The Guardian: What is COP28 and why does it matter?

What is Cop28?

Under the 1992 UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC), every country is treaty-bound to “avoid dangerous climate change” and find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally in an equitable way.

Cop stands for conference of the parties under the UNFCCC, and the annual meetings have swung between fractious and soporific, interspersed with moments of high drama and the occasional triumph (the Paris agreement in 2015) and disaster (Copenhagen in 2009). This year is the 28th iteration, and promises to be a difficult follow-up to last year, when developing countries celebrated victory on key issues of climate finance.

When does it start?

The conference will be hosted by the United Arab Emirates in Dubai, with the official start 30 November. World leaders will attend a segment known as the world climate action summit on 1 and 2 December, then leave their high-ranking officials to get on with the substance of the negotiations. The talks should close on 12 December, though experience of previous years suggests they could run on.

Why do we need a Cop – don’t we already have the Paris agreement?

Yes – under the landmark Paris agreement, signed in 2015, countries committed to holding global temperature rises to “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels, while “pursuing efforts” to limit heating to 1.5C. Those goals are legally binding and enshrined in the treaty.

However, to meet those goals, countries also agreed on non-binding national targets to cut – or in the case of developing countries to curb the growth of – greenhouse gas emissions in the near term, by 2030 in most cases.

Those targets – known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – were inadequate to hold the world within the Paris temperature targets. If fulfilled, they would result in 3C or more of warming, which would be disastrous.

Everyone knew at Paris that the NDCs were inadequate, so the French built into the accord a “ratchet mechanism” by which countries would have to return to the table every five years with fresh commitments. Those five years ended on 31 December 2020, and at Cop26 in November 2021, countries assembled to set out new targets.

Didn’t all this get sorted out at Cop26?

The most important development at Cop26 was that countries agreed to focus on the tougher 1.5C aspirational goal of the Paris agreement, acknowledging that the 2C target would allow massive devastation to take place. Research conducted since the Paris agreement was signed has shown a temperature rise of 2C above pre-industrial levels would cause changes to the climate system that would be, in many cases, catastrophic, and some of them would be irreversible, so switching the focus to a 1.5C goal represents vital progress.

Many countries also updated their NDCs at Cop26, and countries responsible for about three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions set out long-term targets to reach net zero carbon by about mid-century.

However, to stay within 1.5C, the world must not only reach net zero by about 2050 but also halve greenhouse gas emissions, compared with 2010 levels, in this decade. However, the emissions pledges at Cop26 were not adequate to meet that goal.

So at the Glasgow summit, countries also agreed to hasten the ratchet mechanism, decreeing that progress on NDCs should be updated every year, and countries were encouraged to come forward this year, and as often as necessary, with new NDCs until they are adequate.

What has happened since?

No one at Glasgow last year could have foreseen what a changed world we would live in today. Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has sent shockwaves around the world. Geopolitics has been upended, alliances and relationships redrawn, and the world plunged into crisis.

Energy prices were already rising before Putin’s invasion, as the world recovered from the Covid-19 shock, but the Ukraine war sent gas prices soaring. Putin showed his willingness to use European dependence on Russian gas as a weapon of war, turning down the taps, threatening to withdraw supplies, then (almost certainly) sabotaging the Nord Stream pipeline.

The result was even higher gas prices and a bonanza for fossil fuel companies, which have been raking in record profits.

Faced with record-high gas prices, the EU took a series of steps that include an energy efficiency drive, a windfall tax on the excess profits of fossil fuel companies to try to lower household bills and a massive push for renewable energy.

But some EU countries also embarked on a hunt for new fossil fuel supplies, building liquefied natural gas terminals and seeking deals with countries in Africa and elsewhere to explore new gasfields.

The International Energy Agency warned in 2021 that no new fossil fuel development could take place if the world was to stay within 1.5C. If these developments are not swiftly curtailed they could be disastrous for hopes of avoiding the worst ravages of climate breakdown.

What about the UK?

The host country of Cop26 has undergone a remarkable change of heart. Alok Sharma, the UK president of Cop26 under prime minister Boris Johnson, was promptly sacked from the cabinet by Rishi Sunak when he took the reins last autumn. Sharma attended Cop27 in Egypt, where he was visibly angered by some of the outcomes that he regarded as insufficient, but has played little role since.

Instead, the UK has seemed keen to erase the legacy of Cop26. The post of climate envoy within the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was abolished, and the climate team for Cop26 dispersed, and though Sunak boasts that the UK is a “climate leader” with “world-beating” achievements, this is little in evidence.

Most of the emissions cuts he boasts of took place under previous governments, and in September the prime minister made a series of high-profile U-turns on net zero policy, including postponing the phaseout of petrol and diesel cars. These reversals were judged by the Climate Change Committee to have put the UK further from meeting its legally binding target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Worse, Sunak vowed to “max out” the North Sea and embarked on a major round of new licences. He is also planning new rules that would require fresh auctions of licences every year.

Sunak snubbed the UN general assembly this year, conveniently missing a climate meeting with the UN secretary general that his poor record would probably have denied him an invitation to. He will attend Cop28, and he will this year allow King Charles III to attend too and make a keynote speech – an engagement the monarch was denied last year, despite his global renown as a green champion.

What about net zero?

To stay within 1.5C, we must stop emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases – from burning fossil fuels, and from agriculture and animal husbandry, which create methane, from cutting down trees and from certain industrial processes – almost completely by mid-century. Any residual emissions remaining by then, for instance from processes that cannot be modified, must be offset by increasing the world’s carbon sinks, such as forests, peatlands and wetlands, which act as vast carbon stores. That balance is known as net zero.

Long-term goals are not enough, however. The climate responds to cumulative emissions, and carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for about a century after it is released, so we could reach net zero by 2050 but still have emitted so much in the meantime that we exceed the 1.5C threshold irrevocably.

That is why scientists are calling the 2020s the crucial decade for the climate: if emissions can peak soon and be reduced rapidly, we can keep cumulative emissions from growing too much, and still have a chance of staying within 1.5C.

This is the 28th Cop – why has all this taken so long?

Since the industrial revolution, the modern world has run on fossil fuels. We live in a Promethean age – nearly all of our prosperity and technology has been built on cheap, easy-to-access energy from fossil fuels. Ending their reign will require huge changes, to energy systems, to the built environment, to transport, to our behaviour and diet.

Getting everyone to agree on something so complex has not been easy. Developed countries have been unwilling to take on the costs, while developing countries have demanded the right to continue to use fossil fuels to achieve economic growth. There have been wranglings over historical responsibility, over burden-sharing, over costs, over science, and the politics has been influenced by changes of government in key countries – Donald Trump, for instance, withdrew the US from the Paris agreement.

On the plus side, the cost of renewable energy and other green technology has plunged in recent years, so that it is cheaper than fossil fuels in most parts of the world. Electric vehicle technology also progressed rapidly, and new fuels such as hydrogen are being developed. Cop28 is being held in a major oil and gas-producing country in the world’s key oil and gas-producing region. These are the countries that hold our future in their hands.