Dr. Dorothy Maxwell FICRS Head of Sustainability and ESG Advisory
Séamus Higgins Senior Sustainability Manager
Gabriele Bunyte Sustainability Associate
15th December, 2023
The 28th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP28) was hosted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from the 30th of November to the 13th of December. It brought together the 198 signatory countries of the Paris Agreement, to check progress against agreed targets and last year's COP27 commitments. The decision to hold COP28 in a Petrostate was controversial from the outset, which sparked significant debate and resulted in the greatest number of stakeholders from the fossil fuel industry ever attending a COP. The President of the COP, Sultan, Dr Ahmed Al-Jaber, is the CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
The North Star of the COP28 Presidency was to keep 1.5oC within reach. The science says that in order to meet this goal, the world must get to net zero emissions by 2050 and reduce emissions by 43% by 2030 compared to 2019. The agreement reached at this COP did not live up to that ambition. What actually resulted was 198 countries approved a roadmap for "transitioning away from fossil fuels" - a first for a UN climate conference to be fair - but the deal still stopped short of a long-demanded call for a "phase-out" of oil, coal, and gas.
The headline COP28 results are detailed in The First Global Stocktake Agreement (so-called "UAE Consensus")1. This insight unpacks the key takeaways that businesses need to know.
All documentation from COP28 can be found on the COP282 and the United Nations Climate Change3 websites.
The major commitments contained in the final negotiated agreement include:
While the Agreement calls on all countries to move away from the use of fossil fuels, it misses several key requirements many governments including USA, China, EU and Ireland were pushing for. These will now move to the COP29 agenda in a year's time and include:
For Small Island Nations and much of the Developing World, funding the transition from fossil fuels is neither meeting the funding expectations required nor supporting a just transition. According to Anne Rasmussen, lead negotiator for Samoa, the process had failed Small Island Nations and the final agreement has "a litany of loopholes".4
"I came from my home islands to work with you to solve the greatest challenge of our generations, to build a canoe. We have built a canoe with a weak and leaky hull. Yet we have to put it into the water because we have no other option."
- John Silk, the negotiator from the Marshall Islands.
The key business takeaways and initatives from COP28 are outlined below.
The context for COP28 was the world’s first Global Stocktake of progress against the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement (COP23). This stocktake is to take place every five years under the Agreement and is a process for countries and stakeholders to assess distance to target. It informs the next round of country level climate action plans under the Paris Agreement (nationally determined contributions, or ‘NDCs’) to be put forward by 2025. It highlighted that Parties are currently not on course to achieve their goals outlined in the Paris Agreement. The UN Environment Programme Emissions Gap report5 released ahead of the COP showed the world had heated to over 1.2oC already with global emissions still rising. This message of how far off-track progress is was acknowledged in the Global Stocktake Agreement and it “encourages” Parties to come forward with ambitious, economy-wide emission reduction targets, covering all greenhouse gases (GHG), sectors and categories and align with the 1.5°C limit in their next round of NDCs by 2025. This is seen as weak given the distance to target and urgency of the climate emergency. According to UN Climate Chief Simon Stiell this first stocktake that concluded at COP28 revealed that progress is not fast enough, but it is undeniably gathering pace.
"The current trajectory is just under 3oC of global warming equating mass human suffering, which is why COP28 needed to move the needle further".
- UN Climate Chief Simon Stiell.
On climate finance, progress was made in some areas, but not to the levels hoped. This included:
"Many vulnerable countries are drowning in debt and at risk of drowning in rising seas. It is time for a surge in finance, including for adaptation, loss and damage, and reform of the international financial architecture."
- UN Chief António Guterres
Several pledges and initiatives across energy efficiency, renewables and hydrogen were launched including:
COP 28 highlighted the global methane emissions from key emitting sectors Oil and Gas, Agriculture, and Waste. The Global Methane Pledge was agreed covering methane from the key sectors. It aims to reduce global methane emissions by at least 30% from 2020 levels by 2030.
The next COP29 is expected to be hosted by petrostate Azerbaijan from 11-22 November 2024, and Brazil as COP30 host from 10-21 November 2025.
“COP28 has delivered, for the first time at climate talks, a clear call on countries to transition away from fossil fuels. The deal is not perfect, but one thing is clear: the world is no longer denying our harmful addiction to fossil fuels. “We have the solutions; we know what needs to be done. And action can no longer wait.”
- Inger Andersen, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme.
Davy Horizons sustainability advisors work with plcs, large private companies, government bodies, semi-states, and not-for-profits to incorporate sustainability credibly in their organisation and value chains aligned to regulation, industry best practice and customer demand. We provide sustainability consultancy services to businesses across all sectors including on:
Sources:
[1] UNFCC, Outcome of the first global stocktake, 13 Dec 2023, https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cma2023_L17_adv.pdf
[2] https://www.cop28.com/en/
[3] https://unfccc.int/documents
[4] Countries reach ‘historic’ COP28 deal to transition from fossil fuels (ft.com)
[5] https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2023
[6] https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/what-you-need-know-about-cop27-loss-and-damage-fund
[7] www.cop28.com. (n.d.). COP28 Presidency launches landmark initiatives accelerating the energy transition.
[8] www.nrdc.org. (2023). Food Waste Solutions on the Menu at COP28.
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