Dubai, Dec. 12, (dpa/GNA) – The UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai, known as COP28, has gone into extra time as participants struggle to agree on the wording of a final declaration.
Conference President Sultan al-Jaber from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had wanted to conclude the meeting of almost 200 states on Tuesday morning, but many countries remain disappointed that the 21-page draft text does not go far enough on commitments to end the use of fossil fuels.
Such final declarations are crucial is assessing whether the meeting has succeeded in furthering global efforts to limit climate change, or whether the conference will be deemed a failure.
On Monday evening, al-Jaber, also head of the UAE’s state oil company, had presented a draft that the European Union, the German government and dozens of other states had categorized as inadequate.
Environmental organizations were also largely outraged and called for improvements.
It is not unusual for COP talks to be extended, and in recent years, the meetings have often gone on much longer than planned.
Representatives from about 200 countries are locked in a heated debate over a potential agreement on phasing out fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.
Several countries, including China as well as major oil producers such as Saudi Arabia, have reportedly been resisting agreements that foresee an end to the use of coal, gas and oil.
The draft document published on Monday only mentions a reduction in the consumption and production of fossil fuels, rather than a phase-out.
In a previous version, a phase-out was still mentioned as one of several options.
The meeting, hosted by the oil-rich UAE and attended by more than 97,000 participants, has been running for almost two weeks.
During the conference, host al-Jaber repeatedly called on the global community to be ambitious and referred to the internationally agreed target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius as his “North Star.”
Environmental NGOs have warned however that the world is no closer to reaching these climate goals, as outlined in the 2015 Paris agreement, despite a global boom in renewable energy generated from solar or wind power.
According to the United Nations, the planet is heading for an increase of almost three degrees by the end of the century – even if all the CO2 reduction pledges currently made by individual countries are kept.