As a year of record-breaking temperatures and climate change-fuelled disasters draws to a close, nations are once again preparing to gather for another round of UN climate talks.
Several major international issues will be up for negotiation at COP28, which is taking place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) between 30 November and 12 December.
A two-year “global stocktake” to assess progress under the Paris Agreement will reach its conclusion, with officials discussing how it should inform future action. COP28 is also meant to get a new fund for climate change-induced “loss and damage” up and running.
The event’s location in a major petrostate and the choice of Sultan Al Jaber – chief executive of the state-owned oil company – as president, have sparked controversy.
Yet with fossil fuels under the spotlight, some nations will argue for an agreement on phasing them out in the coming years. There will also be calls for other global targets, including tripling renewable energy capacity.
In order to keep track of what everyone wants to get out of COP28, Carbon Brief has conducted its annual assessment of priority issues for various parties, compiled into the interactive table below. This is based on publicly available submissions to the UN and wider research conducted by Carbon Brief.
The first column shows the countries and UN negotiating blocs, the second column shows the topics up for debate and the third column indicates specific issues within those topics.
The final column indicates the position that each grouping is likely to take on a particular issue at the summit. This ranges from “high priority” – meaning the grouping is likely to be strongly pushing the issue – to “red line”, which means the grouping is likely to oppose this issue and show no room for compromise.
This is a living document that will be updated during the course of the summit. Please get in touch if you would like to offer additions to the table, by emailing policy@carbonbrief.org.
Explanations of the overarching issues and jargon-filled language that permeates the talks can be found below the interactive table.
Global stocktake
The centrepiece of COP28 negotiations will be the conclusion of the global stocktake, under which nations have evaluated their progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement (see Carbon Brief’s Q&A for more information).
One key COP28 outcome will be a “decision” text concerning the stocktake. This is intended to reflect on efforts so far and lay out what parties agree should happen going forward.
Parties have submitted their views on what they expect from this document, reflecting their own priorities. Given the all-encompassing nature of the stocktake, these submissions are as varied as the COP negotiations themselves.
They include proposals for how countries should increase the ambition of their climate plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), to align them with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C and well-below 2C warming target.
(As it stands, the stocktake has confirmed that countries must scale up both the ambition of their plans and their efforts to achieve them in order to meet the Paris goals.)
There are also proposals for how the stocktake should inform other aspects of UN negotiations, such as the global goal on adaptation and the new post-2025 climate finance target (see sections below).
In addition, the submissions provide an opportunity for nations to push for sector-specific targets that could help the world get on track for its climate goals.
These include some targets for global energy industries that have already gathered some momentum in the run-up to COP28 (see: Energy targets). However, they also include more country-specific preoccupations, such as Russia’s proposal that gas should be mentioned as a “transitional fuel” or Australia’s proposal for a global low-carbon hydrogen target.
Energy targets
Among the global stocktake submissions from parties are a handful of energy-sector targets that are likely to be a major focus at COP28. The UAE presidency has made “fast-tracking the energy transition and slashing emissions before 2030” one of its priorities for the event.
Perhaps chief among these proposals is the on-going discussion about phasing out or, at least, “phasing down” fossil fuels.
This topic has gained considerable traction since a mention of phasing down unabated coal power made it into the decision text at COP26 in 2021 – marking the first-ever COP decision targeting fossil fuels.
Support for a decision on phasing out all fossil fuels gained momentum at the COP27 summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, in 2022, with around 80 countries getting on board. However, these efforts were ultimately unsuccessful.
The COP28 UAE presidency has stated that “phasing down demand for, and supply of, all fossil fuels is inevitable and essential”.
Some parties have said they will prioritise a complete fossil-fuel phaseout, while others have emphasised a phaseout only of “unabated” fossil fuels or rejected the idea entirely. Still others have pushed more specific targets such as an end to coal or fossil-fuel subsidies.
At the same time, global momentum has gathered behind a call to triple global renewable capacity, which was backed by the G20 group of major economies in September.
The idea has been promoted by the International Energy Agency and adopted by the COP28 presidency, along with another call to double the rate of energy-efficiency improvements.
Loss and damage
Another major issue at COP28 will be the “operationalisation” of the loss-and-damage fund.
The decision to set up this fund, after decades of pressure from developing countries, was widely regarded as one of the main achievements from last year’s COP27.
