This update was produced by Boris van Overbeeke, Consultant and Lily Fox, Associate, provide their views on the last days of COP 28.
Controversy aside, COP28 has resulted in an agreement that observers are cautiously starting to call ‘historic’. On December 11, representatives of 198 countries agreed on a global pact that explicitly calls for “transitioning away from [all] fossil fuels”. This is groundbreaking. While previous U.N. climate agreements have encouraged emission reductions, they avoided explicitly mentioning fossil fuels, despite their role as the primary drivers of global warming.
Wednesday’s agreement follows 36 hours of negotiations, after the conference chair, Al-Jaber, released an earlier draft that was squarely rejected. The old draft proposed “reducing both production and consumption of fossil fuels” as one from a list of options that countries “could” act on, prompting a group of countries that are most vulnerable to climate disasters to describe it as their “death warrant”. After this proposal was written off, the summit went to overtime on Tuesday, as negotiators tried to reach a deal. The chair published a new draft at the end of the Tuesday night, which was approved surprisingly quickly.
On Wednesday morning, at the final plenary session of COP28, Al-Jaber outlined the agreement to the applause of delegates. However, to underscore diversity of opinion in the room, the intervention of Anne Rasmussen, lead negotiator of Samoa speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States, who noted “We have made an incremental advancement when what we really needed is an exponential step-change in our actions and support”, was met with even greater applause.
Wednesday’s agreement is meant to reflect the consensus view of all 198 countries gathered at the conference. It is by necessity a compromise and this year, a particularly hard-fought one.
From the outset many leaders were urging for inclusion of language that called for a complete phase-out of fossil fuels with the EU’s chief negotiator, Wopke Hoekstra, asserting that the conference’s success hinged on such an agreement. The proposal faced intense pushback from the major oil exporters. Saudi Arabia and its partners wanted to focus only on emissions, arguing that technologies like carbon capture and storage could allow for the continued use of fossil fuels. Another argument against a sweeping proposal for the elimination of fossil fuels came from several African nations, contending that Africa contributes a minimal share of emissions. Representatives insisted on the right to further develop their oil and gas reserves to boost their economies before transitioning to less carbon-intensive energy sources.
Negotiators managed to overcome these differences on Wednesday morning, landing on a text that calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” like oil, gas and coal that are heating the planet.
With a call to transition away from fossil fuels, Wednesday’s agreement does indeed represent a landmark in the conference’s history. Although the agreement does not have legally binding authority, politicians, environmentalists, and business leaders express the hope that it will serve as a signal to investors and policymakers, marking the beginning of the end of fossil fuels.
Over the next two years, each nation is expected to present a plan outlining how it intends to reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to 2035, with Wednesday's agreement intended to shape these plans. It remains to be seen if countries adhere to the agreement. Past climate agreements have struggled to inspire substantive action. Despite a 2021 deal in Glasgow to "phase down" coal-fired power plants, Britain approved a new coal mine just a year later. Global coal usage has since surged to record levels, driven in part by the EU Energy Crisis resulting from the Russia-Ukraine war.
Scientists underscore that nations must significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The agreement comes after a year with a summer season that was, once again, the warmest on record by a large margin, with record ocean temperatures, and extreme heat waves, droughts and wildfires all over the world. Wednesday’s agreement, whilst not going far enough for many and certainly not enough in itself to end the ongoing climate catastrophe, does introduce the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. The “transition away” from fossil fuels is explicitly the new agenda and will be a starting point for all future negotiations. Given the concerns and expectations evident before the conference that at least is an achievement.
