It has become a tradition for world leaders to kick off the annual UN climate conference by telling each other and the world what they’re doing to tackle climate change.
This year, some big hitters like the US’s Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping will stay away. Other influential leaders including Narendra Modi, Emmanuel Macron, Mohamed bin Salman, Mia Mottley, William Ruto and Lula Da Silva are due to attend.
World leader speeches at Cop28 are a chance to show off ambitious policies, bear witness to climate impacts, pledge funding and point fingers. Here are seven things to watch out for.
1. Fossil fuel phase-out
A broad coalition of nations is calling for a phase out, or at least phase down, of fossil fuels. They will face resistance from countries that rely on fossil fuels to generate revenue and keep their people content.
Any deal on a fossil fuel phase out will be struck by negotiators in closed meeting rooms towards the end of Cop28 in two weeks time.
But we will get a good sense of the strength of resistance from the first two speeches on Friday – that of UAE’s Mohamed Bin Zayed and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman.
Its not just Gulf petrostates that defend fossil fuels though. Several African leaders in particular want to exploit their fossil fuel reserves, they say, to bring wealth and electricity to their people.
Senegal’s Macky Sall and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Felix Tshisekedi are among them. They may use their speeches to ask why they shouldn’t pump for new oil and gas when the likes of the US and Canada plan to increase production.
2. Tales from the frontline
After a year that had climate scientists reaching for the thesaurus to describe their shock at global temperature spikes, leaders will share how climate disasters hit their people.
In Libya, extreme rainfall overwhelmed decrepit dams and washed away much of the city of Derna in September.
Leaders from Iraq and East African nations may tell of extreme drought while South American leaders could address their weird winter heatwave.
Then there are the slow, creeping climate impacts. In the Pacific, rising seas and intensifying storms are eroding narrow atolls, while expanding desert eats into the fertile land of northern Africa and mountain glaciers retreat.
3. Start-up cash for a loss and damage fund
Negotiators are set to agree at Cop28 on how to set up a global loss and damage fund for victims of the climate crisis.
A handful of pledges are expected from the EU and others to get it started. Don’t get too excited: we’re talking in the region of $0.5-1 billion, not the $100bn a year developing countries ultimately want to see flowing through the fund.
Avinash Persaud, climate adviser to Barbados’ prime minister, told Climate Home that amounts like that should not be dismissed. “Countries can’t pull billions out of a hat,” he said, “because you have to budget in advance.”
Climate Action Network’s Harjeet Singh took a stronger line. “Recovery costs are soaring into the billions,” he said, “far exceeding the expected pledges of a few hundred million.”
4. Green Climate Fund pledges
The UN’s flagship climate fund held its four-yearly fundraising round in October. Pledges from wealthy countries totalled a disappointing $9.3bn – less than last time in 2019.
That’s left the fund’s secretariat looking to have to scale back ambition – help fewer farmers adapt to climate change, conserve less forest, protect fewer countries with early warning systems.
A few late pledges could improve its fortunes. Italy, Sweden and Switzerland have yet to announce contributions. Their leaders are attending.
The US and Australia are not sending leaders but could announce funds elsewhere. Both now claim to be climate leaders. This is the time to prove it with cash.
5. Bridgetown developments
Two years ago, Barbados’ prime minister Mia Mottley got some influential allies together in her capital city Bridgetown to plot how to transform the global financial system to make it work for climate.
Since then, her speeches have become must-watch verdicts on how that mission is going and where it should go next. We’re expecting her to call for more ambition in reforming banks like the World Bank so that they spend more on climate.
Her speeches often include innovative ideas. Last year, she suggested that oil companies should pay for climate damages. With Barbados’ support, France and Kenya have set up a task force to look into making that happen, which Emmanuel Macron and William Ruto are likely to promote. So what Mottley proposes this year is worth watching.
6. Coal-to-clean updates
Two years ago in Glasgow, the concept of a Just Energy Transition Partnership was launched. The idea was for rich countries to financially help coal-reliant emerging economies switch to renewables.
South Africa piloted the idea, while agreements with Indonesia and Vietnam came next. All have been plagued by arguments over the pace of change and the nature of finance.
President Cyril Ramaphosa will give an update on South Africa’s package on Friday. The most advanced of the partnerships, it nonetheless faces political challenges.
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Vietnam is due to announce its investment plan at Cop28. Prime minister Chinh Pham Minh will no doubt talk it up, without mentioning that he’s jailed several environmental campaigners.
