This time, no COP-ing out on climate action

For decades, climate negotiations avoided mentioning the elimination of fossil fuels, until the COP 26, two years ago at Glasgow, agreed to “phase down” coal power. Though countries have taken steps to speed up the deployment of clean fuel, energy markets, roiled by the conflict in Ukraine, have played truant. The future of coal, gas and oil will be among the flashpoints when the Dubai COP works on the main item on its agenda — stocktaking of the progress on attaining the Paris Pact’s goals.

In September, a UNFCCC stocktaking report pointed to deficiencies in every aspect of climate action — mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology and capacity building. The report also affirmed that the current national commitments — the Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs — towards the Paris Pact will not be sufficient to keep the temperature rise below the 1.5-degree C target. The treaty was based on the hope that NDCs would become more ambitious with time. The pact also has a “ratchet mechanism” through which countries are supposed to update their climate pledges every five years. However, the stocktaking process assesses the cumulative effects of the NDCs.

It does not pin responsibility on individual countries. This approach is rightly based on the principle that mitigation is a collective responsibility. But it also makes the already contentious task of scaling up ambitions more fraught. UNFCCC meetings have almost always come to uneasy stalemates over the issue of who should take up more responsibility and how.

That said, the stocktaking process does speak of “integrated, yet inclusive policymaking”. It also underlines that “scaled-up mobilisation of support for climate action in developing countries entails strategically deploying international public finance”. The ball is now in the court of the negotiators in Dubai. Rigid approaches of the past will have to be discarded for COP 28 to make a meaningful difference.