirds of natural gas emissions will need to be captured to limit warming to 1.5°C – the scientifically (and internationally) agreed guardrail. "That's assuming that the world will have substantial means of sucking carbon (at least several billion tonnes a year) from the air in future decades. If these miracle machines fail to materialise, our research indicates that carbon capture would need to be near total on all fuels," the trio add. By failing to clarify what kind of fossil fuel use can continue, the negotiations may have even hobbled another hard-won pledge, they say: the goal of tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030. "This would cause wider harm to the transition by allowing continued investment in fossil fuel infrastructure – new coal plants, for instance, as long as some of the carbon they emit is captured (abated) – thereby diverting resources from more sustainable power sources." Loss and damage Aside from the agreement on fossil fuels, what else was confirmed at COP28? On the first day of the summit, delegates agreed to formally establish a loss and damage fund. This would (in principle) pay countries that have emitted very little of the greenhouse gases changing Earth's climate but are nonetheless bearing the brunt of mounting droughts, floods and other disasters.  Countries that have developed enormous wealth and state capacity through their combustion of fossil fuels and colonial plunder like the UK, US and EU members have fought attempts to label this finance as "compensation" for the ravages their emissions have unleashed, says Lisa Vanhala, a lecturer in political science at UCL. Vanhala has followed the progress of this fund for a decade. She wrote on its shortcomings in November, noting that developing country delegates were generally unhappy with its outline, especially the World Bank's role as interim administrators. Vanhala points out that disaster-struck developing countries are saddled with debt. A lender like the World Bank, accustomed to offering loans instead of grants, could increase this burden. Rich countries are only "invited" to "take the lead" in paying into this fund says Shannon Gibbon, an associate professor of international relations at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. The results so far have been underwhelming: "Calculations of early commitments total just over US$650 million, with Germany and the United Arab Emirates pledging US$100 million and the UK committing US$75 million. The US, one of the largest climate change contributors, pledged only US$17.5 million in comparison. It’s a shockingly low starting point." Meanwhile, the cost of the climate crisis to the poor rises each day. Not all of it can be neatly settled on a balance sheet either says Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson, who researches the social consequences of climate change at United Nations University.  Ayeb-Karlsson has interviewed garment workers displaced by cyclones and land erosion in Bangladesh, survivors of sexual abuse in storm shelters on the South Pacific island of Fiji and leaders of post-disaster mutual aid networks in Vanuatu. "As well as the destruction of land, crops or livestock, loss and damage must come to include child marriage, sexual violence, coercive and controlling behaviour, human trafficking and exploitation," she says. Money for forests Brazil launched another fund in the first week of COP28 that would pay countries with large remaining forests to conserve and expand them. Intact old-growth forests keep enormous quantities of carbon locked in bark and soil where it cannot exacerbate climate change, unless disturbed by chainsaws or fire. This isn't the first financial commitment to forests made at a global summit – there have been several variants proposed at previous COP talks. At COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, more than 100 world leaders pledged to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. It's not going well: global forest loss in 2022 was 33% higher than where it would need to be to keep us on track. The problem isn't just about money says Dhanapal Govindarajulu, a forest ecologist at the University of Manchester's Global Development Institute. He argues that state-led efforts to restore forests have restricted the rights of communities that may have managed these ecosystems sustainably for centuries. Govindarajulu highlights research by Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom and others which shows that people who directly depend on forests tend to protect and use their common resources rationally – provided they are allowed to decide how they are managed. "To restore Earth’s forests and mitigate climate change, states should devolve management rights to the communities in these land parcels and grant them secure tenure," he says. Cleaner cooling for all? In another first for a UN climate summit, countries agreed to target emissions from a sector that is sure to grow as Earth warms: "cooling". This refers to air-conditioning and refrigeration for food and medicine.  COP28 secured a pledge from 63 countries, including major emitters US and Canada, to cut emissions from cooling systems by 68% by 2050 (relative to 2020 levels). "As the climate crisis deepens, close to half of the world’s people have little defence against deadly heat," says Radhika Khosla, an associate professor of geography at the University of Oxford who published a report on the need for cooling in a heating world. Khosla found that nearly 4 billion people, predominantly living in Africa and Asia, have no guarantee that they will be able to cool themselves or essential items when temperatures soar. Meanwhile, demand for energy to power air-conditioners among those who can afford them is predicted to double by 2050. Khosla recommends more trees and updated building regulations to create shadier cities, higher energy efficiency standards and a rapid end to the use of hydrofluorocarbons (potent greenhouse gases) as refrigerants. Promises... Agreements at COP summits are non-binding. If governments stray from the promises their delegations make at these talks, there is little that can be done to reverse their decisions.  Consider another promise made at COP28: Australia's announcement that it will cease financing coal, oil and gas projects beyond its shores (domestic financing stays). "It’s the latest in a welcome series of signals that the international community is slowly turning off the tap for new fossil fuels," say Christian Downie and Maxfield Peterson, governance experts at Australian National University. The UAE consensus, which declares the world is sincere about its obligation to transition away from fossil fuels, could be the strongest of these signals yet.  But the climate is deaf to such signals. As another summit ends, questions around implementing these commitments are kicked ahead another year closer to catastrophe. - Jack Marley, Environment commissioning editor