The deadline set by the host country has passed amid outrage over a proposal that did not include a phase-out of fossil fuels.
The chairman of COP28, the CEO of the UAE’s national oil giant ANDOC, Sultan al Jaber (Sultan Jaber), called for an agreement to be reached before the official end of the 13-day negotiations. On December 6, he said that it could be done “by 11 a.m. on Tuesday, December 12” (9 a.m. Lithuanian time).
But after another late-ending negotiating session, there were no signs of an agreement being reached. Negotiators have been waiting for a new text after the draft agreement released on Monday was criticized.
“We have time and we are ready to stay a little longer,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
The team vowed to stay until the end of the Marshall Islands, which have an average elevation of 2.1m above sea level and are at risk of flooding due to melting glaciers.
John Silk, a negotiator for the Pacific island nation, said his country was participating “not to sign an order to execute her.”
Cassie Flynn, the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) climate director, said it was still possible to reach an agreement that went beyond the draft’s vague wording on fossil fuels.
“Countries work around the clock,” she said. – Negotiators run around the halls and talk on the phone, trying to find areas where they can agree.
“damaged beyond repair”
Activists had hoped that COP28, held in a glitzy metropolis built on petrodollars, would take a historic step and call for the world’s first phase-out of fossil fuels, which account for three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions.
But climate decisions must be made by consensus, and Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, and the opposition it leads are unwilling to give up a huge source of revenue.
The draft presented by COP28 President S. al-Jaber outlines only a few options, including reducing fossil fuel production and consumption.
Professor Clive Hamilton of Australia’s Charles Sturt University, a long-time observer of the climate talks, said the “extremely weak draft” showed the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists, who gathered at COP28 in record numbers.
“If something like the current text is adopted, it will show that the COP process is irreparably damaged,” he said.
Scientists say our planet is already 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than it was before the Industrial Revolution and that 2023, which has seen no shortage of natural disasters including forest fires around the world, will likely be the warmest in 100,000 years. years.
At the 2015 Paris meeting, it was agreed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. That goal is included in the latest draft, but critics say it’s virtually impossible to achieve without serious efforts to limit oil, gas and coal consumption.
“I don’t think anyone here wants to be associated with a failure to fulfill that responsibility.” […] It’s a war for survival,” around 2 p.m. 30 minutes US climate envoy John Kerry, who helped negotiate the Paris agreement, said at the closed-door session.
Mr. Kerry has backed calls to phase out fossil fuels, even though the U.S. is still the world’s largest oil producer and many Republicans strongly oppose climate action.
Probable corrections
Former US Vice President Al Gore, who has won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the climate, called the draft agreement slavish and said it looked as if it had been written by the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) oil cartel.
“For COP28 not to be the worst and saddest failure in 28 years of international climate negotiations, the final text must contain clear wording on the phase-out of fossil fuels,” A. Gore wrote on the X social network.
Mr al-Jaber acknowledged on Monday that there was still work to do, and one informed source called the text proposed on Monday an opening gambit that could be built upon.
The 21-page text does not call for action on fossil fuels, only presenting measures that countries could take.
“This is not a restaurant menu. We have to do all these things,” Canadian climate minister Steven Guilbeault, one of the ministers tasked by the COP28 president to lead negotiations to reach an agreement by Tuesday, told AFP.
COP28 hosts the UAE said on Tuesday that they would seek consensus on a new draft after much criticism over wording on fossil fuels.
COP28 director-general Majid al-Suwaidi played down criticism of the draft text released on Monday, saying the hosts were checking countries’ “red lines” and preparing another draft.
“We need to work on how to incorporate their views into the text in a way that satisfies everyone and allows us to move forward with the goals” of stopping climate warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, he stressed.
“The point is to reach a consensus,” the official emphasized.
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2024-08-11 12:50:29