In the wake of the summit, a “transitional committee” of government officials from around the world was tasked with agreeing on a framework for the fund. This included deciding who should pay into it, who could draw money from it and where it would be based.
Over the following months, these negotiations revealed deep divides between developed and developing countries, which are reflected in Carbon Brief’s interactive table.
In particular, developing countries did not want the fund to be located at the US-dominated World Bank. They also wanted it to be accessible to all developing countries and primarily supported with grant-based finance from developed countries.
Meanwhile, developed countries wanted to ensure that the private sector, humanitarian groups and the wealthiest developing countries, such as China and Saudi Arabia, shared the burden of paying into the fund.
The transitional committee ultimately produced a draft framework that could be agreed at COP28. However, the US objected to the final outcome and the summit could see these issues reopened in negotiations.
Adaptation
Parties are also expected to adopt a framework for achieving the “global goal on adaptation” at COP28. Such a target was first set out in the Paris Agreement, but since then it has lacked a clear definition.
The process of “operationalising” the global goal is a priority for some developing countries, who argue that protecting people against the effects of climate change is given less attention than efforts to cut emissions.
Parties have laid out their visions for what the goal is and how progress towards it could be measured.
Finance is a central issue for adaptation, which tends to receive less funding overall than mitigation efforts. Some parties will likely push for references to a goal of doubling overall adaptation finance – first mentioned in the Glasgow Climate Pact that emerged from COP26 – and look for ways to link adaptation outcomes with the findings of the global stocktake.
Finance
Climate finance is always an important issue at COPs. Developing countries need trillions in annual investments to carry out their climate plans and transition to low-carbon economies.
At the UN climate talks in Bonn earlier this year, some developing countries made it clear that they did not want to discuss cutting emissions unless there was an equal focus on financial support.
Next year, countries are due to decide on a new, post-2025 global goal for providing developing countries with climate finance. There is still no official confirmation that developed countries have met the outstanding $100bn-per-year climate finance goal that they were meant to achieve in 2020.
These issues will loom over the COP28 talks as nations prepare the groundwork for the new target and discuss climate finance in relation to the global stocktake.
Other issues
Two more “work programmes” will continue at COP28.
The mitigation work programme, which focuses on how countries can scale up emissions-cutting efforts, has had two “global dialogues” this year. They specifically addressed just energy transitions in the power and transport sectors.
A decision on this at COP28 could help to take forward some of the work of the global stocktake and mobilise investment opportunities.
The other work programme on “just transition pathways” focuses specifically on how the objectives of the Paris Agreement can be achieved while ensuring a “just transition” for people around the world.
Countries will also continue with work to get Article 6 carbon markets up and running.
In particular, a “supervisory body” has been working on guidance for how the Article 6.4 carbon market should operate. Nations will need to approve these rules at COP28.
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Interactive: Who wants what at the COP28 climate change summit
Özgür Özel is the leader of Turkey’s main opposition “New Party” and a member of parliament from Manisa.
The world is running out of time to deliver on the Paris Agreement. The UN Environment Programme’s latest Emissions Gap Report concludes that the chance of keeping warming below 1.5C without overshooting it is gone. Even if every country delivers its current national pledges, the planet is heading for about 2.6C of warming this century.
This is the backdrop as governments and their leaders gather in Antalya for COP31, ten years after the Paris Agreement took effect. Turkey lies in the Mediterranean, one of the regions most exposed to climate change, and hosting the summit is a real opportunity.
It is also a responsibility, and that responsibility begins at home. The world does not lack targets. What it has lacked – almost everywhere – is delivery. If Antalya is remembered for anything, it should be for shifting the focus from what countries promise to what they actually do.
For many people in Turkey, the climate crisis is already part of daily life. In 2021, forests in Manavgat, a district of Antalya, burned for more than a week. Last year, wildfires forced more than 50,000 people from their homes around the western coast city of Izmir. This October, Istanbul had its heaviest rainfall in more than 80 years, with the floods killing at least eight people.
COP31 Briefing: What to expect from the Antalya climate summit?
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The COP30 presidency’s voluntary timetable asks countries to plan first, then build up clean energy – only turning to oil and gas supplies from 2031
Measurable outcomes
Two weeks of climate negotiations cannot deliver everything that is needed to resolve the crisis, but COP31 can push for a few things that can be measured. The first is a voluntary fossil-fuel transition roadmap, with national milestones for 2030 and 2035 reported in the same format every year.
