COP28 climate cop-out and what comes next
Photo of select state participants at COP28, taken on December 6, 2023. Official Photography for the Republic of Colombia // Credit: CC BY S-A 4.0 DEED

COP28’s climate cop-out, and what comes next

Reading Time: 11 minutes Ignore the media claims of a “landmark” climate deal. COP28 failed to produce outcomes in word or in action or in funding that would get the world back on track for meeting key climate targets. Now what?

Reading Time: 11 minutes

In a year of difficult climate news, the failure of the UN’s latest climate change conference, COP28, to produce meaningful draft language and anywhere near enough funding for key reforms should have been the main story as the two-week conference closed out in overtime on Wednesday, December 13. Instead, we have a spin-cycle struggle between media boasting a “landmark” deal, and reports addressing the gravity of this year’s watered down language and ongoing failures of investment in adaptation and mitigation.

COP28 did not succeed, on the whole.

But its failures are enlightening, and suggest what needs to happen next.

Words, words, words

As noted earlier in COP28 proceedings, the great battle for this year’s conference, held in the oil-rich country of the United Arab Emirates, lay with the difference between “phasing out” and “phasing down” fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are the key driver of climate change, irrespective of pre-conference statements to the contrary from COP28 president, the UAE oil-firm executive Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber. There was also deep concern about loopholes created by touting carbon capture technology in lieu of phasing out fossil fuels entirely. The allowance of language around “abated” fossil fuels, along with vague deadlines for the elimination of methane processes, would also permit industry to set the terms of its own transition.

On December 11, a draft outcome text raised a flurry of argument. Instead of a phaseout for fossil fuels, the language proposed a “phasing out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption and do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible.” Also missing were stronger obligations for richer and more culpable countries, and the words “oil” and “natural gas”. Heated drafting sessions ensued, but to even worse results.

Despite COP28’s inclusion of many important topics, especially around tripling renewable energy capacity and deforestation, the global stocktake released on December 13 is a gutted document. Instead of a phaseout for fossil fuels directly, we have a call for “phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible”. Meanwhile, the only “phase down” is of unabated coal: meaning that so long as companies are working on carbon capture, there is no added pressure to reduce coal production itself.

The spin cycle is powerful, though, so what the world is now being asked to celebrate as a conference victory is the fact that this document recognizes the need 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”.

It is a sorry state of affairs, when the news is spinning the mere inclusion of the words “fossil fuels” as a win. But since even the Paris Agreement of 2015, which first called for the world to strive to cap global warming at 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels, failed to name fossil fuels at all, the bar has certainly been set low.

This crisis could be diverted with more direct investment in the adaptation of vulnerable economies. But then how would the world’s largest polluters be able to spin their own, ongoing commitment to fossil fuels?

Deeply compromised public systems

How much have we actually advanced in recent conferences of the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change? In Glasgow’s COP26, early draft language called for countries to “accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuel”. That obviously couldn’t stand with industry, though, and didn’t: the next draft called for “the phaseout of unabated coal power and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels.” But even a phaseout of fossil fuels with a loophole for carbon capture was too much. The final language? A call for

accelerating efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, while providing targeted support to the poorest and most vulnerable in line with national circumstances and recognizing the need for support towards a just transition;

p. 3, Glasgow Climate Pact, from COP26 in 2021

In Glasgow, the source of watered down language on coal was centrally India. This year’s site of resistance is no less transparent. On top of Saudi Arabia and Russia trying to soften language, OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais wrote to the oil cartel’s membership, calling on these countries to resist the attacks on fossil fuels in COP28. As VOA News reported, Al Ghais wrote,

It seems that the undue and disproportionate pressure against fossil fuels may reach a tipping point with irreversible consequences. … I … respectfully urge all esteemed OPEC Member Countries and Non-OPEC Countries participating in the CoC and their distinguished delegations in the COP 28 negotiations to proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy i.e. fossil fuels rather than emissions.

“OPEC Urges Members to Reject Any COP28 Deal Targeting Fossil Fuels”, VOA News, December 8, 2023

According to environmental think-tank analyst Alden Myer, this is the first time OPEC has tried to intervene in climate change conference proceedings with such a letter. But for a UN conference whose president is also CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, there is as little reason to be shocked about this encroachment of private enterprise on COP28 as there was reason to be shocked by a recent investigation into Saudi Arabia’s plans to expand its fossil fuel markets. If you give private industry a seat at the table, of course it’s going to fight for its own perpetuation.

READ: Saudi Arabia surprises no one with its oil plans

Failures on the financial front, too

But the lousy state of affairs at COP28 didn’t just involve arguments over vocabulary and industry encroachment. It also included a terrible outcome for investment in key funds to prevent and mitigate further disaster.

