by DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – The climate negotiations that just concluded in Dubai got to the heart of compromise, finding a common language that nearly 200 countries accepted, sometimes grimly.
For the first time in nearly three decades of such talks, the final agreement cited fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas – as the cause of climate change and said the world must “transition” away from them. But he did not use the words “phase out,” sought by advocates and more than 100 countries who argued that it would provide a sharper guide for the world to move quickly toward renewable energy that does not the greenhouse gas emissions that the planet consumes are produced.
For an agreement with so much compromise, what experts thought of it, including its potential impact in the coming years, was as polarizing as can be.
The Associated Press asked 23 different delegates, analysts, scientists and activists where they would place COP28 among all climate conferences. More than half said that COP28 was the most important climate talks ever. But a smaller but still large chunk dismissed it as terrible. Some people even emphasized that it was the most significant of the major problems that characterized them.
Thirteen of the 23 said they would be ranked as COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber calls the UAE Consensus in the top five of negotiations and deals. Some claimed it was the most significant since the Paris talks in 2015, which set specific targets to limit temperature increases and was the almost unanimous choice for the most significant climate meeting.
The two weeks of negotiations at COP28 also put into place a new compensation fund for nations hard hit by the impacts of climate change, such as cyclones, floods and drought. Called loss and damage, the fund drew nearly $800 million in pledges during the talks. Nations also agreed to triple renewable fuel use, double energy efficiency and adopted stronger language and commitments to help poorer nations adapt to the worsening extreme weather caused by climate change.
Leaders, mostly non-scientists, said Dubai kept the world’s dim and fading hopes of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures, the goal adopted in Paris. The world has already warmed 1.2 degrees (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit). Many scientific calculations looking at policies and commitments put at least 2.5 to almost 3 degrees of warming (4.3 to almost 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), which could lead to more extremes and make it harder for people adapt.
The negotiators, who spent late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning in special closed-door meetings with al-Jaber before reaching the agreement, were extremely proud, using the word historic frequently in public announcements. When asked where COP28 was in that history, they stayed on message.
“I think it’s very high,” said Zambia’s Green Economy and Environment Minister Collins Nzovu, who led his nation’s delegation. “There is loss and damages. There is a GGA (the adaptation agreement). We talked about fossil fuels, as well. So I think we’re getting somewhere.”
Germany’s special climate envoy Jennifer Morgan, who has attended all these talks as an analyst, as an environmental activist and now as a negotiator, said that it is “very significant” and not only for the list of actions that have been agreed.
“It shows that multilateralism works in a world where we’re having trouble cooperating in a number of different areas,” Morgan told the AP hours after the deal was struck.
Former US special climate envoy Todd Stern, who helped with the Paris trade, put the UAE agreement as number five on his list of landmark climate meetings, first with Paris.
Stern’s colleague at the RMI think tank, CEO Jon Creyts, ranked this year’s market second in Paris “simply because the message is inclusive, across the economy. It also engaged with the private sector and local communities on an unprecedented scale. The US and China were once again united in leadership mode and the voices of the most vulnerable were heard.”
Mohamed Adow from Power Shift from Africa also thought he was second in Paris: “This COP saw the loss and damage fund established, it finally named the cause of the climate crisis – fossil fuels – for the first time and gave pledge to the world to move away. from them, and action is required in this decade. That’s a lot more than we get from most COPs.”
Johan Rockstrom, a scientist who heads the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, praised what happened, but like many others he ranked high, also saw problems.
“Finally, we have a plan the world can work with to phase out oil, coal and gas. It’s not perfect, by a long shot, and it’s not completely aligned with science, but it’s something we can work with,” Rockstrom said in an email. “Will it deliver 1.5°C (even if implemented)? The answer is no.”
The problem is that the agreement has too many loopholes that allow countries to continue producing and even expand the use of fossil fuels, said Jean Su from the Center for Biological Diversity. She also cited a section of the text that allows for “transitional” fuels – a term often used by the industry for natural gas that is less polluting than coal but still contributes to warming.
“It broke a big barrier politically, but it also contained poison pills that could lead to an increase in fossil fuels and climate injustice,” she said.
Joanna Depledge, a historian of climate negotiations at the University of Cambridge in England, said the idea that the language is weak “is somehow a virtue” that the world is in trouble, Depledge said.
“My wonder barely shifted between science and policy, between intent and action, in Dubai,” she said.
The scientists were among those who ranked the UAE market low.
“In the context of these very significant previous COPs, Dubai is a sharp one,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who is also a professor of international affairs.
The language of the agreement was “like making a promise to your doctor that you’ll switch off donuts after being diagnosed with diabetes,” said University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann.
Mann, like former US Vice President Al Gore, called for significant reform of the COP process. For his part, Gore said that it is too early to judge the importance of this COP, but that he is unhappy with the slow progress.
“It’s been 31 years since Rio, and eight years since the Paris Agreement,” Gore said. “We are only now even summoning the political will to name the main problem, a problem that has otherwise been blocked by fossil fuel companies and petrostates.”
Gore and others still have hope, however.
“I think 1.5 is possible,” said Thibyan Ibrahim, who led adaptation negotiations on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States. “You have to make sure that people will do what they said they will do, that the promises will be reached and the promises will be followed through.”
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Sibi Arasu and Jamey Keaten contributed to this report.
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Read more about AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment
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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears
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