Welcome to the ultimate COP28 particular version of DeBriefed, a vital information to all the important thing developments on the Dubai local weather talks. Subscribe to DeBriefed right here free of charge.
International stocktake
FOSSILS AWAY: Practically 200 international locations have agreed to assist the world “transition away from fossil fuels”, as a part of the “world stocktake” determined at COP28, in response to Carbon Transient’s in-depth abstract of the talks. The deal “name[ed] on” all international locations to contribute, utilizing the weakest-possible UN authorized language to ask for motion. But even this was hard-won, with an earlier draft deal having left motion on fossil fuels completely elective.
WHITHER FINANCE? The stocktake additionally referred to as for the tripling of renewables, doubling of power effectivity and “considerably lowering” methane emissions, all by 2030. These targets ticked 4 of the 5 “pillars” to maintain 1.5C in attain, set out by the Worldwide Power Company (IEA) forward of COP28. The essential fifth pillar – finance for growing international locations, which might have unlocked larger ambition elsewhere – was largely lacking.
‘MOMENT OF TRUTH’: COP28 agreed new targets, however solely international locations can ship motion. The stocktake “encourages” them to submit bold new 2035 pledges aligned with 1.5C, with a deadline of 2025. This would be the “second of fact”, one professional informed Carbon Transient.
ACTION STATIONS: The stocktake additionally launched a four-year “dialogue” on implementing the deal, in addition to “mission 1.5C”, designed to spice up “ambition…motion and implementation”. This mission shall be run by COP30 hosts Brazil – who mentioned it will work in direction of chopping fossil gasoline dependence – together with the UAE COP28 presidency and COP29 host Azerbaijan. The function of the “mitigation work programme” – launched at COP26 to “urgently scale up mitigation ambition and implementation on this important decade” – stays unclear.
FREE WEBINAR: Carbon Transient’s workforce of journalists shall be out there to reply questions on the worldwide stocktake – and all the different key outcomes of COP28 – throughout a free webinar happening at 3pm UK time as we speak. Register right here.
Adaptation
MONEY TALKS: Negotiations over a “framework” to information a “world aim” on local weather adaptation confronted vital tensions. African international locations and others mentioned they wanted robust commitments that developed international locations would financially assist them. The US and the EU didn’t need to focus on cash. Massive, rising economies had been accused of blocking talks by insisting on references to the totally different obligations dealing with developed and growing international locations.
NEW FOCUS: The ultimate textual content didn’t include any of the growing international locations’ main priorities. Events agreed to focus adaptation on a number of key themes and selected a handful of ill-defined targets. Nevertheless, it kick-starts a formalised world effort for international locations to scale up their adaptation efforts, with a primary spherical of planning and reporting given a deadline of 2030.
Loss and harm
FUND AGREED: Nations launched a brand new “loss-and-damage fund” on day one among COP28, in what one observer referred to as a “diplomatic coup” for the UAE. This was welcomed as the primary time a serious final result had emerged from a COP opening session. It marked the end result of a decades-long effort by climate-vulnerable nations to safe funds for the unstoppable hurt brought on by local weather disasters.
MONEY NEEDED: With no obligation to pay into the fund, filling it is going to largely depend upon the generosity of rich international locations. A number of events, together with the UAE, Germany and the EU, kick-started the fund with $770.6m of pledges, a few of which had been current funds that had been re-pledged. Campaigners identified this amounted to lower than 0.2% of growing international locations’ annual wants.
Emirati management
OVERSHADOWED PRESIDENCY: COP28 president and oil government Dr Sultan Al Jaber hailed the “world-first” achievement of getting “fossil fuels” in a UN local weather change settlement. Nevertheless, his presidency was overshadowed by allegations the UAE meant to make use of COP28 to make oil-and-gas offers – and by resurfaced remarks he made questioning the science of a fossil-fuel phase-out at an internet occasion on the necessity to embrace ladies in local weather motion.
‘LOW-CARBON’ OIL: Mere hours after the summit, Al Jaber informed the Guardian that his firm, the Abu Dhabi Nationwide Oil Firm (ADNOC), will proceed investing in oil. He claimed to the paper that his oil could be thought-about “low-carbon” as a result of it’s “extracted effectively and with much less leakage than different sources”.
