More than 70,000 delegates are expected at the Dubai summit, where the 28th UN climate change conference will be held. The summit takes place in a rarefied atmosphere, derived from the very choice of the venue, the United Arab Emirates, a country with strong oil interests. However, UN Secretary General António Guterres has stressed the need for nothing to cloud or undermine the conference. "Leaders must act to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, protect people from climate chaos, and end the era of fossil fuels." These are 10 key issues.
It is estimated that a third of global food production could be threatened if temperatures continue to rise at the current rate. Agriculture is also a major contributor to the climate crisis: methane – a powerful greenhouse gas – comes from livestock and nitrous oxide – another greenhouse gas – is generated from the use of fertilizers. Furthermore, when crop fields replace forests, wetlands and peatlands, carbon sinks (which neutralize, fix and remove emissions from the atmosphere) are lost. However, agricultural policies have taken little into account agricultural production and food. This time, leaders will be asked to sign a special declaration on food while the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) will for the first time establish a roadmap for how a growing population can feed itself while maintains within the temperature limit of 1.5°C.
Health is another normally neglected and deeply related to the climate crisis and will be the center of attention at COP28, with a day dedicated to this issue. Heat waves are so intense that they threaten workers with heat stroke; Floods and droughts threaten people with disease and water shortages, while vector-borne infections such as malaria, dengue and Zika, which used to flourish only in some regions, are expanding. Doctors and health experts are increasingly concerned about the climate crisis: a recent report in the medical journal Lancet found that the health of billions of people was at risk.
Methane is, after carbon dioxide (CO2), the second factor that contributes the most to climate change. Tackling methane emissions could help slow the rise in global temperatures by around 0.3ºC in the coming decades. Methane is a greenhouse gas about 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide but it decomposes much faster in the atmosphere. Methane emissions produced by human activities come from the agricultural sector, waste and the energy sector. The problem is that these leaks have been increasing, and operations in facilities where hydrocarbons are worked (from where the gas escapes) are among the main sources. There will be a special meeting to address the methane problem, in which countries and oil companies will be asked to establish plans to address the problem.
Holding a climate summit in a major oil-producing country is a contradiction for many.
The president of the COP 28 conference, Ahmed al Yaber, is at the center of the storm following accusations that the United Arab Emirates had planned to use conference meetings to forge agreements for their own benefit. Al Yaber is also president of the United Arab Emirates' state oil giant, Adenoc, and according to leaked documents, his team was preparing meetings with at least 27 foreign governments before the Conference summit.
The documents included some agenda items such as "to jointly evaluate international LNG [liquefied natural gas] opportunities" in Mozambique, Canada and Australia. The Dubai COP team has rejected any implication of conflict of interest and stressed "Sultan al-Jaber is singularly focused on the COP and achieving ambitious and transformative climate outcomes."
The former president of the Republic of Ireland, Mary Robinson, has expressed concern about apparently private agreements on the sidelines of the conference: "It is very worrying because perceptions matter and there was already a perception that the Presidency was a little compromised and this can make make the situation even more difficult... We don't have time for a bad COP.
Extreme climate events sometimes hit countries with such serious damage that they mortgage their development and wipe out a prosperity that is sometimes achieved with great effort.
To respond to these tragedies, last year, at the Egypt summit, rich countries accepted for the first time the creation of a fund to repair the losses and damage that will be irremediably caused in the poorest nations, exposed and vulnerable to change. climate. Throughout this year, a transition committee has been studying who should govern this fund, what resources it can count on, and which countries should finance it.
The idea is gaining ground that the new fund will be hosted by the World Bank and new emerging economies and oil-rich nations are also encouraged to contribute. Possible sources of new funding include one-time taxes on oil and gas profits, taxes on shipping, and levies on frequent air travelers.
This year, countries do not have to present new national contributions or climate action plans (they have to present them in 2025). However, this is the first year since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 in which countries will make an official global assessment of the progress (or setbacks) of their policies to reduce emissions. We know the answer: not enough progress is being made in reducing emissions to contain warming to below 1.5ºC compared to pre-industrial levels. Therefore, there are no surprises in this evaluation.