Although the conference began with a small win for an overdue loss-and-damage fund (the mere existence of which nearly derailed COP27), pledges for countries hardest hit by climate change soon stalled. Although at least $400 billion USD is already necessary on an annual basis, COP28 ended with only $656 million pledged by an array of countries, with the US offering a mere $17.5 million.

The US has traditionally been the worst performer at providing aid proportionate to its initial contribution to climate conditions: a reputation it’s trying to shake in other ways this year, including a $3 billion pledge to the Green Climate Fund, and an array of domestic readiness projects with some overlapping benefit on the world stage. The problem is that affluent countries dragged their feet for too long, and are now trying to play catch-up to the mounting costs of climate mitigation. Everything thus far committed is still orders of magnitude below ever-rising need.

Meanwhile, private interests are advancing aid in their own complex ways. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $100 million for medical purposes: a figure matched by UAE President Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and joined with COP28’s announcement of an international Health Day. Their philanthropic drive this year amassed over $777 million for the control and elimination of tropical diseases, but this is a double-edged sword when it comes to global action.

Although there will always be a benefit to improving medical knowledge and reducing disease, there is a strong chance of misdirected and redundant funding when project goals are guided centrally by private actors. The prestige of entirely eradicating a specific disease, for example, can sometimes be sought by billionaires at cost to investing in the most pressing medical crises of the day.

READ: Trust us: The problem with crypto-billionaires and effective altruism

In an even more absurd twist of international politics this year, Russia, in an effort to keep its frozen assets from filling Western coffers, has tried to pledge part of that $300 billion to the loss-and-damage fund. The optics are complicated for the West, though. In war, opposing nations generally don’t enjoy giving their enemies good publicity, which is what Russia’s proposed commitment to climate financing (especially in contrast to other countries) would absolutely do.

Will island and developing nations continue to suffer from Western war politics, when the money to make a meaningful difference exists, simply lying in wait?

Data compiled by Joe Thwaites of the Natural Resources Defense Council, from sources linked in his COP28 summary. France, Germany, Italy, the UAE, and the UK were top contributors to four COP28 funds as of December 9, 2023.

Leveraging poverty to sustain fossil fuels

The disconnect between funding and outcomes is most deeply felt by archipelago and island countries at immediate risk for land loss under climate change, and other marginalized people who rarely have the ability to be heard in these proceedings. Although Sonia Guajajara, Brazil’s first Indigenous minister, raised the profile of Indigenous peoples in the country’s negotiating body at COP28, there remains a complex push-pull between many other outsiders and international power.

Bolivia, for instance, strongly resisted actions at COP28 against deforestation, even when they were advanced by other South American countries. This is because Bolivia is one of the world’s fastest deforesting nations, out of a perceived economic need. If it is destroying its own future and contributing to the global loss in carbon sinks, it’s doing so because of the lack of funding for market transition.

Conversely, countries like Samoa found that COP28’s ultimate deal had been announced before the Alliance of Small Island States could join other delegates: a fitting end to a conference in which many of their concerns were not effectively heard, let alone met. As Anne Rasmussen noted,

We didn’t want to interrupt the standing ovation when we entered the room, but we are a little confused about what happened. It seems that you just gaveled the decisions and the small island developing states were not even in the room. We were working hard to coordinate the 39 small island states, developing states, that are disproportionately affected by climate change, and so we were delayed in arriving here.

“Small island nations ‘weren’t in the room’ when deal agreed”, BBC News, December 13, 2023

Samoa is one of many countries to note that the language of COP28’s global stocktake is not enough to meet the 1.5°C target, for which the world remains far off track. Senegal’s Madeleine Diouf Sarr, speaking for the Least Developed Countries bloc, went further, stating that this agreement

reflects the very lowest possible ambition that we could accept rather than what we know, according to the best available science, is necessary to urgently address the climate crisis. [It] highlights the vast gap between developing country needs and the finance available, as well as underscoring rapidly dwindling fiscal space due to the debt crisis, yet it fails to deliver a credible response to this challenge.

Madeleine Diouf Sarr’s statements, as recorded in “Reaction to the final COP28 climate deal”, Reuters, December 13, 2023

While representatives from the EU and North America praised the final COP28 decision as “a moment when multilateralism has come together” (US climate envoy John Kerry) and “the beginning of the end” for fossil fuels (UNFCCC secretary Simon Stiell), Antigua and Barbuda’s Diann Black-Layne highlighted the danger of transition fuels becoming permanent under the language in this global stocktake.

Colombia’s environmental minister also noted that

Loopholes [in the final text] have risks and the risks can undermine the political will. The transition fuels could end up colonizing the space of decarbonization. Right now, in the financial segment of the text, we [still] don’t have the economic structure required for this deep transition — which is not only an energy transition but is fundamentally a whole-of-society economic transition.

