A report, titled ‘COP28 Progress or Regression?’ published by Turkey’s Uskudar University in partnership with the UN-Accredited Caribbean ASEAN Council shows that the climate action plan proposed by the UAE’s presidency of this year’s COP climate summit offers the most ambitious agenda to date ever put forth by a COP presidency in 28 years.
This new analysis is authored by a series of leading global academics and practitioners, including a UN environment advisor, It has compared the four previous COP summits to the agenda of the current COP28 presidency across four key areas viz. emissions reduction targets, renewable energy targets, climate financing and what the COP presidency itself has done or is doing in setting an example on these areas.
The climate action plan revealed by the COP28 presidency earlier this year is in fact far more developed and concrete than previous COP agendas.
The report said, “Altogether, through a combination of domestic and international expansion plans, along with active partnerships, the UAE is mobilising renewable energy projects worth over $300 billion out to 2030 – a sum which vastly outweighs the volume of sums invested by previous COP presidencies. This is equivalent to what the entire world was spending on renewable energy in a single year from 2014-2019.”
“COP28 plan includes a number of core goals which have never been discussed at previous COP summits, including a landmark proposal for a global target of tripling renewable energy capacity which would lead renewable costs to plummet to about a quarter of the cost of fossil fuels today,” said the report.
“Other game-changing goals include brokering agreements on phasing down the use of fossil fuels, the first time an oil producer has endorsed such an idea, phasing out all fossil fuels producing emissions that are not captured, as well as restructuring international financial systems to make trillions of dollars of climate financing available for developing countries, “said the report.
The report discloses for the first time that the COP28 presidency is mobilising far more support for renewables than previously recognised.
Commenting on the report, the author, Professor Ibrahim Ozdemir, said “I decided to embark on this project because I was deeply concerned that the intense polarization and skepticism around COP28 will damage and derail the careful negotiations we need to reach what could be the most ambitious global climate deal in history.” said report author “COP28 is the world’s last chance for a global deal to avoid dangerous climate change. And while we might want the plan on the table to be even more robust than it is, I want my fellow climate campaigners to realize that however imperfect, this is the best plan we’ve ever had in history at the UN level. It is the first time we’ve ever had the prospect of getting countries to agree to global commitments on renewable energy growth, and getting rid of fossil fuels whose emissions are not being captured. If we fail to broker an agreement on the COP28 proposals, one has to wonder if there will be any hope at all of averting dangerous climate change. But if we succeed, we will have a strong platform to keep on fighting at the international level,” he said.
The report is a joint publication of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Uskudar University (Istanbul, Turkey) and the Caribbean ASEAN Council (Rosea, Commonwealth of Dominica), with contributors from Turkey, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Nigeria, Kenya, Chad, The Gambia and Bangladesh.
