Dubai, Dec. 13, (dpa/GNA) – For the first time at a UN climate conference, the international community is calling for a “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems” in the final declaration.
The text of the COP28 declaration was published by the conference presidency from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Wednesday morning and adopted in plenary just a few hours later. The 21-page paper calls on countries to move away from fossil fuels in their energy systems.
The text, however, does not call for a concrete phase-out of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas. More than 100 countries had urged the inclusion of the more ambitious targets.
The text provides for the potential continued use of gas alongside the use of controversial technologies for storing and capturing CO2.
In a round of applause, COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber, who is also the head of the UAE’s state oil company, spoke of the “historic package.”
“Future generations may not know your names but they will owe every single one of you a debt of gratitude,” said al-Jaber.
The agreed plan is to keep the 1.5-degree-Celsius target within reach. This refers to the target agreed internationally in Paris in 2015 to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times.
Many climate experts and environmentalists have cast doubt on the feasibility of achieving that target without far more radical action.
Al-Jaber warned that “an agreement is only as good as its implementation.”
It also includes the goal of tripling the capacity of renewable energies by 2030 and doubling the pace of energy efficiency during this period. The G20 countries had already committed to this.
A number of island countries that are particularly threatened by rising sea levels, however, criticized the decision-making process at the conference and described the final agreement as lacking.
A representative from Samoa to al-Jaber on Wednesday that the group of island states had been outside the room and busy coordinating their response when he only briefly paused to ask for any objections.
The UN conference was supposed to sharply limit climate change, but has instead favoured “incremental change over business as usual” instead of the necessary drastic steps, the Samoan representative said.
“Our leaders and ministers have been clear, we cannot afford to return to our islands with the message that this process has failed us,” she said. “We have come to the conclusion that the course correction needed has not been secured.”
In the plenary hall in Dubai, several other representatives and delegates responded to her remarks with long applause and stood up as a sign of solidarity.
United States climate envoy John Kerry described the agreement as a successful step forward.
“Everyone here should feel good … I am in awe of the spirit of cooperation that has brought everybody together,” said Kerry.
UN and European Union officials acknowledged that the agreement does not strictly phase out fossil fuels, but each called the text the “beginning of the end” for the use of such energy sources.
“COP28 also needed to signal a hard stop to humanity’s core climate problem, fossil fuels and their planet-burning pollution,” the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Simon Stiell, said on Wednesday.
“Whilst we didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end.”
Wednesday is “a day to salute the fact that humanity has finally done what is long, long overdue,” said the European Union’s commissioner for climate action and lead negotiator at the conference, Wopke Hoekstra.
“Thirty years we’ve spent to arrive at the beginning of the end of fossil fuels,” Hoekstra said.
The German government is expressly backing the agreement.
Sources in the German delegation to the conference told dpa that the resolution was “a huge load off” of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s mind.
“Great joy in the German delegation and from the foreign minister that the world has decided to end the fossil age,” dpa was told.
GNA