María Susana Muhamad, as recorded in “Dubai deal: Ministers and observers react to the UAE consensus”, Climate Change News, December 13, 2023

These struggles were also named by Xie Zhenhua, in his capacity as the climate envoy for China, but in a way that echoed how countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia are also using the existence of fragile economies and global poverty to protect their own industrial holdings. China is the world’s biggest emitter and a country highly dependent on coal. When Xie was asked about China’s stance around the phaseout language at the heart of COP28, he replied:

I’ve already talked with the minister of one oil-producing country. And he said to me 80% to 90% of his country’s income depends on oil production. So if we phase out all the fossil energy, including oil, how will their country survive or develop?

Xie Zhenhua’s remarks at a press conference attended by The Guardian, and reported in “China says it would like agreement on substituting renewables for fossil fuels”, December 9, 2023

Of course, this crisis could be diverted with more direct investment in the adaptation of vulnerable economies. But then how would the world’s largest polluters be able to spin their own, ongoing commitment to fossil fuels?

So what comes next? New contracts for change

On December 2, President Gustavo Petro committed Colombia as the first continental signatory to an accord advanced by island and archipelago countries: the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. Petro halted new oil and gas exploration contracts in his first year in office, in keeping with his speech at COP27, in which he argued that

the market is not the main mechanism for overcoming the climate crisis. It was the market, the accumulation of capital, that produced it. And it will never be the remedy. … Only multilateral public global planning will permit us to achieve a global decarbonized economy. … It is the global politik, the mobilization of humanity, that will course-correct, and not the accords [reached] by technocrats greatly influenced by the interests of the businesses of carbon, petroleum, and gas.

Remarks by Gustavo Petro at COP27, as delivered in Spanish and translated by M L Clark

Despite Petro’s hyperbolic claim that the market will never be the solution, Colombia’s plan for transitioning from a centrally oil-driven economy involves the market directly: through boosting tourism, diversifying agriculture, and investing in new energy systems. The challenge now comes from global investors, and related pressures placed on vulnerable economies via rising debt servicing fees. How are vulnerable economies supposed to invest effectively in energy diversification and innovation, along with other forms of climate resilience and adaptation, while under immense pressure to pay back increasingly private loans?

READ: Argentina and the politics of desperation

A day before COP28 President Al Jaber announced the watered down final text for the conference’s proceedings, Colombia was also party to the publication of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance COP28 Call to Action, which includes Denmark, Fiji, Finland, France, Greenland, Ireland, the Marshall Islands, Portugal, Quebec (absent the rest of Canada), Samoa, Spain, Sweden, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Wales. This document provides exactly the language missing in the main event:

We urge all Parties to join us in calling for the global phase out of all fossil fuels in line with IPCC pathways—to achieve net zero CO2 no later than 2050 and limit global average temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels under the negotiated outcomes of COP28. This must include a peak in fossil fuel production and consumption this decade, to peak emissions by 2025, alongside targets on the scaling of renewable energy and the improvement of energy efficiency. The enabling conditions for this phase out should also be reflected, from the phase out of fossil fuel subsidies as soon as possible, and the halting of fossil fuel finance, to enhanced planning and support for just transitions from oil and gas.

We must be realistic. The fossil fuel sector will not unwind itself, nor can it, in isolation. We must plan for an orderly, just transition aligned with 1.5°C, rather than risking the abrupt closure of uneconomic oil and gas production. Producers and consumers, and the multilateral system, must work together to avoid price volatility, and to support investment in the transition, particularly for the most exposed economies and communities. The global phase out of fossil fuels must also be accompanied by strong financial system reform and the deployment of innovative, effective, and accessible financing to support vulnerable and developing economies in their transitions.

from the Beyond Oil and Gas COP28 Call to Action

COP28 has failed to produce the top-down public leadership necessary to combat climate change. But that doesn’t mean the opportunity this UN event provides for working groups from around the world—to hash out their own accords, and maybe even to broaden their coalitions—is without value. Although the main event will continue to stump for industry when the UN reconvenes next November in Azerbaijan (a country that became critical for supplying fossil fuels to Europe amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, and which provides a market for Russian oil despite sanctions), UN draft language is not the only path to change.

Until then, here are some resources from recent research on the effects of climate change and the state of current mitigation efforts. Find the ones that will help to leverage local action. Make sure your politicians and nonprofits are aware of them, and of your interest in mobilizing for green energy solutions wherever possible. And of course, push for your nations to become signatories on accords that pursue goals we actually need, to prevent more extreme climate disaster while we still can.

Just don’t hold your breath on them following through.

climate crisisenvironmentglobal humanisminternational

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