Standoff in Dubai: on the last scheduled day of COP28, countries in favor of phasing out fossil fuels, including those in the European Union, are trying to obtain the maximum against the bloc led by Saudi Arabia in the final agreement negotiated by the United Arab Emirates.
The 7 a.m. GMT (2 a.m. EST) deadline set last week by Emirati COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber passed without a deal, as many negotiators feared.
The latest draft text put on the table on Monday by Sultan Al Jaber is considered too weak by the European Union, the United States, small island states and many South American countries to respond to the climate crisis.
“We expected it,” COP28 Director General Majid Al Suwaidi said on Tuesday. “We wanted the text to spark a conversation.” Which he undoubtedly succeeded in doing, judging by the outcry in Dubai.
This 21-page document would in fact leave complete freedom to the signatory countries of the Paris agreement to choose their way of “reducing” fossil fuels, without obligation.
It no longer sets any common objective of “exit” from oil, gas and coal, although envisaged in previous versions.
“There is a large, very large group of countries, even a super-majority, who want more ambition,” European Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said on Tuesday.
The text is “unacceptable” and “well below the ambition necessary to keep our islands above the surface of the water”, denounced Tuesday Joseph Sikulu, responsible for the Pacific of the NGO 350.org.
It is “an insult to those of us who came here to fight for our survival,” according to the activist.
” Until the end “
Europeans are constantly talking to each other to coordinate. Diplomats and ministers worn out by sleepless nights are seeking to make the text more restrictive.
A new draft agreement is expected on Tuesday, according to delegates. But the hope of having a historic text adopted calling for the exit from oil, gas and coal on the day of the 8e anniversary of the Paris Agreement now seems very unlikely.
A representative from the Marshall Islands told AFP she intended to stay “until the end”.
“We are prepared to stay a little longer,” also assured the head of German diplomacy Annalena Baerbock.
It remains to try to find a formula likely to satisfy countries with divergent views. A minority of hydrocarbon exporting countries, led by Saudi Arabia, oppose any wording explicitly targeting the main source of their revenue.
In the COPs, the texts are adopted by “consensus”, a notion different from unanimity since there is no vote, legally ill-defined, but which can theoretically allow a single State to object.
The United States also calls for “substantially” strengthening the Emirati project.
NGOs and experts denounce a project in the form of a “shopping list” or an “à la carte menu” putting the development of solar, wind, nuclear, hydrogen or that of energy capture techniques on the same footing. carbon.
In their infancy, these are favored by the fossil industry and the producing countries, Saudi Arabia in the lead, but will have only a weak impact in the current crucial decade.
Chinese influence
“I am surprised by the lack of ambition,” confides another Western negotiator.
All eyes are on China and the United States, the world’s top two emitters of greenhouse gases (41% between them). The Chinese envoy said nothing publicly on Monday.
In November, the two powers agreed to avoid talking about an “exit” from fossil fuels but emphasized the role of renewable energies to gradually replace them.
Progress on energy objectives is also suspended from parallel progress in other negotiated texts, in particular on financial aid from rich countries to developing countries so that they can adapt their agriculture or their cities to climate change, or finance their transition to solar energy and their energy transition.