Faced with the increased effects of global warming and a confluence of geopolitical crises, States are working to resolve their oppositions on fossil fuels or on North-South solidarity one month before the Dubai COP, the most important since COP21 in Paris.
Four weeks before this 28th United Nations climate conference (November 30-December 12), supposed to officially establish that the objectives of the Paris agreement have not yet been met, ministers from around fifty nations are meeting on Monday and Tuesday in the United Arab Emirates for a “pre-COP” behind closed doors, rarely so scrutinized.
Heatwaves, fires, floods and hurricanes
Exit from fossil fuels, financing of the energy transition, sharing of responsibilities between developed countries, historical polluters, and emerging countries, which are catching up, solidarity with more vulnerable countries: everything remains to be played out on a series of burning questions while the humanity must reduce its current greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 40% by 2030 to hope to meet the most ambitious objective of the Paris agreement: limiting warming to 1.5°C since the beginning of the industrial era.
But with the Israel-Hamas war, “it is difficult to know where we will be in a month in the Middle East,” Alden Meyer, expert at the E3G center, commented for AFP. Because this conflict risks “making already complicated multilateral cooperation more difficult because of Ukraine and Russia, China-United States tensions and the debt crisis, among others”.
Eight years after Paris, 2023 is approaching +1.5°C for the first time over an entire year and the oceans have been breaking heat records for six months. On the continents, heatwaves, fires, floods and hurricanes hit populations. In this context, COP28, chaired by the oil and gas power of the United Arab Emirates, focuses both expectations and attacks.
More than 80,000 people and 5,000 journalists, unprecedented, are expected there, the participants in the immense economic fair on the sidelines of the negotiations adding to the scientists, NGOs and delegates of the 198 signatories of the United Nations Framework Convention on the fight against climate change. The Emirati presidency hopes to attract a record number of heads of state there on December 1 and 2. The rare presence of Chinese President Xi Jinping or the unprecedented presence of Pope Francis are mentioned.
+2.8°C
Even if global emissions – mainly from coal, oil and gas – have not started to decline, some progress has been made since Paris. At the time, the world was heading towards a warmer climate of 2.9 to 3.1 degrees in 2100. At the rate of current emissions, warming is now heading towards +2.8°C according to the IPCC, or even + 2.4°C if States respect their existing commitments. These must, however, be increased, to avoid certain tipping points: melting of the poles, dieback of forests or thawing of permafrost, colossal reserves of additional GHGs.
“COP28 offers the opportunity to accelerate the transition by building the energy system of the future, while rapidly decarbonizing today’s energy system in order to keep the 1.5°C limit within reach,” says Sultan Al Jaber, president of COP28, in his last letter to negotiators. But Adnoc, the oil and gas company he chairs, is investing $150 billion over five years in expanding hydrocarbon production capacity.
“Just transition”
The debate on the exit from fossil fuels, carefully avoided at COP27, is this time firmly established in the work on the results of the Paris agreement. But where island countries are calling for a moratorium and the EU to accelerate the exit, many countries are calling for a “just transition” which gives them more time so as not to compromise their development. And producing countries are promoting the idea of “clean fossil fuels”, based on capture technologies and controversial carbon credits.
At the same time, the rise of renewable energies is rare good news: an agreement to triple their capacity by 2030 seems within reach. Even realistic, according to the International Energy Agency, in particular thanks to heavy American (IRA), Chinese and European investments (Green deal).
But any final agreement will be dependent on progress on finance and solidarity with developing countries, to which rich countries are required by the UN climate convention. The blocking of negotiations on the realization of a “loss and damage” fund, the main success of COP27 and a red line for developing countries, does not bode well.
In the event of blockages, “the risk is that we will be sold lots of declarations and ancillary coalitions which do not replace an ambitious agreement on the results of the Paris agreement, including fossils and losses and damages”, warns Lola Vallejo, expert at the Sustainable Development Institute of International Relations (IDDRI).