The words of Indonesian president Joko Widodo could be interesting as, ahead of February’s elections, he could air his complaints about rich countries’ insistence on mainly loans not grants.
With India uninterested, there are no more in the immediate pipeline but plenty of leaders will emphasise the volume of investment needed to support clean development.
7. Bids to host Cop29
Two years ago, we already knew that we’d be in the United Arab Emirates for Cop28. Similarly, we already know that Cop30 will be in Belém in Brazil in two years time.
But we don’t know where we’ll be this time next year. It’s up to the UN’s Eastern Europe group to decide. Various EU states have offered but Russia has vetoed them because of EU support for Ukraine.
Russia supports Azerbaijan’s candidacy but Armenia, which is at war with Azerbaijan, opposes that and wants to host itself – which Azerbaijan opposes right back.
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The various potential hosts could use their speeches to make their case. If there’s no agreement the default is for the UAE to keep the presidency with the physical conference held at the UN climate headquarters in Bonn, Germany.
For Cop31, contenders include Australia, whose leader is not on the speaker list, and Turkiye whose president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will speak on Friday.
The post Seven things to watch out for in world leader speeches at Cop28 appeared first on Climate Home News.
Seven things to watch out for in world leader speeches at Cop28
Climate Change
Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
Countries attending a first-of-its-kind fossil-fuel summit have been asked to consider “action recommendations” such as “halting all new fossil-fuel expansion” and “reject[ing] gas as a bridging fuel”, according to a preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief.
Around 50 nations will gather in Santa Marta, Colombia from 24-29 April to debate ways to “transition away” from fossil fuels, in the face of worsening climate change and sky-high oil prices.
The talks come after a large group of nations campaigned for, but ultimately failed, to get all countries to formally agree to a “roadmap” away from fossil fuels at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November.
The nations gathering in Santa Marta for the summit co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, call themselves the “coalition of the willing”.
Ahead of country officials arriving in Santa Marta, a global group of academics will gather in the city this week to present and discuss the latest scientific evidence on fossil-fuel phaseout, which will then inform debate among policymakers.
A preliminary scientific “synthesis report” circulated to governments attending the talks and seen by Carbon Brief offers 12 “action insights” for countries to consider, along with a wide range of “action recommendations”.
These recommendations range from “phase out subsidies on fossil-fuel production and consumption” to “kick-start a forum to develop a legal framework to ban fossil-fuel advertisements”.
‘Rapid’ assessment
The preliminary scientific report seen by Carbon Brief – titled, “Action insights for the Santa Marta process” – is the result of some rapid work by an “ad-hoc” group of around 24 scientists.
It is designed to present governments attending the talks with concrete and actionable recommendations for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
The preliminary version, which includes recommendations such as “halting all new fossil fuel expansion”, has already been circulated to governments, with a view that this could help them to prepare for the talks in advance.
It will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the academic segment of the Santa Marta talks, before a final version is made public towards the end of April, Carbon Brief understands.
The process to produce the report began shortly after the conclusion of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November, explains its lead author, Dr Friedrich Bohn, a research scientist and co-founder of the Earth Resilience Institute in Germany. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When [Brazil] announced there would be a Santa Marta conference led by Colombia and the Netherlands, I was sitting listening with a small group of scientists. We thought: ‘This is great news, but it should be supported by scientific expertise.’”
One of the members of Bohn’s group had a pre-existing relationship with the Colombian government, allowing a dialogue to quickly be established, he continues:
“In the beginning, the idea was to just write a peer-reviewed paper. But, because of this close connection to the Colombian government and some feedback from them, the synthesis paper evolved.”
The report came out of a “very rapidly evolved process” that relied on the “goodwill” and “enthusiasm” of the academics involved, adds coordinating author Prof Frank Jotzo, a professor of climate change economics at Australian National University. (Jotzo is a former Carbon Brief contributing editor.) He tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s an attempt to get broad coverage on relevant topics from researchers with good expertise and reputation.”
The group of 24 scientists involved spent around two months compiling the “action insights” for the report, drawing on their expertise and the latest available research, says Jotzo.
Given the rapid nature of the report, it does not aim to be “completist”, has not been externally reviewed and did not follow a stringent process for author selection comparable to that used by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, he adds.
The contributors to the report currently skew to the global north and include more men than women, adds Bohn.
‘Direct guidance’
In a departure from IPCC reports, the preliminary Santa Marta synthesis report offers “very direct guidance to action”, says Jotzo.
The report lists 12 “action insights”, each with three “action recommendations”. (The list was cut down from a shortlist of about 40-50 insights, Carbon Brief understands.)