The second is a stronger commitment to protecting forests, with progress tracked over time. The third is yearly reporting on progress towards the agreed $1.3 trillion a year in climate finance by 2035, backed by a financial roadmap.
On adaptation, the indicators agreed in Belém should become funded national plans. By COP32, we should be able to see how many countries have an adaptation plan and the financial commitment behind each one.
Regional resilience partnership
The summit also has an unusual shape. Turkey hosts, Australia leads the negotiations, and the Pacific island nations play a central role. Climate diplomacy now sits at the centre of energy security, trade and development, and Turkey, which bridges developed and developing economies, is well placed to help build consensus between them. The lasting value of its presidency will depend on the practical partnerships it leaves behind.
One such partnership could connect two very different regions. On a map, the Mediterranean and the Pacific seem to have little in common, but their problems look similar: eroding coastlines, salt creeping into aquifers, failing harvests, fishing towns with fewer fish.
Turkey and Australia could launch a Mediterranean–Pacific Climate Resilience Partnership, linking coastal cities, scientists, institutions including development banks and island governments. It does not need a new bureaucracy. It can start with a few projects: shared satellite data and early-warning systems, better coastal flood defences, and trials of water-saving farming in the communities most at risk. What matters is visible results on the ground, not a ceremony.
Turkey’s track record
Turkey does have progress to point to. It has committed to net zero by 2053, and its solar and wind capacity has grown fast. The sunshine, the wind and the industrial base are all there. But the long-term direction of the energy mix is still unclear.
Turkey also signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use at COP26, pledging to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. With four years left, COP31 is a chance to show how that promise will be kept.
COP30 roadmap says faster use of existing tools can halt forest loss by 2030
And while the summit celebrates zero waste, Turkey took in more than half a million tons of European plastic waste last year, much of it bound for Mersin and Adana. On November 21, the day after COP31 closes, an EU ban on plastic-waste exports to non-OECD countries takes effect. Turkey, as an OECD member, is exempt. That should worry us more than it seems to.
None of this will carry much weight unless Turkey’s own record holds up. A leadership at odds with its own environment and its own citizens will struggle to inspire global confidence in its commitment to protecting the planet.
Threat to local climate action
Cities are where adaptation happens. Water, flood protection, waste and urban planning fall largely to municipalities. That is why the imprisonment and removal of more than 50 elected opposition mayors, including the mayor of Istanbul, matter for environment and climate policy, as well as for democracy.
When local leadership is disrupted, investment plans stall and work on flood defences and water supplies loses continuity. As a result, local governments are left paralysed.
Comment: From Australia to Chile, our cities are driving a green investment boom
Inconsistent policymaking when it comes to the environment and climate deepens the problem in Turkey as it does in other countries. A few practical steps would make a real difference.
Set out a gradual, well-planned energy transition. Stop new construction in streambeds and drinking-water basins and put zoning maps online. Inspect every imported plastic shipment and cap total imports. Hold public hearings on environmental impact assessments before permits are issued, not after. And publish an independently audited climate scorecard each year covering emissions, renewables capacity, forest loss and adaptation spending.
This could set an example beyond Turkey. Many emerging economies are trying to cut emissions while protecting jobs and keeping industry competitive. Digital tools and artificial intelligence are already available to help forecast wildfire risk, reduce grid losses and track water use.
With the 1.5C limit now set to be breached, Antalya’s success will be measured by the greenhouse gases avoided, the investments delivered and the forests still standing in the years that follow. It is our responsibility to watch closely and see whether those commitments are delivered, transparently and in line with international standards.
The post Turkey must make COP31 a turning point for global climate action appeared first on Climate Home News.
Turkey must make COP31 a turning point for global climate action
As oil companies pull out of Argentina’s oil heartland in the Patagonian province of Chubut, workers and communities are struggling to secure their future, with little say in the decisions being made about it.
“The impacted are fragmented, the exploiters organised,” said José Glinski, a member of parliament from the province.
In Comodoro Rivadavia, where Argentina’s oil industry began in 1907, those words carry particular weight. For nearly 120 years, oil has shaped the city’s economy and that of Chubut province, which helped power Argentina for decades. Now the companies that built their fortunes there are shifting their investments elsewhere, threatening an economy that has depended on oil for generations.
