Climate ministers increase pressure on host of COP28 summit

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A group of countries led by Germany and Canada have called on the UAE, which hosts the COP28 UN climate summit, to focus on phasing out all fossil fuels where emissions are not captured.

COP28 president-designate Sultan Al Jaber is expected to outline a plan for the summit, to be held in Dubai in December, while climate ministers from the G20 countries meet in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.

In a letter published in the Financial Times ahead of the ministerial meeting, German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan, her Kenyan counterpart Ali Mohamed, Canadian environment minister Steven Guilbeault, Belgian climate minister Zakia Khattabi and the Austrian minister for climate action Leonore Gewessler said COP28 will not be easy but warned countries were facing catastrophic human, environmental and economic losses without urgent action.

In the face of deadly heatwaves, wildfires and torrential flooding, we must all do more, faster to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis, they wrote.

Temperatures have already risen by at least 1.1°C since pre-industrial times, leading to a cascade of weather events of increasing intensity this year.

Climate leaders have called for COP28 to focus on three overarching criteria.

These include relentlessly phasing out fossil fuels, while tripling the global deployment of renewable energy by 2030 to reach 12 terawatts of installed capacity and improving energy efficiency.

The letter also advocated a renewed focus on funding to address climate change and the energy transition, including ambitious funding from the Green Climate Fund, the United Nations body that funds clean energy and climate resilience projects in developing countries.

The loss and damage fund, agreed last year at COP27 in Egypt, also needed to be up and running, they added.

Canada, a major oil and gas producer, has been impacted by unusual weather conditions since June. They fueled fires that are still raging in British Columbia.

On Wednesday, Guilbeault announced that Canada would pledge C$450 million ($340 million) to the Green Climate Fund, up from its C$300 million pledge in 2019. He encouraged other contributors, traditional and new, to also raise their ambitions and commit more funds.

Climate finance must be a central part of the conversation at COP28, Guilbeault added, and progress must be made at the summit on reforming multilateral institutions to make them better able to support climate-vulnerable nations.

The UAE’s role in COP28 has come under close scrutiny. A group of US and European lawmakers and activists have raised questions about the suitability of a petrostate hosting the annual climate negotiations. In recent weeks, Al Jaber has been under pressure to set out his vision of the agenda at the summit.

In recent speeches, he has emphasized the need to triple renewable energy capacity and increase energy efficiency, but has failed to provide a timeline for phasing out fossil fuels.

Jaber, who leads the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, is expected to focus on decarbonisation at COP28. The FT previously reported that the UAE is working on an oil and gas industry alliance and is attempting to attract other polluting industries to focus on decarbonisation through the use of carbon capture and storage technology, which remains not proven on a large scale.

Guilbeault on Wednesday said a big disappointment for COP27 and the recent UN climate talks in Bonn in June was the little progress made on mitigation.

We cannot solve climate change unless we have an ambitious mitigation agenda, he said.

The ministers’ letter to the FT, also signed by Ralph Regenvanu, climate minister of the vulnerable island of Vanuatu, and Joyce Banda, former president of Malawi, said: “We believe that the COP28 summit in Dubai can be a success if, like …al-Jaber says, the world unites and agrees to work together for the common good.

They added: The world cannot afford the COP28 summit to fail.

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