COP28: a non-binding agreement but nevertheless a deal

In the final session held on the night between December 13 and 14, the delegates to the 28^th meeting of the Conference of Parties, or COP28, reached an agreement that had eluded them in the previous gatherings.

“For the first time since nations began meeting three decades ago to confront climate change, diplomats from nearly 200 countries approved a global pact that explicitly calls for ‘transitioning away from fossil fuels’ like oil, gas and coal that are dangerously heating the planet,” wrote The New York Times in the opening paragraph of the story it carried on its front page on December 14, 2023. This was the morning after an agreement was reached at the Dubai meeting. “The sweeping agreement, which comes during the hottest year in recorded history was reached on Wednesday [December 13, 2023] after two weeks of furious debate at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai. European leaders and many of the nations most vulnerable to climate-fueled disasters were urging language that called for a complete ‘phaseout’ of fuels.” But that proposal faced intense pushback from major oil producers and exporters such as Saudi Arabia and Iraq as well as large consumers of fossil fuels such as India and Nigeria.

The sweeping agreement which was put on the conference screen by Sultan Al Jaber, the conference chairman but also the head of Dubai’s oil company, asked for a vote. “Hearing no objection, it is so decided,” said Al Jaber. Delegates, many of whom had traveled long distances to attend the meeting, looked around the room, hugged and rose to their feet. Al Jaber whose appointment, given his background in the oil industry, had triggered intense unhappiness, relished the moment and described what had been achieved as a “new mindset to climate solutions, secured by compromise and inclusivity after meetings at 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. and 5 a.m.” Al Jaber was not the only important figure on the floor who was pleased at the outcome. “Humanity has finally done what is long, long overdue,” said the European Union’s climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra. “Whether this is a turning point that truly marks the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era depends on the actions that come next,” former US vice president Al Gore said. He, as President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, was the man behind the Paris accord.

John Kerry, who headed the US delegation to Dubai and turned 80 in the emirate, had called this COP the last one in which 1.5C goal could be kept within reach. The goal of global warming to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius was adopted at the Paris meeting. President Joe Biden joined the chorus of approval at the arrival of the deal by calling it a “historic milestone” that keeps alive the hopes of the Paris accord. “While there is still substantial work ahead of us to keep the 1.5 degrees C goal within reach, today’s outcome puts us one significant step closer,” the US president said in a statement.

A positive view of the outcome of Dubai came from Auden Schendler, author of the forthcoming book, Terrible Beauty: Reckoning Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul. According to whom, in the end, in an overtime session, the conference delegates “did almost miraculously, agree to transition away from fossil fuels” in what it termed as “just, orderly and equitable manner”. “This was seen as huge win — and it will be, if it becomes the new norm in an evolving world,” he wrote in an article.

Not even the landmark 2015 agreement, arrived at the meeting held in Paris, had specifically mentioned fossil fuel use, focusing instead on the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. More than any climate agreement before Dubai, the new deal reflects a recognition that the world is doing more harm than good continuing the era of coal, gas and oil to move forward the global economy and global society. During this two-hundred-year period, the output of the global economy increased several-fold, life expectancy soared and the global population grew eightfold. All this had been achieved at a great cost. This was underscored by a number of studies including those released by the United Nation’s system that 2023 would end by being the hottest year on record.

The primary goal of this year’s COP was to marshal a response to the assessment conducted as a follow-up to the Paris accord that determined that the world was well off the track in meeting its climate goals. That helped to sharpen the focus on the continuing large-scale use of fossil fuels in a year that registered record temperatures, Arctic melting, floods and vast wildfires. What was achieved at Dubai that led to so many positive assessments?

While past UN climate agreements have urged countries to reduce their emissions, they did not explicitly mention the words “fossil fuels” even though the burning of oil, gas and coal is the primary cause of global warming. In the end negotiators, which included a heavy presence of oil, gas and coal lobbyists, struck a compromise. The Dubai deal calls all countries to accelerate shift away from fossil this decade in a ”just, orderly and equitable manner” and to quit adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere entirely by mid-century. It also calls on countries to triple the amount of renewable energy like wind and solar power, installed around the world by 2030 and slash emissions of methane.

There were clear pathways for continued use of fossil fuels. The deal aimed to achieve carbon neutrality by the year 2050, yet even in that undertaking there would be some space for oil and gas. The ramp-down — the phrase used in the agreement rather than phaseout — applies to fossil fuels in “energy systems”, a phrase that left a lot of room for interpretation. The text also mentions the need to bolster technologies that could be used to capture emissions yielded by industries and operations such as steel and cement-making, and shipping and air travel. The agreement also allows for a role for “transitional fuels” that is generally understood to mean natural gas, which the fossil fuel industry has maintained that countries could use while they invest in producing renewable energy sources. However, the main component of natural gas is methane, a potent pollutant that heats the atmosphere more than carbon dioxide. Even here there was some movement at Dubai.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 18^th, 2023.

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