01 dec 2023 om 15:18
World leaders must now really fulfill the climate promises they have been making for years. That was the main message that outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte delivered on Friday at the climate summit in Dubai.
Rutte said he had asked young people what they hoped the outcome of the Dubai summit would be. “Their answer was clear. They expect us, today’s leaders, to keep the promises we have already made. And that we will try harder to phase out fossil fuels.”
The climate summit started on Thursday with a surprising success. All countries immediately agreed on the establishment of a climate damage fund, which should help poor countries after climate disasters. In total, more than $400 million has already been pledged to fill the fund.
The Netherlands will contribute 15 million euros of this, Rutte announced on Friday. According to him, it is purely about starting capital to get the fund on track. It must be decided later how much the Netherlands will contribute structurally. The Netherlands is currently building up international climate financing towards 900 million euros per year by 2050.
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‘World is sick’
Rutte is one of 170 world leaders who traveled to Dubai to speak about the climate. Many of them expressed their disgust at global warming. António Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations, said he recently stood on the melting ice of Antarctica and a glacier in Nepal.
“Those two places are far apart, but are united in crisis,” Guterres said. The melting ice “is just one symptom of the disease that is shaking the world. A disease that only you, world leaders, can cure.”
British King Charles also spoke during the opening ceremony. He hopes the summit can be a “critical turning point” for the climate, which he says is undergoing “a gigantic, terrifying experiment.”
The speeches did not excel in concrete commitments. As host country, the United Arab Emirates was one of the few to announce a major new climate plan. The country, which benefits economically from oil and gas sales, is investing $30 billion in a fund to help developing countries switch to green energy.
Criticism of unfulfilled promises
Here and there there was also pessimism. For example, King Tupou VI of Tonga called it “painful” that the climate summit in Dubai “may not be the milestone we all hoped for.” As an archipelago, Tonga is one of the countries most sensitive to climate change.
Developing countries especially called for more climate financing so that they too can make the transition to clean energy and be better protected against the consequences of climate change. In recent years, rich countries have failed to raise the promised $100 billion per year.
“Such unfulfilled promises diminish solidarity and trust,” said Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan. “It has damaging and costly consequences for developing countries.”
Quit fossil fuels
One of the agenda items in Dubai is a plan to triple the amount of renewable energy between 2022 and 2030. According to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, 110 countries have now joined that call.
“The energy of the future must be clean, affordable and home-grown,” said Von der Leyen. She hopes that the plan will become part of the final declaration of the climate summit, which will contain the most important conclusions. This requires unanimous support, including from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, which would like to continue selling fossil fuels.
There appears to be no broad support for the European call to stop using fossil fuels completely. Most world leaders who gave speeches on Friday did not mention the topic. Others chose less far-reaching words.
For example, Kenya’s President William Ruto called for “reduced dependence on fossil fuels”. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil also wants an “economy that is less dependent on fossil fuels”. There will be a lot of discussion about those kinds of word choices in the next two weeks.
2023-12-01 14:18:46
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