Argentina’s national oil company, YPF, whose roots lie in Comodoro Rivadavia, is selling off its mature oilfields in the region to concentrate investment in the shale oil and gas reserves of Vaca Muerta, further north. According to Glinski, around 10,000 direct jobs have gone in Chubut, and unemployment has climbed from 2% to 10% in a single year.
“And this while all remaining companies have kept extremely high levels of profit,” he said.
COP31 Briefing: What to expect from the Antalya climate summit?
Glinski blames government policy as much as the companies. “Companies are choosing to leave and the government lets them do so, while weakening tax and environmental regulations, leaving the city without the necessary income to organise the transition.”
Nobody has yet worked out who will clean up the old fields and more than 6,000 wells, look after the workers who remain, or pay for whatever comes next.
Comodoro Rivadavia is not alone. From Mejillones and Tocopilla in Chile to La Guajira in Colombia and Appalachia in the United States, from Scotland to Mpumalanga in South Africa and East Kalimantan in Indonesia, places built around fossil fuels for generations face some version of the same problem. As investment moves elsewhere, plans to protect workers, support communities and repair damaged land often lag far behind, if they exist at all.
Building an economy beyond fossil fuels
In Comodoro, as locals call the city, the community has not been passively waiting for oil to run out.
“We have looked into multiple alternatives for the territory, including building on geothermal capacity, an agricultural programme that could reinforce food security and focus on cultures that are not too water dependent, and exploring also aquaculture built on local species,” explained Ruben Zárate, who heads Comodoro Conocimiento, a public agency created by the municipality to develop economic opportunities. “The only alternative is economic diversification.”
But having ideas is one thing. Finding the money and securing the political support to put them into practice is another. In many countries, decisions that shape a region’s economy are made in the capital or in company boardrooms, and local authorities have little say, and few resources, when a major employer pulls out.
Glinski points to deals struck at the national level that leave communities without a meaningful say in decisions affecting their future.
“Some of the barriers relate to the absence of regulation of private actors which have negotiated conditions at the national level that prevent provinces or territories from capturing benefits that could be useful to fund the transition,” he said. “Comodoro had no voice in these deals.”
One example is Argentina’s Large Investment Incentive Regime, known as RIGI, which offers substantial tax benefits and regulatory guarantees to major investors. Argentina’s Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN) has warned that this regime could also give large projects preferential access to water and energy at the expense of local communities and businesses, making it harder for regions to diversify their economies.
At root, it’s a question of power: who controls the money and the decisions, and whether the people who kept these industries running for generations have any control over what comes next.
“Comodoro, like most territories that developed around fossil fuels, is heavily dependent. Everyone knew the oil business would end, but none planned for it,” said Antonella Risso, a climate expert and community member. “Comodoro deserves a bright future. Its people have the capacity to chart a future for its next hundred years – a real Just Transition”.
What COP31 could do
Last year in Belém, governments agreed to develop a Just Transition Mechanism. At COP31 in Antalya they will negotiate how it should work, and civil society is pushing for a strong Belém-Antalya Mechanism (BAM) that can help channel resources for action on the ground.
Camila Mercure, a climate policy officer with FARN and a coordinator of CAN’s Just Transition working group, said, “For a city like Comodoro Rivadavia, the BAM could mean support to develop diversification plans, assess viable alternatives, and access public, grant-based finance to put them into practice.”
“Workers and communities must have a meaningful role in shaping these plans, building on local knowledge and priorities. The aim should be to create decent livelihoods beyond fossil fuels and avoid alternatives that reproduce the same economic dependence, inequalities and environmental harm,” she said.
Why COP31 needs to start talking about just transition finance
The BAM could also put regions in touch with each other. Officials in Patagonia, northern Chile, Mpumalanga or East Kalimantan are wrestling with many of the same questions, and sharing what has worked would spare them from starting from scratch.
Then there are the companies. Fossil fuel producers should not be able to walk away from their workers, their environmental obligations and the towns that depended on them. The BAM could help regions share experiences and develop ways to hold companies accountable, ensuring they plan ahead and pay their fair share of the transition costs.
In Comodoro Rivadavia, the transition has already begun, without the community’s consent and with little support. COP31 is a chance to help places like it plan ahead, before the last company leaves rather than after.
The post When the oil companies leave, who pays? appeared first on Climate Home News.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/11/05/when-the-oil-companies-leave-who-pays/