Last night’s release of the draft Global Stocktake text winded the collective delegates in Dubai at COP28. Early evening, as news of the document’s release rippled around the Expo venue, the halls became noisy – people picked up that for the first time in any COP declaration, there was an explicit mention of ‘fossil fuels’ (a pledge to reduce coal, but not oil or gas, was referenced at COP26). Some NGOs and journalists even penned rapid responses, heralding this as the beginnings of a breakthrough. But slowly the penny dropped.
As thousands of people read and reread, silence began to fall. The draft text calls on parties to take action that ‘could’ include ‘reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, so as to achieve net zero by, before or around 2050, in keeping with the science.’
A word can change the course of history. What could have been a substantive set of agreed actions for the next iterations of national climate plans across the world, able to correct our course back towards 1.5C, became a multiple choice list, with the answer ‘none of the above’ implicit in its lack of obligation.
The central tenet of this COP has been the ambition to include the phase out of fossil fuels in the final negotiated outcomes. A growing movement of voices across the economy and wider society has come together over the past two weeks to show support for a phase out of the underlying cause of climate change: burning fossil fuels.
The deep disappointment and concern over what some have called a ‘dangerous’ draft text has been palpable. Some country groups, including the EU, suggested the omission of substantive phase out language could lead them to walk out of the talks if unaddressed. Australia, the US, the UK, Canada and Japan said they would “not be a co-signatory” to “death certificates” for small island states, demanding a stronger agreement at the summit to deal with fossil fuels and address the climate crisis.
United Nations Secretary General António Guterres suggested a “central aspect of the success” of COP28 would be the reaching of a “consensus on the need to phase out fossil fuels”. The US State Department said the wording on fossil fuels needed to be “substantially strengthened”.
COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber, however, addressing media, said: “The COP28 Presidency has been clear from the beginning about our ambitions. This text reflects those ambitions and is a huge step forward. Now it is in the hands of the parties, who we trust to do what is best for humanity and the planet.”
In the corridors in the COP venue in Dubai there is much talk of where the blockages lie. It is understood a large number of countries support the strengthening of the text to include the phase out of fossil fuels, as well as the tripling of renewables and doubling of energy efficiency. Many countries suggested overnight that the lack of tangible actions in the draft cannot be the basis of the final text.
The world doesn’t have time for ‘could’. Nations returning to the negotiating tables today ‘must’ and ‘can’ deliver a strong agreed outcome from COP28 in order to secure a stable future for all of us.
