There are just over 24 hours left until COP28, according to its agenda, closes, although, as usual, the climate summit, which this year is being held in Dubai (United Arab Emirates), will be extended a few more hours.
Negotiations continue behind closed doors with drafts full of technicalities, clichés and bombastic expressions to please all parties. Paragraphs full of conditional verbs and with semi-colons placed with extreme precision, because any interpretation can change the legislation of a country.
During the last two weeks in Dubai many topics have been discussed, but the COP28 plenary sessions have focused on several concepts that cause the greatest tensions to put the finishing touches on a new Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
World Balance. It is a mandate from the COP21 in Paris by which all countries adhering to the pact must present plans for voluntary emissions cuts to prevent global warming of the planet from exceeding 2 degrees. COP28, also set in Paris, is the summit at which the plans put in place to date must be reviewed and an evaluation of the decarbonization roadmaps that have already shown that, with the current scenario, global warming It is dangerously close to 3 degrees.
1.5 degrees. It is the symbol of the global climate fight or, like the president of COP28, Sultan Al-Jaber, the “star that guides us.” It is not a direct measure of temperature, but rather an indicator of how much the planet has warmed and cooled compared to the average for the period 1850-1900, just before the expansion of fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels. They can be divided into three: coal, natural gas and oil. According to the United Nations, all of them comprise 80% of the world's current primary energy demand. When burned, they release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that, in turn, trap heat in our atmosphere, making them primarily responsible for global warming and climate change.
Reduce or eliminate. It is the great discussion of this summit, the verb that precedes the word fossil fuels. Reducing fuel use means reducing it, but it is not known to what extent. Eliminating means ending them progressively. The choice of these terms comes from English, the language in which the negotiations take place: phase down (progressive reduction) or phase out (progressive elimination). This is the point where the positions are opposed. This Sunday, Al-Jaber sat down all the ministers face to face to see the positions
Unabated or abated. They are terms inherited from the COP26 in Glasgow, but they do not have a direct translation into Spanish as a concept. The translation is unabated and refers to the emissions that are produced when generating this energy. If the progressive disappearance of fossil fuels is decided without ceasing, it could be allowed to continue using coal plants that have a system for capturing and storing their emissions so that they do not end up in the atmosphere.
Carbon capture. It is a technology defended by many sectors of the economy that have difficult decarbonization. It is an expensive and rarely used technique that consists of capturing emissions from a facility and storing them underground or in the deep sea.
Loss and damage. It is the great achievement so far of COP28. He first day of the summit A fund was launched with more than 700 million so that the countries most vulnerable to climate change can face the consequences of global warming.
Adaptation. Countries in the global south are calling for more funding to moderate potential harms or benefit from opportunities associated with climate change.
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