Our 5 Key Takeaways from COP28
Between 30 November and 12 December 2023, 100,000 people gathered in Dubai to attend COP28, the United Nations annual climate change conference. Its main purpose is to hold international discussions on climate change and devise agreements for mitigating and preventing it. So how successful was COP28 in achieving this?
These are our five key takeaways from the event.
The New Climate Deal
For the first time in COP history, fossil fuels were named as the main driver contributing to climate change, and 200 countries agreed to phase out fossil fuel usage. This has been praised as being as impactful as the 2015 Paris Agreement, but will it be enough to keep warming to 1.5 C?
Many experts are sceptical, because the language used within the deal is far weaker than originally intended due to opposition from major oil producing countries and middle-income developing countries. Their arguments are that they need the revenue generated by oil, gas and coal sales to pay for the transition to greener energy, but at this stage this approach seems like one step backward one step forward. Stronger commitments are needed by all countries if we are to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
The friction between developing countries that say they are in need of fossil fuel finance, and the developed countries who contributed the majority of GHG emissions in the past 200 years brings us on to the next key takeaway, the reparations pair to small islands.
Small Island Reparations
The ‘Loss and Damage’ fund is designed so that richer countries with greater climate responsibility will pay reparations to small island nations which will be disproportionately affected by climate change. Many details of how and when the money will be given have not been disclosed, but the pledge is for $400 million from the EU, UK, US etc.
These reparations are certainly deserved and may have a significant effect if distributed in the right way, but there are complaints that the Alliance of Small Island States was not in the room when the fund was agreed upon, and so the people supposed to benefit from these reparations did not have a say in agreeing upon them. Brianna Fruean, a Samoan activist who attended COP, said:
“It’s like asking us to celebrate flowers that will lie on our graves”
This paints an image that will no doubt soon appear on climate protestor’s posters and political comics. Wealthy governments handing stacks of cash to islanders being flooded by rising sea levels and telling them to ‘save themselves’.
Of course, this is a pessimistic prediction, and it may be that the fund will have a huge benefit, but we cannot know this until it comes into full effect.
Hosted in a petrostate
COP28 was hosted in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, one of the top 10 oil producing countries in the world. This fact seems particularly relevant when there have been rumours flying that UAE planned to use COP as an opportunity for making oil and gas deals with 27 different countries (BBC). While this seems highly counterproductive to the objectives of COP, the UAE team did not deny their involvement, saying ‘private meetings are private’.
Representatives from countries including the UK and Peru have expressed their displeasure at this discovery, calling it hypocritical and a serious breach of standards of conduct.
Next year's conference is set to take place in Azerbaijan, another state reliant on fossil fuels for their economy, so it will be interesting to see whether these same controversial deals take place in COP29.
More people than ever before
There were almost 100,000 people at COP this year, from politicians and journalists to fossil fuel industry representatives to visiting students. In comparison, there were only 4,000 attendees from the first conference in 1995, and even COP26 in Glasgow 2021 had just 40,000. Still the population of a town, but less than half the number of attendees this year.
This could be a good thing. It means the significance of COP is growing and it is seen in the public eye as one of the key climate events of the year. This will bring new perspectives to the negotiations, from different nations and types of people.
However, another perspective is that having too many voices clouds the main objectives of COP, and prevents real change being made. This could be especially true when more of those voices than ever before are representatives from oil, gas, and coal industries, who will have a vested interest in making sure fossil fuels are not phased out immediately.
Final outcomes
So what will the overall effect of COP28 be? It’s difficult to say yet. The new climate deal and the loss and damage fund are steps in the right direction, but may be too little too late as the earth hurtles towards warming of over 1.5 degrees.
One thing that has been clearly defined is that the world needs solutions from all directions. Clean energy, emissions reduction, carbon removal, and climate adaptation will all be vital industries that continue to grow in the coming years. Nellie is highly motivated and committed to being a significant part of the solution.
