COP28 Climate Summit Gets Underway Amid Tensions

World lead­ers and del­e­ga­tions from nearly 200 coun­tries are con­ven­ing in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to dis­cuss action on cli­mate change in a year of extreme weather around the globe.

The main objec­tive of COP28, the 28^th annual United Nations cli­mate change con­fer­ence, is to sus­tain the goal among the world’s nations of keep­ing global tem­per­a­ture rise below 2 ºC – and prefer­ably below 1.5 ºC – this cen­tury com­pared to pre-indus­trial lev­els as stip­u­lated by the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015.

IPCC, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has indi­cated that achiev­ing the 1.5‑degree tar­get is cru­cial to staving off the most dam­ag­ing effects of cli­mate change.

However, based on recent sci­en­tific esti­mates, the aver­age global tem­per­a­ture will likely exceed the 1.5 ºC limit and rise some­where between 2.4 ºC and 2.7 ºC above pre-indus­trial lev­els by 2100 under cur­rent poli­cies.

Meteorologists have also warned that 2023 is expected to be the hottest year ever recorded on the planet, while 2024 will likely set even higher tem­per­a­ture records.

Meanwhile, accord­ing to a study by British NGO Save the Children released ahead of COP28, more than 27 mil­lion chil­dren in 12 coun­tries expe­ri­enced acute food inse­cu­rity in 2022 due to extreme weather events, which have been linked with cli­mate change.

However, COP28 became the scene of con­tention even before its offi­cial open­ing of oper­a­tions last Thursday.

The appoint­ment of Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, the chief exec­u­tive of ADNOC, the state-owned oil com­pany of the United Arab Emirates, to chair the sum­mit has been widely crit­i­cized by envi­ron­men­tal­ists and other inter­est groups.

“This appoint­ment goes beyond putting the fox in charge of the hen­house,” said Teresa Anderson, the Global Lead on Climate Justice at ActionAid.

“The U.N. Climate Summit is sup­posed to be a space where the world holds pol­luters to account, but increas­ingly, it’s being hijacked by those with oppos­ing inter­ests,” Anderson added. ​“Like last year’s sum­mit, we’re increas­ingly see­ing fos­sil fuel inter­ests tak­ing con­trol of the process and shap­ing it to meet their own needs.”

In addi­tion, doc­u­ments seen by the BBC report­edly show that Sultan al-Jaber is plan­ning to use the COP28 cli­mate sum­mit as a vehi­cle to nego­ti­ate fos­sil fuel deals with other coun­tries and pri­vate oil com­pa­nies.

Al-Jaber dis­missed the alle­ga­tions, stat­ing that cli­mate change can only be addressed if oil and gas are part of the dis­cus­sions at the cli­mate sum­mit.

The U.A.E. said that the doc­u­ments aired by the BBC are inac­cu­rate and that any pro­fes­sional talks about oil and gas tak­ing place at the COP28 would be only on a ​“pri­vate level.”

Asked by jour­nal­ists to com­ment on al-Jaber’s alleged secret agenda for new oil deals, United Nations sec­re­tary-gen­eral António Guterres said, ​“I can’t believe it is true.”

A pal­pa­ble dis­cord among par­tic­i­pants is also evi­dent at COP28 over using fos­sil fuels for energy pro­duc­tion, which is con­sid­ered the main source of green­house emis­sions.

Summit chair Sultan al-Jaber called for a grad­ual reduc­tion (phase-down) in their use, while a coali­tion of the E.U. bloc and other coun­tries is push­ing for a com­plete phase-out of fos­sil fuels and a switch to renew­able energy.

“Our ambi­tion is to really phase out fos­sil fuels as soon as pos­si­ble and have lan­guage that does jus­tice to that cause,” said Wopke Hoestra, the European com­mis­sioner for Climate Action.

However. offi­cials from oil-pro­duc­ing coun­tries attrib­uted the bloc’s eager­ness to phase out fos­sil fuels to the fact that the E.U. coun­tries are minor oil pro­duc­ers and almost entirely depen­dent on oil imports to cover their energy needs.

COP28 attend­ing nations are also expected to approve releas­ing the first ​‘loss and dam­age’ pay­ments, agreed at COP27 last year, to assist devel­op­ing coun­tries impacted by cli­mate change.

• BBC
• Naftemporiki
• In