A new draft of a global deal from the COP28 climate summit is a “sorely needed improvement” on tackling fossil fuels, WWF has said, after a previous version sparked outcry.
However there is still no specific reference to the phase out of fossil fuels.
The UN’s climate body published the proposed text of the deal early on Wednesday morning after negotiations massively overran in Dubai.
Instead of the phrase “phase out” the proposal discussed “transitioning away” from fossil fuels, beginning this decade.
If adopted, it would mark the first time in three decades of COP climate summits that nations agree on a concerted move away from oil, gas and coal – products that currently account for around 80% of global energy.
Image: COP28 President Sultan al Jaber
Stephen Cornelius, WWF Deputy Global Climate and Energy Lead, said: “This draft is a sorely needed improvement from the last version, which rightly caused outrage.
“The language on fossil fuels is much improved, but still falls short of calling for the full phase out of coal, oil and gas.
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“The text calls on all countries to be guided by IPCC climate science and the aim of limiting global warming to 1.5C, but the guidance is not fully aligned with this aim. For a liveable planet we need a full phase out of all fossil fuels.”
However the draft received a warmer welcome from others.
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Norway’s minister for climate and the environment Espen Barth Eide said: “It is the first time that the world unites around such a clear text on the need to transition away from fossil fuels.
“It has been the elephant in the room. At last we address it head on.”
Melanie Robinson, Global Climate Program Director, World Resources Institute, also welcomed the text saying: “This text makes a clear call for the world to transition away from fossil fuels and accelerate action this decade.
“This would dramatically move the needle in the fight against climate change and overcome immense pressure from oil and gas interests.”
The proposed deal would specifically call for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner… so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.”
The document recognised “the need for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions in line with 1.5C pathways” and called upon nations to take notice.
The actions suggested included:
• Tripling renewable energy capacity globally and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030;
• Rapidly phasing down unabated coal and limiting the permitting of new and unabated coal power generation;
• Accelerating efforts globally towards net zero emissions energy systems, utilising zero and low carbon fuels well before or by around mid-century;
• Transitioning away from fossil fuels in our energy systems, beginning in this decade, in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science;
• Accelerating zero and low emissions technologies, including, inter alia, renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies, such as carbon capture and utilisation and storage particularly in hard to abate sectors, and low carbon hydrogen production, so as to enhance efforts towards substitution of unabated fossil fuels in energy systems.
• Accelerating and substantially reducing non-CO2 emissions, including, in particular, methane emissions globally by 2030;
• Accelerating emissions reductions from road transport through a range of pathways, including development of infrastructure and rapid deployment of zero emission vehicles;
• Phasing out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible.
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2:19
Island nations have expressed their fury after a first draft of a climate pact suggested countries
More than 100 nations had called for the phrase “phase out” to be used regarding fossil fuels in the resolution, but this language was watered down.
Intensive sessions went well into the small hours of Wednesday morning.
Then, the United Arab Emirates-led presidency, fronted by Sultan al Jaber presented delegates from nearly 200 nations a new central document – called the global stocktake – just after sunrise in Dubai.
It’s the second version presented in about two weeks.
Image: A climate activist from India, holds a banner during COP28
Some of the language in previous versions of the draft that most upset nations calling for dramatic action to address climate change was altered.
Actions that had previously been presented as an optional “could” changed to a bit more direct “calls on parties to.”
After a quick de-brief, Union of Concerned Scientists climate and energy policy director Rachel Cleetus said it was “definitely an improvement” over earlier versions that environmental advocacy groups like hers had massively criticised.
The aim of the global stocktake is to help nations align their national climate plans with the Paris agreement.
The moment could have felt so different. It should have felt so different.
It was supposed to come a long time ago, and it was supposed to be the outcome of a peace process, of reconciliation, of understanding, of coexistence and of healing.
If it had happened the right way, then we’d be celebrating two states living alongside each other, coexisting, sharing a capital city.
Image: Destroyed buildings in Gaza, as seen from Israeli side of the border.
Pic: Reuters
Instead, the recognition of Palestine as a state comes out of the rubble of Gaza.
It has come as a last-ditch effort to save all vanishing chances of a Palestinian state.
Essentially, the countries which have recognised Palestine here at the UN in New York are jumping to the endpoint and hope to now fill in the gaps.
Those gaps are huge.
Even before the horror of the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, there was almost no realistic prospect of a two-state solution.
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3:45
Two-state solution in ‘profound peril’
Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and Benjamin Netanyahu’s divide-and-conquer strategy for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza had made reconciliation increasingly hard.
The Hamas attack set back what little hope there was even further, while settlement expansion by the Israelis in the West Bank accelerated since then.
Image: An updated map of Israel and Palestine on the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office website after the UK recognised the state of Palestine
The same questions which have made all this so intractable remain.
How to share a capital city? Who controls Jerusalem’s Old City, where the holy sites are located? If it’s shared, then how?
What happens to the settlements in the West Bank? If land swaps take place, then where? What happens to Gaza? Who governs the Palestinians?
And how are the moderates on both sides emboldened to dominate the discourse and the policy?
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7:55
Two-state solution ‘encourages terrorism’
Hope rests with Trump
Right now, Palestinian extremism is holding out in Gaza with the hostages, and Israeli extremism is dominant on the other side, with Netanyahu now threatening to fully annex the West Bank as a reaction to the recognition declarations at the UN.
