Conflicts, contradictions and chances from the Dubai COP28 Consensus

By: Dorothy Guerrero
Date: 19 December 2023

The 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was the biggest climate summit held under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) so far. Attended by some 85,000 participants, world leaders were joined by representatives from various multilateral bodies, civil society organisations, scientific and research expert groups, Indigenous Peoples, trade unions, feminists, youth, philanthropy, religious groups and a record number of fossil fuels business lobbyists.

This year’s climate talks featured several landmarks:

The first ‘Global Stocktake’ – an evaluation of the progress on achieving key provisions of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
The approval of the operationalisation of the Loss and Damage Fund – the culmination of the process from the Sharm El-Sheikh COP27 decision and crafted over five meetings throughout the year by the UN Transitional Committee.
Reaching a decision to transition away from fossil fuels, although much weaker than the much anticipated and contentious “fossil fuel phase out” advocated by climate vulnerable countries, small-island states and climate justice groups.
Embarking on a discussion process on Just Transition, which is linked to all the streams of the negotiation.

The conflicts

The COPs are not merely annual meetings attended by global leaders and non-state observers to craft solutions together. Of course, just because everyone purports to care about climate change and the environment in one way or another, this does not in fact mean that the COPs are by any means harmonious. COPs are negotiations between 198 parties (197 countries plus the European Union) in which each government seeks to align the resulting agreements with their countries’ own political and economic agenda and interests. Often the agenda and interest of individual countries and blocs may be in conflict with those of other countries and blocs.

Indeed, human history is based on unjust and unequal relations of power produced by colonialism, dispossession, and racism. Climate injustice comes with inequality and the injustices are still being reproduced and exacerbated by current systems. There are inter-state and inter-class conflicts in seeking solutions to global problems like climate change.

The fundamental reality of climate injustice is that high-income and high-emitting countries, mostly in the global north, have been responsible for 40% of global emissions from consumption and economic activities that caused climate change, while low-income countries, mostly in the global south, have contributed a small 0.4% of emissions but have been the ones suffering the impacts for some decades now. The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%.

In the negotiations on Global Stocktake, Finance, implementation of the Paris Agreement and in the new process on Just Transition, it was very evident that negotiators from rich countries tried to dilute the principles of equity, international cooperation and common but differentiated responsibility and respective capacity (CBDR-RC), which are all enshrined in the Convention and the Paris Agreement, in order to avoid their climate obligations.

The contradictions

We are in the critical decade when possibilities for limiting the global average warming to 1.5°C are slipping away due to previous inactions, delays and wrong priorities of governments in the global north, which should lead in addressing climate change. Given this, the final Dubai Consensus, despite having some important aspects, is undoubtedly very weak. While the text does recognise the need for “deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions” to stay in line with 1.5°C, the listed efforts simply do not offer the chance of achieving this goal. However, the agreement does at least recognise the gaps between the aspirations and targets since 2015 and where we are actually heading.

Samoan chief negotiator Anne Rasmussen, whose country chairs the Alliance of Small Island States, repeatedly warned that the commitments are off-track and the outcome was not enough to correct the course. She criticised the final document as a “litany of loopholes” and “[only] an incremental advancement over business-as-usual, when what we really need was an exponential step change in our actions and support”. COP28 failed to use the scientific evidence generated by the UNFCCC to make progressive decisions.

It is remarkable that it has taken a COP hosted in a country with the fifth largest oil reserves in the world, to introduce a commitment to address the future of all fossil fuels into a COP outcome for the first time in 30 years. However, despite the landmark nature of this, there are also major contradictions. It is unsurprising that the global resolution “calling on countries to contribute to … transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner”, leaves many with disappointment. Rather than deciding on a full phase out, as hoped by many so the world could begin the needed just transition, the decision makes no requirement of the world’s biggest polluters to do their energy transition faster than the lower-income countries who are still addressing their energy poverty and have done little to cause climate change.

It is important to note that although the US, UK, EU, Australia and other rich countries indeed pushed for the term “fossil fuel phase out”, they did not offer to put in place any finance to deliver that. In fact, the US, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK are responsible for a majority (51%) of planned expansion from new oil and gas fields until 2050. They also doubled down on advocating the use of debunked technologies (such as carbon capture and storage) that the fossil fuel industry seeks to use to delay their phase out.

COP28 president Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the UAE’s minister of industry and advanced technology as well as the chief executive of his country’s state-owned oil and gas company Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) in an interview said, “What we need to do right now is to decarbonise the current energy system, while we build the new energy system.” This could lead to more investments in renewables since bank loans on fossil fuels may lose their value and profitability and become much riskier. It now offers a chance to push for removal of subsidy on fossil fuels and increase investments on renewables. Interestingly, Al Jaber is also the founder of the Emirati company Masdar, one of the world’s leading renewable energy companies. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), which is the nearest to a UN body on renewable energy that exists, is also located in the UAE.

Chances and possibilities

The Just Transition Work Programme is also a good start. However, future discussions must ensure a transition that is equitable, based on international cooperation, sector-wide, fair, gender responsive and takes into account social-economic and political realities of different regions, nations, as well as the imperatives of climate justice.

Finance is a key element to unlocking just transitions in global south countries, but this support is being blocked by global north countries (including the UK). Without finance and equity, many measures are likely unachievable by global south countries, which vary in levels of preparedness and capacity for transition, as well as access to technology compared to global north countries. Without adequate finance countries in the global south (and their populations) will be forced to shoulder the burden of transforming their economies to solve a climate crisis they did least to cause.

The loss and damage fund was finally agreed on the first day of COP28. Although it is an imperfect mechanism and with details opposed by countries from the global south (eg. having the World Bank as interim host for four years), some small funding announcements began to trickle in. Not amounting anywhere near the billions needed, but a start. There is now a pot that can help countries to rebuild and recover in the aftermath of climate disasters. We must double our efforts in campaigning for our government to make polluters pay to increase climate finance contributions.

In the run-up to COP28, there were debates on whether or not to attend COP28 because of the host country (a petrostate) and COP president (a CEO of an oil company). However, events showed that it was indeed very prudent to attend and push for a progressive agenda regarding fossil fuels. The fact that it was held in a key petrostate is precisely what enabled the fossil fuel phase out issue to be accelerated right into the centre of the debate, albeit in a contradictory way. Civil society pushed, kept the focus and put immense pressure on fossil fuel phase out at COP28. The result is obviously far weaker than hoped for, but this is not surprising and at least improves the terrain of struggle in the future. We should grow our movement faster and stronger to make a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty a reality.

Photo: Dorothy Guerrero/Global Justice Now