One of the most striking in the draft is “action insight 5”, which says:
“Take immediate measures to prevent future emissions. Ban new fossil infrastructure, mandate deep methane cuts, accelerate electrification and inscribe fossil-fuel phase-down targets in NDCs [nationally determined contributions] and clean-energy pathways support to low and middle income countries (LMICs).”
The accompanying three “action recommendations” include “halting all new fossil-fuel extraction and infrastructure projects ahead of a final investment decision”, “implementing deep, legally binding methane cuts in the energy sector” and “inscrib[ing] targets for fossil-fuel phase down, electrification and green exports in NDCs”.
(The draft report includes multiple references to “phasing out” and “phasing down” fossil fuels, rather than the “transition away from fossil fuels” language that was, ultimately, agreed by countries at the COP28 UN climate talks in Dubai in 2023.)
Another action insight says “public support for climate action is broadly underestimated and undermined by interest groups, but it can be strengthened by debunking greenwashing narratives”.
One recommendation for this insight is that nations “reject natural gas as a bridging technology and CCS [carbon capture and storage] techniques as scalable compensation”.
In a letter introducing the report to governments and civil society, the scientists note that making direct recommendations is a “challenge for our community”, but added:
“However, in the spirit of a constructive collaboration between science and policymaking, we allowed ourselves to identify some potential courses of action that our community would recommend for each particular issue – and we invite you to weigh these against your own circumstances and pick up whatever seems most useful for you and your colleagues.”
The prescriptiveness of the recommendations – something strictly prohibited in IPCC reports – was an explicit request from the Colombian government, Bohn says:
“The idea of actionable recommendations was introduced by the Colombian government.
“There was some discussion within the team about this. It’s a tricky area when you leave science and move to consultation. Therefore, we agreed, in the end, to call them ‘actionable recommendations’ and to make them as precise as possible, from the scientific perspective.”
Jotzo, a veteran of the IPCC process, tells Carbon Brief that it was “very liberating” to work on a report with a “free-form process”:
“The bulk of policy-related research is very readily deployed to recommendations pointing out what countries could do. The IPCC process, for example, just doesn’t allow that. As far as the summary for policymakers in the IPCC is concerned, it will usually be governments that filter out anything that could be interpreted as a specific recommendation.”
He adds that the hope is that some of the action insights might be reflected in the high-level segment of the Santa Marta conference:
“No one is under any illusions that governments will walk away from the Santa Marta conference and will have made a decision to implement recommendations one, seven and nine – or something like that. But it is a chance to insert directly applicable action points into national and plurilateral policy agendas.”
Colombia calling
The preliminary report will be further debated and refined by scientists attending the “pre-academic segment” of the Santa Marta talks.
This is taking place from 24-26 April, ahead of the “high-level segment” involving ministers and other policymakers from 28-29 April.
The pre-academic segment will also separately see the launch of a new advisory panel on fossil-fuel transition and a scientifically led roadmap for how Colombia can transition away from fossil fuels, Carbon Brief understands.
The high-level segment is expected to be attended by representatives from around 50 countries, including COP31 host Turkey and major oil-and-gas producers such as the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Norway.
Countries expected to attend account for one-third of global fossil-fuel demand and one-fifth of global production, according to the Colombian government.
At the end of the conference, countries are due to release a report featuring a “menu of solutions” for transitioning away from fossil fuels, according to Colombia’s environment minister Irene Vélez Torres.
This report is in turn set to inform a global “roadmap” on transitioning away from fossil fuels being developed by the Brazilian COP30 presidency, which is due to be presented at COP31 in Turkey this November.
The Brazilian COP30 presidency offered to bring forward a “voluntary” fossil-fuel transition “roadmap” outside of the official COP process, after countries failed to formally agree to one during negotiations in Belém.
The post Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: Scientists tell Colombia fossil-fuel transition summit to ‘halt new expansion’
Technical Assessment of Woodside’s Browse Pygmy Blue Whale Management Plan
To secure their approvals, Woodside had to develop a plan for how they would manage the significant risks to threatened green turtles if the project proceeds. We’ve had two independent scientists provide a technical assessment of Woodside’s management plan for whales and turtles and their findings are gobsmacking.
Woodside’s Browse gas project could make Scott Reef’s unique green turtles extinct.
Woodside’s Browse gas project could delay or prevent the population recovery of the endangered pygmy blue whales that rely on Scott Reef, heightening their extinction risk.
Technical Assessment of Woodside’s Browse Turtle Management Plan
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Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
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