Talks at COP28 continue this Tuesday, December 12, as world leaders try to reach a new draft agreement that closes a gap on ending the use of fossil fuels globally. The talks continue after the controversial text presented a day earlier by the summit presidency that urged “reducing”, but not eliminating, the use of hydrocarbons, despite urgent calls from scientists in the face of the acceleration of global warming.
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Overtime to seek a draft agreement at COP28. The summit that takes place in an oil-producing territory has raised controversy due to what activists, scientists and some governments point out as the lack of a credible commitment to reduce global warming.
And in the meeting, which has lasted more than a week, crucial decisions are at stake for the planet and therefore the future of several generations. But the draft text released a day earlier generated strong widespread rejection. At the center of the discord, the call to “reduce”, but not eliminate, the use of fossil fuels.
Delegates at the negotiations in the United Arab Emirates, a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), are divided, with some demanding a call for a “phasing out” of oil, gas and coal as the main cause of global warming, but other leaders only urge a decrease, measures considered insufficient.
Oil and gas will be “pillars of global energy for many decades to come,” even noted the final declaration of a meeting of Arab energy ministers on the eve of the meeting's conclusion.
The draft was also criticized as too weak by participants such as Australia, Canada, Chile, Norway, the European Union and the United States, among the 100-member group demanding a firm commitment to wean the world away from coal, oil and coal. gas.
Reduce consumption and production of fossil fuels?
The previous text suggested eight options that countries “could” take to reduce emissions of polluting gases.
One of them, “reduce both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a fair, orderly and equitable manner, to reach net zero by 2050, before or around 2050.”
This would be the first time in history that a UN climate summit mentions reducing the use of all “fossil fuels.”
However, the measure fell short of the “phasing out” of coal, oil and natural gas, as some participating nations and organizations had hoped. Nor an emphasis on reducing its use in this decade, which, according to scientists, must happen to avoid an escalation of climate change.
Conversations in “a critical phase”
Some African nations indicated that any agreement must require that most developed countries, which have long produced and used fossil fuels, first abandon the stance shown in the previous draft.
“The transition must be based on differentiated pathways to net zero and the gradual reduction of fossil fuels,” said Collins Nzovu, Green Economy Minister of Zambia, who chairs the African Group of countries at the UN climate talks.
Some governments are urging a global action plan to limit climate change quickly enough to prevent more disastrous floods, fatal heat and irreversible changes to the world's ecosystems.
Brazil aims for a more forceful final declaration on the abandonment of hydrocarbons, but that makes it clear that rich and poor nations must do so in different deadlines, stressed the Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva.
Germany's climate envoy, Jennifer Morgan, assured that the talks have entered a “critical phase.” “There is a lot of shuttle diplomacy going on,” she said on platform .
Greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change. Despite the rapid growth of renewable energy, they still produce around 80% of the world's energy.
With Reuters and EFE
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