The world continues to be divided over the role of fossil fuels and how fast they should be phased down or phased out as the COP28, the 28th United Nations Conference of Parties on Climate Change kicks off in Dubai, United Arab Emirate {UAE}. Scheduled to hold from today, November 30 through to December 12, 2023, this year’s conference comes at a critical juncture where urgent and ambitious action is required to mitigate the devastating effects of climate change. With its theme anchored on reducing emissions through climate change mitigation and just energy, building climate resilient societies, and investing in solutions to counter the effects of climate change, COP28 comes, undoubtedly, at a decisive moment for international climate action.
The summit brings together heads of state and governments, world leaders, policymakers, scientists, and activists to address the pressing challenges of climate change. Nigeria will be represented at the event by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is expected to deliver a national statement, highlighting the country’s stance on various thematic issues, including renewable energy and climate financing during the high-level World Leaders’ Summit, which takes place on December 1 and 2, 2023, under the theme, “Unite, Act, and Deliver,” President Tinubu will maximize the opportunity afforded by the platform to advocate increased financial and technical support for developing nations, while reminding developed countries of their public pledge to provide $100 billion annually for support to localized initiatives to address climate change-related challenges.
Mindful of the severe impact of climate change on Nigeria, such as flooding, erosion, desertification, drought, and national security risks arising therefrom, President Tinubu will also urge world leaders to scale up their efforts across all areas and get on track with meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. Additionally, the president is expected to actively explore establishing new and deeper bilateral partnerships to implement Nigeria’s Energy Transition, Article 6 Projects, Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs), Technology Transfer, Capacity Building, and Methane Mitigation.
COP28 is taking place against the backdrop of escalating climate crises and mounting scientific evidence of the need for swift action. In recent years, we have witnessed unprecedented extreme weather events, rising global temperatures, and the irreversible loss of biodiversity. Temperature records are repeatedly being broken by significantly wide margins and climate impacts manifested in unprecedented wildfires, floods, storms and droughts worldwide. Scientists have noted that the earth has been warmer in 2023 than in any other year on record. Clearly, much more has to be done to fast-track the energy transition and reduction of emissions before 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5° C (2.7° F) above pre-industrial levels.
However, the world is failing to get a grip on the existential crisis, due to greed and suspicion. The United Nations has warned that insufficient progress has been made so far and COP28 must set the stage to mitigate the climate crisis.
A new report from UN Climate Change explained that the national climate action plans remain insufficient to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The report showed that even with increased efforts by some countries, much more action is needed now to bend the world’s emissions trajectory further downward and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. It further showed that world governments are taking baby steps to avert the climate crisis. And it stressed why governments must make bold strides forward at COP28 to get on track.
According to the Executive-Secretary of UN Climate Change, Simon Stiell, “the COP28 must be a clear turning point. Governments must not only agree what stronger climate actions will be taken but also start showing exactly how to deliver them.”
The latest science from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicated that greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut 43% by 2030, compared to 2019 levels. This is critical to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century and avoid the worst impacts of climate change, including more frequent and severe droughts, heatwaves and severe rainfall.
A second UN Climate Change report on long-term low-emission development strategies, also released recently, looked at countries’ plans to transition to net-zero emissions by or around mid-century. The report indicated that these countries’ greenhouse gas emissions could be roughly 63% per cent lower in 2050 than in 2019, if all the long-term strategies are fully implemented on time.
The report noted that many net-zero targets remain uncertain and postpone into the future critical action that needs to take place now. Interestingly, the debate about the future of fossil fuels is expected to take center stage at the COP28 climate summit. While the UN and environmental organizations are pushing for language in the final statement to include a timeline on the phase-out of fossil fuels, some of the biggest carbon emitters, including China and India, which continue to rely on coal and boost its production and use, are unlikely to endorse a phase-out of fossil fuels. These two Asian giants will likely be joined by the oil producing nations and some developing countries who are continuously wary of the West’s push for end of fossil fuels. They will argue strongly that the oil and gas industry could still be part of the solution.
Several developed countries are calling for accelerating “the transition away from fossil fuels,” which, they say, “are at the root of this crisis.”
Environmentalists call for urgent action and adoption of texts for a complete phase-out of fossil fuels, while the COP28 President, Sultan Al Jaber – group CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) – calls on the world to unite and support the position that oil and gas industry could be part of the solution, not the problem, in the energy transition.
“This industry can and must help drive the solutions. For too long, this industry has been viewed as part of the problem, that it’s not doing enough and in some cases even blocking progress,” Al Jaber said at the ADIPEC energy conference last month.
As the first CEO designated to be president of any climate summit, Al Jaber, who is is chief executive of the national oil company of OPEC’s third-largest producer, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has stirred already controversy, ahead of the summit with allegations that he secretly used climate summit role to push oil trade with foreign government officials.
The global friction on climate action was further hightened ahead of the COP28 summit by the developing nations rejection of a proposal by the United States and the European Union to establish the climate reparations fund within the World Bank, threatening to abandon negotiations entirely if Washington does not budge on the matter.
According to the Financil Times, the G77 nations plus China are “deadlocked” with the US regarding who will run the fund, which is meant to pay for “loss and damage” incurred by nations considered “particularly vulnerable” to climate change.
The G77+ representatives have warned that the World Bank’s structure could complicate the fund’s ability to receive philanthropic donations or raise money on capital markets, while its focus on loans and other revenue-generating transactions is also a sticking point. Developing nations, often struggling with debt burdens imposed by international institutions in the guise of lifting them out of poverty, want grants, not new financial obligations.
Luis Pedroso Cuesta, the Cuban chair of the G77+, explained that the bloc would only compromise on hosting by an international body like a UN organization or another multilateral development bank.
However, the World Bank, the G77+ has argued, was not an option as it lacks a “climate culture” and drags its feet on important decisions, making it ill-suited to urgent climate crisis.
“We have been confronted with an elephant in the room, and that elephant is the US. We have been faced with a very closed position that it is [the World Bank] or nothing,” Cuesta complained.
Some analysts claim the US is hiding behind the World Bank to distract from its own inability to fulfill its climate finance promises.
The parties are also at odds over financing. The G77+ demands developed nations – specifically the US – pay up. However, despite its status as the world’s top historic emitter of greenhouse gases, Washington has pledged nothing to the fund, instead leaning on China to pony up.
At last year’s COP27 climate summit, 200 countries agreed to establish a loss and damage fund to help developing nations recover from the effects of climate change they had already endured. The US, long a holdout from such proposals, grudgingly consented on condition that it would not equate to compensation.
