Amid all the noise around the COP28 climate talks in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, it can be easy to lose sight of the negotiations and the core legal process at the summit.
This process often fades into the background, hidden from sight in closed-door negotiating rooms and late-night sessions, where diplomats – and then ministers – hash out their disagreements.
However, COP28 will culminate in a set of legal decisions, under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its associated Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement.
This set of legal texts lies at the heart of COP28 – and every other UN climate summit.
Negotiations over these documents are often fraught – and always closely fought. They can even be tripped up by a single misplaced word. A “shall” in place of a “should” – denoting a binding versus a non-binding requirement – nearly derailed the Paris Agreement in 2015.
Carbon Brief always takes a close interest in this process, attempting to scrutinise the hundreds of pages of draft negotiating text, as they evolve over the course of each two-week summit.
In order to keep track of these negotiating texts at COP28, Carbon Brief has created the interactive table below, which will be constantly updated, in close-to-real time.
Reading from left to right, the first column in the table shows the topic of each document, from, for example, the loss and damage fund through to the global goal on adaptation or the global stocktake.
The table then shows the date and time of publication, the number of pages, brackets and options. Carbon Brief may add notes to highlight key elements in each draft. Finally, the table lists the document type and gives the relevant web link.
Readers can search for keywords using the text box. Additional features will be added to the table in due course.
Typically, a draft negotiating text might begin its journey as a loose series of bullet points, written by a pair of negotiators appointed to lead a particular part of the talks.
These documents might be described as an “elements text” or – in the case of the first draft of the COP28 text on the global stocktake – as “building blocks”.
Later, text is turned into formal legal language. At this point, areas of disagreement are denoted with [square brackets], meaning the bracketed text has not yet been agreed by all parties.
Alternatively, the negotiating text might set out a series of “options” or “alt” text, with parties able to choose between a number of different passages that offer alternative formulations of words.
Importantly, the lexicon of UN legal drafting is carefully calibrated and includes a “crescendo” of words, depending on how strong the drafters would like it to be.
In Glasgow at COP26, for example, there was a period of confusion over whether the word “request” was a stronger instruction than “urge” (it is).
Where agreement proves difficult to find, parties or the negotiators leading each process may propose “bridging text”. This is an attempt to find a way through apparently incompatible preference on the way towards a final “landing zone” that will be acceptable to all parties.
Although it is not a foolproof measure, texts with many square brackets or options tend to be an indicator of a high level of disagreement between parties. For this reason, the table above is colour-coded according to the number of outstanding brackets under each agenda item.
On the other hand, some of the most difficult-to-resolve issues may revolve around a single word or passage of text.
Disagreements over one topic may get caught up in the “four-dimensional spaghetti” of countries’ competing priorities, with these potentially being used as bargaining chips or tradeoffs as part of a wider “package” of agreement over multiple issues.
At this point, it is common for parties to complain that an individual text – or an overall package – lacks “balance”, meaning their priorities get insufficient attention relative to the priorities of others.
As draft texts progress through the course of the summit, they are discussed in “contact groups” for each topic, which may devolve into “informal” negotiations, “informal informals”, “drafting groups” or – towards the business end of the summit – small “huddles” of key players in any disagreement.
As parties narrow down the options and brackets, towards the end of each summit, they start to generate “clean” texts, which contain no areas of disagreement and can be converted into “draft decisions”, that are ready for formal adoption at the closing plenary of the meeting.
Finally, at the closing plenary, each draft decision must be gavelled through by the COP president, signifying its formal adoption as a legal agreement and outcome of the summit.
The post Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at COP28 climate summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at COP28 climate summit
The case shows that climate change is a fundamental human rights violation—and the victory of Bonaire, a Dutch territory, could open the door for similar lawsuits globally.
From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Paloma Beltran with Greenpeace Netherlands campaigner Eefje de Kroon.
A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won
Climate Change
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
SYDNEY, Saturday 28 February 2026 — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US announce they will seek a new trial and, if necessary, appeal the decision with the North Dakota Supreme Court following a North Dakota District Court judgment today awarding Energy Transfer (ET) USD $345 million.
