Before COP28 started, I wrote that I hoped the conference President’s affiliations with Adnoc (the UAE national oil company) wouldn’t play a role – it didn’t take long for that hope to be dashed on the rocks of conflict of interest, did it?
But, of course, it goes beyond one person’s impact. The success of the talks relies on the collective efforts, convictions, and ultimately actions of a vast number of people, governments and other actors. And the fact that not everyone at the conference is pulling in the same direction certainly doesn’t make achieving that success any easier.
Perhaps it was just the more rigorous registration rules making COP28 delegates who work for the coal, oil and gas industries and related organisations more visible, or maybe the numbers really were up from 600 at COP27 to nearly 2,500 at this year’s conference. Either way, the fact that more delegates fit this description than the total number of those representing the 10 most vulnerable nations of the world (a total of just over 1,500 delegates) is extraordinary.
It would be right to ask how the talks can fail to be adversely influenced in achieving their stated aims with such obvious conflicts of interest in play. It’s a major disappointment that, having required official observers to more fully disclose their interests, the UN have failed to apply the recommendations of work dating from June 2022 that suggested a range of solutions to create more equitable access and participation. It’s also telling that although 130 countries supported the inclusion of “phasing out” fossil fuels, this was strongly opposed by those countries with vested interests and the final wording was the far weaker “transitioning away” from fossil fuels. I can’t help but wonder about the influence of so many fossil fuel lobbyists on that outcome.
A lot has been made of the fact that the final decision text refers to fossil fuels at all – the first time in the 30-year history of the conference. But, I’m not at all convinced that it’s a meaningful epoch if what it says about fossil fuels isn’t effective.
There is a stark contrast between some of the context-setting wording and those parts of the text which countries will, or perhaps will not, act on:
The conference “expresses serious concern” about global temperatures and the impacts of climate change in 2023, and “notes with alarm and serious concern” the various findings of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, yet, it also includes wording which effectively allows countries to retain fossil fuel subsidies depending on their definition of whether they are ‘inefficient’ or not, and green-lighting the continued use of gas, presumably on the basis it’s not as bad as coal (the “phasing down” of which the text suggests should be accelerated).
Of course, irrespective of the wording, it only matters at all if countries do what they say they’re going to do so perhaps the most worrying aspect of the text is that the conference “notes with concern” that countries aren’t implementing their policies rapidly enough – so even if the text included measures which aligned with 1.5C (which it doesn’t), our track record of actually implementing them isn’t good. And that’s a problem.
All in all, the final text is certainly an improvement over drafts which appeared earlier in the conference, but there’s no doubt it could have been significantly stronger, gone further, and driven much more rapid change.
All the more reason for us to not sit back and wait for policy and regulation to force action but to recognise the scale of, and opportunity presented by the challenge, and get on with it ourselves.
What are your thoughts?
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