At COP28, Sticking Points Remain, As Talks Near Crunch Time

Dubai (AP)

Negotiators have been urged to narrow down their options so they can agree on how to save Earth from disastrous levels of warming and help vulnerable societies adapt to weather extremes as the clock runs down on United Nations climate talks.

COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber told journalists on Sunday that negotiators were “making good progress”, just not fast enough. So he was borrowing from Arab culture and convening a majlis on Sunday afternoon, a new format for talks where he was bringing ministers from all countries to sit together in a circle, more as a conversation. He begged them to leave their objections and talking points behind.

Unlike most of the big group sessions, this one is not broadcast and is closed to the public and media.

“I want everyone to come ready to be flexible and to accept compromise,” he said, as protesters could be heard nearby calling for the end of fossil fuels. “Failure or lack of progress or watering down my ambition is not an option.”

Wopke Hoekstra, the EU climate commissioner, repeated calls for a fossil fuel phase-out at the majlis.

“We all see that this will be a massive transition, make no mistake about that,” he said in prepared remarks. “But postponing it simply will not help. The sooner we do it, the less painful it will be.”

There were some signs negotiators were moving forward on Sunday: A new draft agreement on global adaptation goals — which will determine how poor countries will brace themselves for climate change-fuelled weather extremes like drought, heat and storms — was released.

The new draft “presents the skeleton of what could be a reasonable framework” on how to adapt to climate change, said Ana Mulio Alvarez of climate think tank E3G, but to be effective, adapting to climate change “requires developed countries to provide support to developing countries” to actually enact plans, which wasn’t in the draft.

Sticking points for the Global Stocktake — the part of the negotiations that assesses where the world is at with curbing warming and how countries can stick to climate goals — are along familiar lines. Some countries wanting to see strong language on phasing out the use of fossil fuels, while others are hesitant to have forceful language on the issue because they want to continue to develop their oil, gas or coal industries.

“It’s very clear that there is a group of countries here that don’t want to phase out fossil fuels,” said German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan. Small island states, Latin American countries and European countries are pushing for a phase-out, but other nations are “still far apart”.

“It’s going to be very difficult,” Morgan said. “I’m a bit worried.”

Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists told journalists that “the big laggards, the ones being obstinate, is definitely Saudi Arabia and the OPEC countries”, the powerful oil cartel.

But Brandon Wu of ActionAid USA also criticised America’s plans to expand oil and gas production.

“We should not ignore the fact that the United States has the single largest oil and gas expansion plans of any country in the world by far. It’s not even close,” Wu said.

US Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts acknowledged the Ukraine war boosted domestic natural gas production because “the LNG industry in the United States saw an opportunity to dramatically expand its footprint”.

He added: “We cannot preach temperance from a bar stool. We cannot tell the rest of the world you should move towards a renewable energy future if we ourselves are spreading this LNG poison around the world.”

Meanwhile, an analysis by the Paris-based International Energy Agency on Sunday found that the several pledges made at COP28 to move to clean energy — over a 100 countries promised to triple renewables and double energy efficiency, and several oil and gas companies pledged to slash their methane emissions — were nowhere near what’s needed to cap warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.

If countries and companies kept their promises, it would result in around four gigatons fewer of carbon pollution globally by 2030, the report said. But that’s only about 30 per cent of the “emissions gap” — the difference between how much the world is currently emitting and how much it can emit if the world is to meet its climate goals.

And that’s only if countries and companies actually stick to their promises.