COP28: Week 1 Update
There are some striking and welcome signs of progress in the climate talks at COP28, as we will attempt to report in this and subsequent summaries. The elephant in the room remains the reluctance of fossil fuel-producing countries to take sufficiently rapid steps to phase out fossil fuel production and use altogether.
Indeed, as we point out in our post on the Production Gap Report 2023 from UNEP and others, twenty countries, including the UAE as host of COP28, responsible between them for 82% of the world’s fossil fuel production and 72% of the world’s fossil fuel consumption have plans to increase fossil fuel production to double the levels needed to meet the Paris Agreement targets.
The response of the conference to this key challenge, and to the first Global Stocktake, will be closely watched.
Early win on Loss and Damage
The climate talks at COP27 in Sharmh el Sheikh, Egypt in 2022 were bedevilled by arguments about loss and damage – the compensatory payments made to the vulnerable countries which have suffered most from climate change, despite having in most cases their having done least to cause it. The structure of a Loss and Damage Fund was finally established, but no funds were contributed to it initially, and it looked as though this could become another political standoff between the Global North and South.
Our Borrowed Earth Project briefing on the background to the Loss and Damage issue, published in 2022, is here.
It was therefore a bold move by the UAE Presidency of COP28 to put loss and damage on the agenda for the first day of the conference, and to announce a total of $420 million in contributions to the fund in the first hour. This took delegates by surprise, and added a very welcome momentum to some of the other negotiations.
King Charles’ speech – “The Earth does not belong to us – we belong to the Earth”
At the website that we have re-named The Borrowed Earth Project, we respectfully agree. We would find it hard to find much to fault in King Charles’ reflective and notable speech opening the Dubai climate talks. For example, his comment that climate “Records are now being broken so often that we are perhaps immune to what they are really telling us.”
There is some risk of that, which we try to avoid by constantly circling back to the science, and what it can tell us about broken temperature records, sea level rise, melting poles and glaciers and approaching tipping points, as well as the way in which actual atmospheric CO2 levels have risen inexorably despite the fine work and even finer words at 28 COPs.
You can watch King Charles’ speech here and below:
Agreement on Food & Farming
Recognising that climate change directly affects nations’ agriculture and food production, as well as making a substantial contribution to the generation of emissions, the COP28 UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action saw 134 world leaders subscribe to new high level but important commitments. Their declaration stated that “…we commit to expedite the integration of agriculture and food systems into our climate action…”.
It is clear from the text of the declaration that this should result in food and farming featuring in most National Adaptation Plans, Nationally Determined Contributions and National Biodiversity Strategies. This does not feel like a quick win, but is perhaps more of a significant long-term adjustment.
Tripling renewable energy by 2030
The EU, COP28 Presidency and 118 countries at COP28 have signed up to the Global Pledge on Renewables and Energy Efficiency. In this they commit to triple the world’s capacity for renewable energy to at least 11,000GW, and to double the rate of global energy efficiency improvements, from 2% to 4%, by 2030.
OUTSIDE THE CONFERENCE
EU Methane Regulation
The European Council and European Parliament have reached provisional agreement on a new EU Methane Regulation. The EU press release states that:
“The regulation introduces new requirements for the oil, gas and coal sectors to measure, report and verify methane emissions, as well as put in place mitigation measures to avoid such emissions, including detecting and repairing methane leaks and limiting venting and flaring. It also puts forward global monitoring tools to ensure transparency on methane emissions from imports of oil, gas and coal into the EU.”
The full EU press release on this significant new agreement and potential EU Regulation is here.
An article by Gas Strategies on the new EU Regulation and its expected implications for imports and EU global supply chains, is here.
Belgian Climate case
VZW Klimaatzaak v Kingdom of Belgium and Others
On 30 November 2023 Belgium’s Court of Appeal upheld a challenge brought on behalf of many thousands of concerned citizens, and ruled that the climate policies being applied by the Belgian State, the Flemish Region and the Brussels Capital Region did not do enough to address climate change with sufficient urgency, and would have to be replaced by policies delivering 55% emissions reductions by 2030.
Biodiversity and Climate Change
The Borrowed Earth Project’s new short film on Biodiversity and Climate Change is now being taken out to youth groups working on climate and biodiversity, with the next showing for UK Youth4Nature on 4 December 2023.