It all feels pretty bleak and desperate. If there is cause for some hope, it rests with Donald Trump.
Image: Donald Trump is the only man who can influence Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu (below). Pic: AP
Image: Pic: Reuters
Over the next 24 hours in New York, he will meet key Arab and Muslim leaders from the Middle East and Asia to present his latest plan for peace in Gaza.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan will all participate in the meeting.
Image: Delegates applaud after Emmanuel Macron announced France’s recognition of a state of Palestine. Pic: AP
They will listen to his plan, some may offer peacekeeping troops (a significant development if they do), some may offer to provide funding to rebuild the strip and, crucially, all are likely to tell him that his Abraham Accords plan – to forge ahead with diplomatic normalisation between Muslim nations and Israel – will not happen if Israel pushes ahead with any West Bank annexation.
Netanyahu will address the UN at the end of the week, before travelling to the White House on Monday, where he will tell Trump what he plans to do next in both Gaza and the West Bank.
If Trump wants his Abraham Accords to expand and not collapse – and remember the accords represent a genuine diplomatic game changer for the region, one Trump is rightly proud of – then he will force Netanyahu to stop in Gaza and stop in the West Bank.
Emmanuel Macron was in his element. Touring the UN’s main hall, hugging fellow leaders before taking to the podium.
He was here to make history. France, the country that carved up the Middle East over a hundred years ago along with Britain, finally giving the Palestinians what they believe is long overdue.
Yvette Cooper witnessed the event looking on. Her prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, did the same over the weekend. Foregoing such hallowed surroundings, he beat the French to it by a day.
“Peace is much more demanding, much more difficult than all wars,” said Macron, “but the time has come.”
There were cheers as he recognised the state of Palestine.
The time for what? Not for peace that is for sure. The war in Gaza rages and the West Bank simmers with settler violence against Palestinians.
The French and British believe Israel is actively working against the possibility of a Palestinian state. Attacks on Palestinians, land seizures, the relentless pace of settlement construction is finishing off the chances of a two-state solution to the conflict, so time for unilateral action they believe.
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1:37
Could UK recognition of Palestinian state affect US relationship?
Without the horizon of a state of their own, Palestinians will resort to more and more extreme means.
The Israelis say they have already done so on 7 October and this move only rewards the wicked extremism of Hamas.
But the Netanyahu government has undeniably sought to divide and weaken the Palestinians and has always opposed a Palestinian state.
Israel still has the support of Donald Trump, but opinion polls suggest even in America public sentiment is moving against them. That shift will be hard to reverse.
More than three quarters of the UN’s member nations now recognise a state of Palestine, four out of five of the security council’s permanent members.
The move is hugely problematic. Where exactly is the state, what are its borders, will it now be held to account for its extremists, who exactly is its government?
But more and more countries believe it had to happen. That leaves Israel increasingly ostracised and for a small country in a difficult neighbourhood that is not a good place to be, however strong it is militarily.
China will evacuate 400,000 people over a super typhoon that slammed into the Philippines and Taiwan today.
Super Typhoon Ragasa, which is heading to southeastern China, has sustained winds of 134mph.
Thousands of people have already been evacuated from homes and schools in the Philippines and Taiwan, with hundreds of thousands more to leave their homes in China.
More than 8,200 were evacuated to safety in Cagayan while 1,220 fled to emergency shelters in Apayao, which is prone to flash floods and landslides.
Image: The projected route of Super Typhoon Ragasa, by the Japanese Typhoon Centre. Pic: Japan Meteorological Agency
Domestic flights were suspended in northern provinces hit by the typhoon, and fishing boats and inter-island ferries were prohibited from leaving ports over rough seas.
In Taiwan’s southern Taitung and Pingtung counties, closures were ordered in some coastal and mountainous areas along with the Orchid and Green islands.
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Officials in southern Chinese tech hub, Shenzhen, said they planned to relocate around 400,000 people including people in low-lying and flood-prone areas.
Image: Strong waves batter Basco, Batanes province, northern Philippines, on Monday. (AP Photo/Justine Mark Pillie Fajardo)
Shenzhen’s airport added it will halt flights from Tuesday night.
In Fujian province, on China’s southeast coast, 50 ferry routes were suspended.
According to China’s National Meteorological Centre, the typhoon will make landfall in the coastal area between Shenzhen city and Xuwen county in Guangdong province on Wednesday.
Image: The International Space Station captures the eye of Typhoon Ragasa. (Pic: NASA/Reuters)
A tropical cyclone with sustained winds of 115mph or higher is categorised in the Philippines as a super typhoon.
The term was adopted years ago to demonstrate the urgency tied to extreme weather disturbances.
Ragasa was heading west and was forecast to remain in the South China Sea until at least Wednesday while passing south of Taiwan and Hong Kong, before landfall on the China mainland.
The Philippines’ weather agency warned there was “a high risk of life-threatening storm surge with peak heights exceeding three metres within the next 24 hours over the low-lying or exposed coastal localities” of the northern provinces of Cagayan, Batanes, Ilocos Norte and Ilocos Sur.
Power was cut out on Calayan island and in the entire northern mountain province of Apayao, west of Cagayan, disaster officials said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from Ragasa, which is known locally in the Philippines as Nando.
On Monday, Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos Jr suspended government work and all classes on Monday in the capital, Manila, and 29 provinces in the main northern Luzon region.