Cop28 live: negotiations resume as countries seek
progress on final deal
Delegates return after rest day with children,
education and food on the agenda
Matthew Taylor
Fri 8 Dec 2023 10.08 GMT
3m ago
10.08 GMT
Damian Carrington
The mystery of Sultan Al Jaber’s ‘identical’
words
In Monday’s
combative press conference, in which Cop28 president Sultan Al Jaber responded
to the Guardian revelation that he had said there was “no science out there
that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C”, a
journalist raised the issue of a powerful, and apparently contradictory,
statement made by UN secretary general Antonio Guterres a few days before.
“The
Secretary General (SG) has said just, here a few days ago, don’t even talk
abated,” the reporter from Associated Press said. Guterres had said: ““The
science is clear: The 1.5C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning
all fossil fuels. Not reduce, not abate. Phase out, with a clear timeframe.”
Al Jaber
responded: “I’m glad you mentioned what [the SG] said. He’s right. But guess
what? I said it a day before he did - it wasn’t picked up, not even mentioned.”
Al Jaber
then said he had confronted the oil and gas industry, brought them around the
table, and got them to sign up to commitments, apparently referring to the Oil
and Gas Decarbonization Charter announced at Cop28.
He then
said: “Actually, let me just be simple. I said the same thing. I was identical.
Same thing, no pick up whatsoever. The SG gets maximum coverage.”
Immediately
after the press conference, The Guardian asked the Cop28 press office what the
“identical’ comments were and when Al Jaber had made them. Despite repeating
the request since, no answer has been received.
26m ago
09.45 GMT
Damian Carrington
With a
calls for a “phase out” versus a “phase down” of fossil fuels shaping up to be
the critical fight in the second week of Cop28, Christiana Figueres, the UN’s
climate chief when the landmark Paris agreement was reached in 2015, is
unequivocally behind phase out.
“If we want
a step forward in this COP, then we cannot compromise on phase out,” said
Figueres, now founder at the Global Optimism group. “It sends a political
signal that has ramifications for companies that need to decide where they’re
going to put their [investment].”
She said
including further language around phase out would take into consideration other
concerns. “Language around equity is important, because industrialised
countries can and should phase out much quicker than developing countries who
are exporters [and] language around a just transition is critical.” Figueres
spoke at a Guardian Live event on Wednesday.
Lawyer
Tessa Khan, founder of the Uplift campaign group in the UK, also spoke, and
said: “The signal that that softer language - phase down - sends is suggesting
a longer lifetime for fossil fuel demand and production. That’s a dangerous
signal to send national governments, to investors, to companies, that are at
right now really at a crossroads in terms of whether or not they do invest in
new fossil fuel supply, or how quickly they transition their economies away
from fossil fuels.”
41m ago
09.30 GMT
Adam Morton
The vexed
question of where Cop will be held next year may be a step closer to
resolution.
As has been
previously reported, it’s eastern Europe’s turn to host Cop29 but Russia has
vetoed the 27 EU countries and, until recently, Armenia and Azerbaijan have
been vetoing each other. That left only seven, mostly small states as possible
hosts under the UN consensus model. And organising a Cop is highly expensive.
The picture
changed on Thursday night after the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan,
which have been at odds for decades, issued a joint statement saying they were
taking steps to “normalise” their relationship. They included releasing
captured soldiers and Armenia dropping its Cop bid and throwing its support by
Azerbaijan.
“The
Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan do hope that the other
countries within the eastern European group will also support Azerbaijan’s bid
to host,” the joint statement said.
This isn’t
guaranteed. Moldova has also put itself forward as a candidate and Reuters
reports that Serbia is mulling a bid.
It remains
possible that Bonn, the home of the UN climate secretariat, or a larger German
city could become the default location if agreement isn’t reached.
Australia’s
climate change minister, Chris Bowen, doesn’t have a say in the decision, but
has been watching from a distance as the delay over next year has held up
discussion of where Cop31 will be held in 2026. Australia had made a bid to
co-host with Pacific nations.
Asked about
the Azerbaijan-Armenia statement, Bowen said “there does appear to have been a
breakthrough” on where Cop29 would be held and that was “welcome”.
Asked if he
was surprised, he said: “Yeah, well, a little. But the fact that Azerbaijan and
Armenia, through the purposes of a Cop… strike a reached agreement does give
you some reminder that there’s cause for a little bit of hope in the world.”
Updated at
09.44 GMT
52m ago
09.19 GMT
Patrick Greenfield
Mary
Robinson has arrived at Cop28 just days after her exchange with Cop28 president
Sultan Al Jaber over the role of fossil fuels in limiting global heating to
1.5C caused controversy at Cop28.
In a
picture near the Blue Zone entrance, the former Irish president reiterated the
need to phase out fossil fuels to meet the target.
“Countries
must do more than offer superficial pledges. We need radical collaboration to
ensure an ambitious response plan to the Global Stocktake. To protect the 1.5°C
warming limit this requires a phase out of all fossil fuels,” she said on X.
Earlier
this week, Al Jaber was forced into a fierce defence of his views on climate
science, after the Guardian revealed his comment that there was “no science out
there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is
what’s going to achieve 1.5C”.
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