ET’s SLAPP suit remains a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace International will also continue to seek damages for ET’s bullying lawsuits under EU anti-SLAPP legislation in the Netherlands.
Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International Executive Director said: “Energy Transfer’s attempts to silence us are failing. Greenpeace International will continue to resist intimidation tactics. We will not be silenced. We will only get louder, joining our voices to those of our allies all around the world against the corporate polluters and billionaire oligarchs who prioritise profits over people and the planet.
“With hard-won freedoms under threat and the climate crisis accelerating, the stakes of this legal fight couldn’t be higher. Through appeals in the US and Greenpeace International’s groundbreaking anti-SLAPP case in the Netherlands, we are exploring every option to hold Energy Transfer accountable for multiple abusive lawsuits and show all power-hungry bullies that their attacks will only result in a stronger people-powered movement.”
The Court’s final judgment today rejects some of the jury verdict delivered in March 2025, but still awards hundreds of millions of dollars to ET without a sound basis in law. The Greenpeace defendants will continue to press their arguments that the US Constitution does not allow liability here, that ET did not present evidence to support its claims, that the Court admitted inflammatory and irrelevant evidence at trial and excluded other evidence supporting the defense, and that the jury pool in Mandan could not be impartial.[1][2]
ET’s back-to-back lawsuits against Greenpeace International and the US organisations Greenpeace USA (Greenpeace Inc.) and Greenpeace Fund are clear-cut examples of SLAPPs — lawsuits attempting to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy and ultimately silence dissent.[3] Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands, is pursuing justice in Europe, with a suit against ET under Dutch law and the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP directive, a landmark test of the new legislation which could help set a powerful precedent against corporate bullying.[4]
Kate Smolski, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is part of a worrying trend globally: fossil fuel corporations are increasingly using litigation to attack and silence ordinary people and groups using the law to challenge their polluting operations — and we’re not immune to these tactics here in Australia.
“Rulings like this have a chilling effect on democracy and public interest litigation — we must unite against these silencing tactics as bad for Australians and bad for our democracy. Our movement is stronger than any corporate bully, and grows even stronger when under attack.”
Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years.[3] A couple of these cases have been successfully stopped in their tracks. This includes Greenpeace France successfully defeating TotalEnergies’ SLAPP on 28 March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forcing Shell to back down from its SLAPP on 10 December 2024.
-ENDS-
Images available in Greenpeace Media Library
Notes:
[1] The judgment entered by North Dakota District Court Judge Gion follows a jury verdict finding Greenpeace entities liable for more than US$660 million on March 19, 2025. Judge Gion subsequently threw out several items from the jury’s verdict, reducing the total damages to approximately US$345 million.
[2] Public statements from the independent Trial Monitoring Committee
[3] Energy Transfer’s first lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2017 under the RICO Act – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US federal statute designed to prosecute mob activity. The case was dismissed in 2019, with the judge stating the evidence fell “far short” of what was needed to establish a RICO enterprise. The federal court did not decide on Energy Transfer’s claims based on state law, so Energy Transfer promptly filed a new case in a North Dakota state court with these and other state law claims.
[4] Greenpeace International sent a Notice of Liability to Energy Transfer on 23 July 2024, informing the pipeline giant of Greenpeace International’s intention to bring an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the company in a Dutch Court. After Energy Transfer declined to accept liability on multiple occasions (September 2024, December 2024), Greenpeace International initiated the first test of the European Union’s anti-SLAPP Directive on 11 February 2025 by filing a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer. The case was officially registered in the docket of the Court of Amsterdam on 2 July, 2025. Greenpeace International seeks to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of Energy Transfers’s back-to-back, abusive lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace organisations in the US. The next hearing in the Court of Amsterdam is scheduled for 16 April, 2026.
Media contact:
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
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Former EPA Staff Detail Expanding Pollution Risks Under Trump
A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
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