COP28 final draft removes mention of fossil fuel phaseout, sparking backlash

Dec. 11 (UPI) -- The final draft of the COP28 global climate summit agreement was released on Monday evening, drawing criticism from numerous stakeholders for dropping specific language around a phaseout of fossil fuels.

The future of fossil fuel use has been the most contentious issue at this year's summit. Many world leaders and scientists have been demanding a commitment to a total phaseout of coal, oil and natural gas in COP28's final agreement, while major oil-producing states such as Saudi Arabia have pushed to block any mention of fossil fuels at all.

Earlier drafts of the agreement, known as the global stocktake, had included several options for countries to phase out fossil fuels, but Monday's text sidestepped the debate entirely.

It provides a range of options including "reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels ... so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science."

Negative reactions poured in from climate groups and political leaders after the text was released, with complaints about the lack of specificity in language and timelines.

"If this is all we get from COP28, then this conference was a failure," Greenpeace International said.

"The text has a menu of things countries might choose to do or not to accelerate the energy transition," Kaisa Kosonen, head of Greenpeace's COP28 delegation, said in a statement. "This leaves the door open to a host of false solutions that will benefit the oil, gas and coal industries."

Mary Robinson, chair of The Elders, called the current text "grossly insufficient" to reach the goal of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius laid out in the Paris Agreement adopted at COP21.

"It is not good enough to say you reaffirm the Paris Agreement but to then fail to commit to a full fossil fuel phase-out," she said.

The president of COP28, the United Arab Emirates' Sultan Al Jaber, however, called the text a "huge step forward" in a statement accompanying the release.

"We have made progress, but we still have a lot to do," he added during a conference addressing COP28 member states. "I want you to deliver the highest ambition on all agenda items, including on fossil fuels language."

Al Jaber, who heads the state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., has been at the center of controversy around the decision to host a climate conference in a petrostate.

Last week, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore called Al Jaber's presidency "the most brazen conflict of interest in the history of climate negotiation."

The text will go back to a debate in a session on Monday evening as the final wording is worked out for an agreement that has to be adopted by a consensus of nearly 200 member nations.

The Alliance of Small Island States, an intergovernmental organization representing 39 countries, said that it would not approve the agreement in its current form.

"We will not sign our death certificate," Cedric Schuster, a Samoan politician and chair of AOSIS, said in a statement. "We cannot sign on to text that does not have strong commitments on phasing out fossil fuels."

The European Union's commissioner for climate action, Wopke Hoekstra, called the current text "disappointing."

"It is insufficient and not adequate to address the problem we are here to tackle," he said. "The science is clear: we need to phase out fossil fuels. We have to continue the conversation."

The event -- officially the Conference of Parties -- is being held at the end of a year that saw scorching heat waves and extreme weather from flooding to wildfires around the globe.

Last week, the United Nations issued its latest global climate report, which concluded that 2023 was "virtually certain" to be the warmest year in the 174-year observational record.

COP28 is slated to conclude on Tuesday morning.