Without bitterness, this review (whose results or conclusions must be reflected in the final agreement) is a lever, an opportunity to relaunch action and force countries to be more ambitious in their new plans.
Governments must present these plans every 5 years (with à la carte voluntary goals on gas reduction but with a scheduled list of actions to be undertaken). The deficiencies revealed should serve to specify new actions that must reorient today's action and future ambition (pointing out new measures, correction of others, perhaps new taxes or those responsible for them...)
One of the star debates is how the planet should abandon its addiction to fossil fuels, probably the “most complex” issue, according to the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU.
In 30 years of climate talks, there have hardly been any relevant agreements on this issue. It was not until 2021 in Glasgow that it was agreed to accelerate efforts "for the gradual reduction of coal energy generated without mitigation measures." This same text was repeated last year in Sham el Sheikh (Egypt). Last year at COP27, more than 80 countries tried but failed to pass a decision to phase out all fossil fuels (including oil and gas).
At this year's conference the battle will continue and may center on the language used: will a “total elimination” of all fossil fuels be agreed upon, as environmental organizations demand?, or will the more moderate expression “be opted for?” phasing out fossil fuels without carbon capture,” something many see as more feasible?
“No carbon capture” is the addition introduced by countries that say they are in favor of the progressive elimination of fossil fuels but excluding those fuels or technologies whose emissions can be sequestered (and which, therefore, are prevented from being dumped). to the atmosphere).
These countries find their salvation in CO2 capture and storage technologies, systems tested in thermal plants and other hydrocarbon facilities that capture the gases before expelling them, burying them and neutralizing them, but whose effectiveness is disputed.
By introducing this nuance, the aim is to legitimize and prestige the use of technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) to eliminate emissions from the atmosphere once they have been produced by the burning of fossil fuels.
However, the technologies available are “on a limited scale”, since nowhere in the world is the technology used on a commercial scale, after two decades of development. Furthermore, it is extremely expensive and only feasible in some geological formations.
The EU notes that they should be used mainly in sectors where it is “difficult” to reduce emissions and maintains that “these absorption technologies should be aimed at contributing to negative emissions on a global scale” (as an additional effort) and “should not be used to delay climate action in sectors where viable, effective and cost-effective mitigation alternatives are available, especially in these crucial ten years.
Some countries would like to use the technology to allow their oil and gas operations to continue operating. However, scientists warn that this option is not realistic.
Civil society activist groups fear that oil-producing countries, including the United Arab Emirates, will try to use it as a smokescreen to hide their support for fossil fuels. The UK is also making a £1 billion bet on these systems.
The EU is in favor of adopting at the COP the agreement in favor of a progressive elimination of production without mitigation measures and consumption of energy from fossil fuels. He also wants this consumption to “reach its peak in this decade” and for the peak of emissions to be reached no later than 2025. If not, he does not see it as feasible to achieve the 1.5ºC goal.
He also sees it as important for the energy sector “to be predominantly free of fossil fuels well before 2050” and to achieve, in the 2030s, “a fully or predominantly decarbonized global electricity system, leaving no room for new energy production based on of coal.”
On the other hand, the EU is in favor of the progressive elimination as soon as possible of subsidies for fossil fuels that do not allow us to combat energy poverty or achieve a just transition.
China continues to build new coal-fired power plants despite China promising at the Glasgow conference that CO2 emissions would peak in 2030. Xi said China would “strictly control coal-fired power generation projects.”
China, the country with the most emissions in the world, "dramatically accelerated" the approval of licenses for coal plants in 2022, after the supply problems experienced the previous year, when there were severe power outages, with factory closures and episodes of unheated homes. All this has increased the importance of a stable energy supply. In fact, many of its politicians see coal as the main guarantee of energy security while criticism of the country's investments in coal is frowned upon, experts say. China approved 50.4 GW of new coal-fired power in the first half of 2023. And in 2022, construction began on 50 GW of coal-fired capacity, six times more than the rest of the world combined. The massive addition of coal sector capacity does not necessarily mean that carbon emissions will increase in China, experts say, if the closure of obsolete plants accelerates, if clean energy continues to grow and if electricity demand stabilizes.
