COP28 - UN climate conference: "beginning of the end" for fossil fuels?
The global community has been trying to get a grip on global warming at climate conferences for almost 30 years. Despite this, it was only now, in an oil country of all places, that the main driver of the crisis - fossil fuels - was even mentioned. A "day of great joy", as Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock announced after the decision in Dubai?
Some celebrated the "beginning of the end" of the fossil fuel era. However, many believe that a consistent fight against the crisis must look different.
Although all countries have set themselves the goal of saying goodbye to fossil fuels, the two-week meeting failed to establish a clear roadmap for phasing out coal, oil and gas - even though more than 100 countries would have supported this. Instead, backdoors were left for controversial technologies and formulations that give the states a lot of leeway as to what they actually derive from them.
Tears of joy and indignation at the same time
"The course correction we needed has not been achieved," said Samoa's representative, Anne Rasmussen, visibly outraged on behalf of the particularly threatened island states - a few minutes after conference president Sultan Al-Jaber had banged his gavel on the table and applauded the supposedly unanimous result. The representatives of the island states were not even in the plenary at this point. While others shed tears of joy, the delegates from the islands later shed tears for other reasons.
"We cannot return to our islands with the message that this process has betrayed us," said Rasmussen, explaining that the group of states still had to coordinate. Several delegates spontaneously stood up and clapped. A sign of solidarity, but without consequences. The Emirati host al-Jaber thanked the delegates for speaking and announced his intention to reflect on the matter. However, it was too late to change the decision.
Unequal power at the negotiating table
The dramatic end in Dubai highlights a fundamental conflict at world climate conferences: The countries that are already hardest hit by the escalating crisis do not have much negotiating power and are often bypassed. Yet they suffer the most from the increasingly severe and frequent droughts, heatwaves, storms and floods.
In contrast, the lobby for coal, oil and gas was powerful and in droves in Dubai. According to a data analysis by activists, at least 2456 fossil fuel representatives were accredited at the UN meeting - four times more than in Egypt last year. Remarkably, the lobbyists received more access passes than all delegations from the ten countries most vulnerable to global warming combined. Somalia, Chad, Niger, Guinea-Bissau, Micronesia, Tonga, Eritrea, Sudan, Liberia and the Solomon Islands together only provided 1509 delegates. The halls and pavilions were virtually "flooded" with lobbyists, complained Lili Fuhr from the US organization Center for International Environment Law.
Pressure was also built up behind the scenes, as revealed by an incendiary letter from the oil cartel Opec leaked by the Guardian, which bluntly called for the blocking of ambitious resolutions to phase out coal, oil and gas.
Dubious dual role of the host
Environmental activists suspected that this would also go down well with conference chairman Al-Jaber, who is also head of the state oil company Adnoc. After all, Adnoc is also planning to invest billions in fossil fuel projects - "a surefire recipe for accelerating catastrophic climate change", according to a report by the organizations Urgewald, Lingo, Reclaim Finance and Banktrack. In fact, the Adnoc Group says it plans to increase its oil production by 25 percent by 2030.
And so it goes on: next year's World Climate Conference will once again be held in an oil state, namely Azerbaijan. This is "highly problematic", said Christoph Bals, Political Director of Germanwatch. There are also major problems with corruption there.
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Source: www.stern.de
