The hosts of the Cop28 climate summit will make a last-ditch attempt on Wednesday to forge a fresh deal on the future of the climate, after their original attempt was roundly rejected by rich and many poor countries.
A new text laying out a potential deal on fossil fuels was under preparation for more than 24 hours, as the fortnight-long talks stretched nearly a day past their official deadline of Tuesday morning in Dubai.
Sultan Al Jaber, president of the talks on behalf of the United Arab Emirates, engaged in an intense round of shuttle diplomacy throughout Tuesday and had meetings with heads of delegation singly and in groups planned until 3am on Wednesday.
Nations were still deeply divided over whether to phase out fossil fuels, after an initial text proposed “reducing both production and consumption of fossil fuels”. This was couched merely as one of a list of options that countries “could” act on, however, which was unacceptably weak to many vulnerable countries. A group of countries described the text as “a death warrant” for small island states.
The UK government came in for sharp criticism from activists and some delegations on Tuesday when the Guardian revealed that the climate minister, Graham Stuart, had been recalled to London for the Rwanda vote. Following widespread outrage, Rishi Sunak ordered him back to Dubai for the final hours.
Rich countries have failed to show the leadership necessary to solve the climate crisis, and many are too mired in their own hypocrisy over fossil fuels to break the impasse at Cop28, climate justice advocates have told the Guardian.
Saudi Arabia and a few allied countries are in a small minority that have publicly raised strong objections to the inclusion of any reference to reducing the production and consumption of fossil fuels in the text of a potential deal.
Many developed countries are publicly pushing hard for a phase-out of coal, oil and gas – but with caveats such as “unabated” or just coal, in the case of the US.
In contrast, many in the developing world – despite their desire to see global temperatures limited to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – say any commitment to phasing out fossil fuels must be “fair, funded, and fast”, with the rich polluting countries transitioning first.
Some, such as the African group, would be content to see key elements of the current draft stand, with only optional action included and no fossil fuel phase-out or phase-down. “The GST [global stocktake] outcome must ensure that the energy transition will be just, equitable and orderly, as such the transition should be premised on differentiated pathways to net zero and fossil fuel phase-down,” said Collins Nzovu, the African group chair.
Mohamed Adow, the director of the Nairobi-based energy and climate thinktank Power Shift Africa, said the money was key. “Rich countries say they want a global phase-out of fossil fuels, but they are refusing to fund it. There is simply not enough in the current text for developing countries to believe there will be finance to help them decarbonise.”
He said African countries would be willing to side with the rich world but only if they received assurances that their transition to renewable energy would be fully funded, and if there was clear language to differentiate between the phase-out dates for rich and poor countries.
Campaigners also stressed the need for rich countries to acknowledge their greater responsibility for emissions. Meena Raman, a climate policy expert at her 16th Cop with the Third World Network, said: “The global stocktake has been full of dishonesty and hypocrisy from the global north, especially the US and umbrella group of countries, who are suddenly claiming to be climate champions talking about the 1.5C north star, while refusing to talk about their historical emissions and historical responsibility.
“This is a super-red line for the United States. They don’t want to talk about equity, and insist that the text refers to all parties without any differentiation.
“They are setting up the developing countries for failure so they can blame, and show themselves as climate champions even as they are expanding fossil fuel production and consumption … This is hypocrisy, it’s climate colonialism, and climate injustice.”
The actions of rich countries in pursuing fossil fuels themselves reeked of hypocrisy, Adow added. The US is the biggest oil and gas producer in the world; the UK has vowed to “max out” the North Sea and is building a new coalmine; the EU is sourcing additional gas supplies from around the world.
“We know these are crocodile tears from the UK and the US on phasing out fossil fuels,” said Adow. “The US is the ultimate petrostate. If they were so opposed to fossil fuels, why do they seem to love them so much?”
Asad Rehman, the founder of the Global Campaign for Climate Justice, said: “The hypocrisy of rich countries claiming it’s a death sentence for small islands, whilst spending the last decades refusing to cut their emissions and announcing huge fossil expansion is the real death sentence. It’s a toxic circle: both a lack of ambition and years of saying one thing and obstructing behind closed doors.”
Brandon Wu, the director of policy at ActionAid USA, said rich countries must fulfil their promises: “It’s understandably very difficult for developing countries to commit to a fossil fuel phase-out when they simply have no reason to believe that international support will be forthcoming. Rich countries have to rebuild the trust by giving some much clearer signals that finance and technology transfer will be coming.”
Rebecca Newsom, the head of politics at Greenpeace UK, said it was “no wonder” that many African countries felt this way. “Countries like the UK continue to go on a drilling frenzy for new oil, gas and coal, and rich historically polluting countries have consistently failed to deliver – or blocked progress – on the new public finance urgently needed to support developing countries with climate action,” she said.
According to analysis by the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network and Oil Change International, 127 countries at the talks had called for or endorsed a decision to phase out fossil fuels at Cop28, up from 80 countries just a year earlier.
Newsom said there was still a chance for rich countries to take a different direction. She said: “What these dynamics make clear is that to really unlock the talks in Dubai, countries like the UK, US, EU, Japan, Canada and Australia need to urgently get their own house in order and significantly ramp up the public finance needed to deliver the genuinely fair and ambitious package that the world wants and needs.”
