As Cop28 in Dubai enters its final hours, the emotional weight of the moment is hard to bear. I find myself thinking of a six-year-old boy called Desmond I met in Turkana county, Kenya, who died from severe acute malnutrition on the same day. His death was the result of a climate-induced drought that has left millions of people on the brink of starvation in the Horn of Africa.
I want the negotiators deciding the outcome of Cop28 to know Desmond’s story. Because in the end, the climate crisis is not about pledges, statistics, reports or activists. It’s about human suffering and ruined lives. It’s about death.
Right now in Dubai, the world’s countries are negotiating what to do about fossil fuels. Some governments, such as those from small-island nations, are leading the push. Some, including the likes of Saudi Arabia, are blocking any meaningful progress.
Over the weekend, there was a glimmer of hope. It looked like an agreement on phasing out all fossil fuels might just be possible. However, the latest draft of the global stocktake, released on Monday, showed a text that has been gutted of all references to oil or gas. References to “phasing out fossil fuels” have also been obliterated. The weak fossil-fuel cuts it does refer to are now presented as optional for countries – using the word “could” rather than “must”. There is also no mention of the need for developed countries to help finance the energy transition in developing countries.
Selfish, short-sighted actors are once again sabotaging our collective fate in the name of profit. We know this: last week, Opec sent a letter to its oil-producing member countries asking them to block any progress on fossil fuel phase-out.
It hardly needs repeating at this point, but the science is very clear. The only credible way to keep 1.5ºC alive is through a fast and just phase-out of all fossil fuels.
The wording of the current draft also opens up loopholes for more pollution, like the undefined word “abatement”. We know that such language will tacitly condone increases in fossil-fuel production for years to come, with the pretence of relying on fairytale technologies such as carbon capture and storage. The Oxford Smith School said last week that a route to net zero by 2050 that is heavily reliant on carbon capture and storage would cost world governments $30tn more than a route relying on renewables and energy efficiency. It is a distraction designed to keep the oil and gas industry in business and receiving state subsidies.
As time runs out in Dubai, it feels as though the lifeboat of our shared humanity is sinking. And fossil fuels are also not the entire story here. The “home” the majority of us will return to when Cop28 is over is not the home we once felt safe in. Many of our homelands are already being decimated by extreme weather. Huge changes are already with us and even more are inevitable – even if countries had agreed to a fossil fuel phase-out. So we must adapt.
Cop28 needs to be the Cop that finally delivers a global goal on adaptation – a map for the world’s attempts at adaptation and clarity on how we will fund them. At an absolute minimum, developed countries need to double adaptation finance to $40bn per year by 2025. This is a commitment they made two years ago in Glasgow, and which they are still far from fulfilling. Even through a self-interested lens, this makes basic economic sense. We know that every dollar spent on adaptation saves $6 in loss and damage.
In the final hours of Cop28, progressive states and activists need to fight with all we have for a phase-out of all fossil fuels, without distractions. We also need to see a real and tangible outcome on adaptation. They are connected. And neither can be sacrificed for the other.
This will be hard. I know that it is difficult for nearly 200 nations to put their respective self interests aside and work for the common good. And I know that it may feel dark right now. The only light we have is from the cameras of 4,000 representatives of the world’s media.
But to those at Cop28, I say this: people around the world are watching you – including people who have watched their children die as a direct result of your decades of inaction.
There is nowhere to hide.
Vanessa Nakate is a climate activist, Unicef goodwill ambassador and author of A Bigger Picture: My fight to bring a new African voice to the climate crisis
