UvA climate scientist: “Closing COP28 text is full of deliberate ambiguity”
A “historic” agreement was reached Wednesday morning at the 28th United Nations Climate Summit in Dubai: COP28. The world is going to phase out fossil fuels. The wording in the final agreement took some doing, according to climate scientist Bart Verheggen. “In any case, the text reflects that fossil fuels have had their heyday.”
“It was about time that fossil fuels were included in the final text. Countries that are economically heavily dependent on fossil fuels have blocked such wording until now,” says UvA climate scientist Bart Verheggen in a reaction to the final agreement reached today at the climate summit in Dubai (COP28).
After endless negotiations, 198 countries agreed on the latest version of the final text of COP28. The text includes phasing out fossil fuels for the first time. “For that reason, this climate summit can be considered ‘historic,’” Verheggen said.
It became clear over the past two weeks that fossil fuels would be included in the final text of the climate summit. Yet until last Monday, the views of different countries on the future of fossil fuels remained far apart. The climate summit was therefore extended. After the deadline passed on December 12th, negotiations continued late into the night in Dubai to herald the end of fossil fuels in the final declaration. Those negotiations focused on the final wording of, among other things, this bit of text:
“Further recognizes the need for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5 °C pathways and calls on Parties to contribute to the following global efforts....
[...]
Transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science;
[...]”
“What is striking is that there has been a shift in language from last Monday's earlier version,” notes Verheggen. “Then it was still about reducing fossil fuel production and consumption, ‘reducing.’ Now the wording has changed to transitioning away from, indicating a stronger commitment to moving away from fossil fuels entirely. In addition, it says something like ‘calls on parties to,’ so it ‘calls on’ parties to do something. That is the weakest terminology you can use for this. ‘Request parties to’ would have been much more powerful in that sense. Those last few hours of negotiations were really about this kind of language thing.”
The EU, led by EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, would have liked the final text to be more progressive. Still, Hoekstra speaks of the beginning of the end of fossil fuels. Verheggen says: “I can understand that because what is not in the final text is ‘phasing out fossil fuels,’ as the EU would have liked to see. In that respect, the text is a compromise between phasing out fossil fuels, as the EU and small island states wanted, and wishy-washy reduction, which countries like Saudi Arabia wanted. The text is therefore full of intentional ambiguity so that different countries could agree.”
The final wording does, however, move in a new direction: away from fossil fuels. According to Verheggen, this is an important signal to companies and governments. “This text reflects that fossil fuels have had their heyday. The hope is therefore that both policy and major investment decisions will be steered toward cleaner alternatives. With foresight, countries and companies will hopefully then still think ‘Hey, if we want to be future-proof, maybe we'd better bet on the horse that keeps running the longest,’ and that's just not fossil fuel anymore.”
