Russia’s new climate plan justifies the use of natural gas as a “transition fuel” by referencing the controversial loophole that it pushed to have included in the COP28 pledge on shifting away from fossil fuels.
In a landmark agreement at the Dubai climate summit two years, governments agreed to call on each other to work on “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems” as one of eight global efforts to fight climate change.
The hard-won agreement followed years of campaigning by climate activists and pro-climate action governments, and was hailed as “the beginning of the end” for the fossil fuel era by UN climate chief Simon Stiell.
But in a concession to some countries that were led by Russia – the world’s second-biggest gas producer, the COP28 agreement included a paragraph recognising that “transitional fuels can play a role in facilitating the energy transition while ensuring energy security”.
After it was agreed, Antigua and Barbuda negotiator Diann Black-Layne called it a “dangerous loophole” because natural gas is a fossil fuel “we need to transition away from”.
This year, all the signatories of the 2015 Paris Agreement are due to submit their emissions reduction targets up to 2035, and must say how their targets have “been informed by” the COP28 agreement.
Gas as “transition fuel”
Russia’s new climate plan says it is compatible with paragraph 28 of the COP28 agreement – which includes the language on transitioning away from fossil fuels – because Russia “continues to contribute to the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through national efforts to the greatest possible extent”.
It adds that the transition should be “based on independence and freedom of choice, the technological neutrality in designing the composition of energy mix and implementing climate policies in the energy sector”.
It then cites the COP28 language around transitional fuels to say Russia “uses natural gas as a transition fuel on the way towards a low-carbon economy” and gas “is the most environmentally friendly type of fuel among the types of conventional heat generation”.
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While burning gas for power releases less emissions directly than burning coal, whether or not it emits less overall depends mostly on how much gas leaks as it is transported from where it is produced to where it is consumed, energy experts say.
Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and campaigns at renewable energy advocacy group 350.org, said Russia was “wilfully misreading the global stocktake”.
“Rebranding methane-heavy, flare-ridden gas as a ‘transition fuel’ is spin, not science [which] props up a regime whose political economy runs on petro-rents and aggression,” Sieber told Climate Home News, adding “any credible transition runs on renewables and efficiency, not on Russia’s gas”.
Russian climate envoy Ruslan Edelgeriev told a UN climate summit last week the country’s commitment to reaching net zero by 2060 was firm and it “has moved from strategy to practical implementation”.
Russia is not the only government to play down the COP28 language on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Shortly after COP28, the Saudi energy minister said the agreement in Dubai was just an “a la carte menu” from which governments could choose.
And several African countries including Nigeria have set out plans to boost the use of fossil gas as a “transition fuel” in their updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
“Unambitious” target
Russia’s plan aims to reduce emissions to 33%-35% below their 1990 levels by 2035. This adds to existing targets to cut emissions by 30% on 1990 levels by 2030 and reach net zero – when the country emits no more than it absorbs – by 2060.
Russia’s emissions dropped by a quarter after the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, making percentage reductions on 1990 levels much more achievable. US President Donald Trump noted this in a recent UN speech, saying “Russia was given an old standard that was easy to meet – 1990 standard”.
Climate Action Tracker (CAT), a nonprofit which assesses governments’ climate plans and policies, said Russia’s new 2035 target “does not increase ambition beyond business as usual” because Russia’s current policies already put it on course to cut emissions 35% by 2035.
CAT said that is at odds with a Paris Agreement principle that targets should reflect the “highest possible ambition”. “Russia’s 2035 target not only fails to reflect highest ambition, but does not increase ambition at all”, CAT said in an analysis on its website.
Russia says the target is in line with the Paris Agreement’s goal to hold a temperature increase to 2C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5C. CAT said, however, that it was only compatible with warming of 4C or more.
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Under its climate plan, Russia says it will cut overall emissions through gas, nuclear, hydropower, renewables, carbon capture and storage and hydrogen. It will also aim to reduce the emissions which come from producing coal and oil, by capturing and selling gas rather than burning it as a waste product and by detecting and fixing pipeline leaks.
CAT also accused Russia of taking too much credit in its carbon accounting for the emissions absorbed by its huge forests. UN guidelines say countries should only take credit for forests which they actively manage, giving governments discretion to decide which land falls into this category.
Russia claims it manages nearly two-thirds of its vast forests, a percentage CAT said was “inflated”. Other heavily forested nations such as Guyana – which claims to be “carbon negative” – have been criticised by climate campaigners for similarly large assumptions about how much forest they manage.
The post Russia justifies fossil gas use by citing contentious COP28 loophole appeared first on Climate Home News.
Russia justifies fossil gas use by citing contentious COP28 loophole
An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.