The negotiations they continued overnight
A historic agreement was reached by countries around the world after the end of the United Nations climate conference in Dubai (COP28) – the abandonment of all fossil fuels to achieve the goal of net zero emissions by 2050.
The decision was made after the official end of COP28 on Tuesday. In the early hours of Wednesday, the UN Climate Body announced that the agreement from the ongoing negotiations would be announced at 6 a.m., followed by a plenary session with Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, the president of this year’s climate forum and head of the National Petroleum company in Abu Dhabi.
Minutes after the session began, Al-Jaber announced the decision, to which there were no objections from any of the nearly 200 countries present, but
there was criticism of 39 small
island countries because the deal was pushed through without them. “For the first time in our final agreement, there is wording on fossil fuels. We have steered the world in the right direction,” said Al Jaber.
“We are a little confused by what just happened. It seems that you made the decisions and the small island developing States were not in the room,” commented Anna Rasmussen from the Alliance of Small Island Countries Vulnerable to Climate Change. According to her, there are many gaps in the agreement, called the “UAE Consensus”.
The solution was praised by US and EU,
as the US Special Envoy on Climate Matters John Kerry pointed out that it is a reason for “optimism”.
Dan Jorgensen – Denmark’s minister for the development of global climate policy and one of the two delegates who lead the so-called stocktake for COP28: “What we’re basically saying is that the way you make a living has to change because we’re moving away from fossil fuels – they’re not the future.”
The deal will require “ambitious and economic-wide” emission reduction targets to be set over the next 2 years, in line with the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to the critical threshold of 1.5°C. The targets will be set “in view of the different national conditions” – a reference to poorer countries, which are more difficult to reduce harmful emissions. The deal also calls for tripling global renewable energy capacity by 2030 and for
acceleration of the development of technology with low emissions
like nuclear power.
The lack of detail on how poorer, heavily indebted countries will finance divestment from fossil fuels and adapt their economies remains a problem, however. According to Rachel Cletus of the Union of Concerned Scientists, the agreement is “grossly inadequate” when it comes to phasing out the fuels altogether. In his words, “without funding, we will not get where we need to be”. Another problem may be the role of the so-called transition fuels, as some countries and climate experts argue that they support the continued use of gas.
2023-12-13 20:30:00
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