Meals, forests and nature
FOOD: Carbon Transient has simply revealed a separate in-depth take a look at what COP28 delivered for meals, land, forests and nature. “Meals day” at COP28 noticed the launch of the Alliance of Champions for Meals Methods Transformation – a gaggle of 5 international locations dedicated to pushing the agenda of systemic change in meals methods. However the Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on agriculture and meals safety failed to succeed in an settlement, leaving events pissed off.
FORESTS: The worldwide stocktake “emphasises” that halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030 shall be key to fulfill the targets of the Paris Settlement – the primary time such a pledge has garnered formal recognition in a UN local weather change authorized textual content. A number of international locations put ahead new concepts for safeguarding forests at COP28, however Brazil stole the present with its $250bn “tropical forests ceaselessly” fund proposal.
NATURE: COP28 hosted an unprecedented variety of high-level occasions on the hyperlinks between local weather change and nature loss. In a first-of-its-kind initiative, COP28 president UAE and COP15 president China launched a Joint Assertion on Local weather, Nature and Folks acknowledging the interconnected nature of local weather change and biodiversity loss, signed by 20 international locations. The world’s landmark nature deal agreed in 2022, the International Biodiversity Framework, was additionally referenced in a UN local weather change textual content for the primary time.
FOSSIL FUELS: New fossil-fuel pledges dominated the beginning of COP28, with the US amongst 9 new international locations to enroll to the Powering Previous Coal Alliance – and Kenya, Samoa and Spain signing as much as the Past Oil and Fuel Alliance.
RENEWABLES: Some 130 international locations pledged to triple put in renewable capability and double the speed of power effectivity enhancements by the tip of COP28. Notable exceptions embrace China and India.
METHANE: Turkmenistan – a serious methane emitter – and different international locations joined a pledge to chop world methane emissions by 30% by 2030 at COP28. The US, China and UAE held a methane summit and greater than $1bn was put ahead to cut back emissions of the potent greenhouse gasoline.
HEAVY INDUSTRY: Some 36 international locations joined a brand new alliance led by Germany and Chile to chop emissions from heavy business, equivalent to metal and cement making.
GENDER BIAS: A COP28 presidency picture celebrating the result of the summit that includes a big group of males raised eyebrows, together with with Spain’s ecological transition minister Teresa Ribera and UN greenwashing tsar Catherine McKenna.
The variety of hours COP28 went into additional time, making it the thirteenth longest UN local weather summit.
In npj Ocean Sustainability, a gaggle of ocean scientists examined the inequities of their area and proposed methods to handle these gaps.
A brand new research, revealed in Communications Earth & Setting, discovered that seagrass meadows off the coast of the Bahamas retailer as a lot as 590m tonnes of natural carbon within the prime metre of sediment.
By 2100, as much as 18% of species in south-east Asia might change into regionally extinct beneath a “business-as-usual” deforestation state of affairs, in response to analysis revealed within the Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences.
(For extra, see Carbon Transient’s in-depth day by day summaries of the highest local weather information tales on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
![Global stocktake verbs at COP28](https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/gst-verbs.png)
UN local weather change texts could be troublesome to interpret for international locations, observers and journalists alike. One strategy to glean deeper that means from the texts is to look at the kind of verbs that they use. In line with Carbon Transient evaluation, the worldwide stocktake textual content agreed at COP28 makes use of few “operative” verbs – phrases that demand motion from international locations (proven in purple on the chart above). What’s extra, the important thing passage on fossil fuels merely “calls on” international locations to take motion. As Carbon Transient’s editor Leo Hickman famous, that is the weakest of all the phrases that COP texts can use to ask international locations to behave.
PIPE DREAMS: An Al Jazeera documentary launched earlier than COP28 seemed on the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline and what main oil tasks imply for Uganda.
COLOMBIA LEADS: A Bloomberg characteristic examined how Colombia led from the entrance at COP28 and have become the primary main coal producer to affix a gaggle of countries calling for a fossil-fuel non-proliferation treaty.
LINE HELD: UK local weather justice activist Asad Rehman wrote within the Guardian that the settlement on a fossil gasoline phase-out had “extra loopholes than a block of Swiss cheese”.
Developing
15 December: Worldwide Power Company (IEA) Coal 2023 report launch
17 December: Serbian parliamentary elections
18 December: Inexperienced Alliance occasion on what COP28 means for UK politics
20 December: Democratic Republic of Congo presidential and nationwide meeting elections
Choose of the roles
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please ship any suggestions or suggestions to [email protected]
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