The ongoing climate change conference, COP28, in Dubai, looks set to close with a deal demanding a global transition away from fossil fuels, amidst deep concerns among participants about its implementation.
The latest draft of the final communique, published Wednesday morning, includes much stronger language on moving away from the dirtiest sources of energy.
The text, if agreed upon, would be the first time such an agreement is reached in nearly three decades of climate change negotiations.
Climate analysts believe the new text calling for a transition away is in line with a target to reach climate neutrality by the middle of the century.
However, there are speculations that the deal is subject to Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries agreeing to the wording.
This year’s COP which began on 30 November was expected to conclude on 12 December, however, the lingering contentious issues such as fossil fuel phase-out/down, poor financing of Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) and order weak wordings contained in several text draft have pushed the negotiation forward by extra hours.
Throughout the night, clusters of delegates wandering at the COP’s Expo centre after an initial disappointing text were hoping that the final wording could be strengthened.
For a developing country like Nigeria, whose economy largely depends on revenue generated from the oil sector, the pivotal question is what will its alternative economic driver as countries of the world begin to shift to cleaner energy?
Nigeria has already rejected the phase-out or phase-down call.
Reactions
Reacting to the new text published Wednesday morning, Teresa Anderson, ActionAid International, said: “While the new text sends a signal that the fossil industry’s days are numbered, the wealthiest countries have clearly refused point-blank to offer any new finance to help developing countries make these targets a reality on the ground.”
She said rich countries should remember there’s no such thing as a free climate target.
“This text means that lower-income countries already being pushed into debts by the cost of climate disasters may be forced to make impossible choices between economic security and climate action,” she noted.
She explained further: “The text has many loopholes and offers several gifts to the greenwashers, with mentions of carbon capture and storage, so-called transition fuels, nuclear power and carbon markets. Overall, it maps a rocky road towards a fossil-free future.”
On his part, Eduardo Giesen, Regional Coordinator DCJ, Latin America and the Caribbean, said “Once again, at COP28, the rich countries in complicity with the world’s economic elites, sacrifice the opportunity for real decarbonisation and a transition based on justice, equity, and sustainability.”
Through a terrible text, the climate activist said with misleading concepts like “unabated fossils”— that wealthy nations promote the continuity of fossil fuels extractivist and false solutions.
“Carbon capture and storage, hydrogen production, nuclear energy and others, increase climate vulnerability and lead to the violation of the rights of communities and nature in the Latin American and the Caribbean region as well as the entire Global South,”
Nnimmo Bassey, HOMEF’s executive director, said finally the COP grudgingly acknowledges that there must be a “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems.”
He described the move as “a major step” but that the COP has not set concrete pathways and deadlines for this to happen.
He said the COP still refuses to understand that fossil fuels are also a big climate issue in areas other than energy.
“The stubborn continued dependence on fossil fuels is based on the mythological conviction on the permanence of the petroleum civilization. The COP must recognise that the time has come to halt the expansion of sacrifice zones, recognise the real burden of climate debt and call for the fossilisation of fossil fuels to give the planet and all beings on it a much-needed sabbath,” he said.
He added that false solutions such as carbon markets, carbon capture/storage and other geoengineering models will merely compound the looming climate chaos.
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