As a year that brought the highest global temperatures ever recorded winds down, world leaders will gather in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai later this week for the latest United Nations negotiations on climate change, a nearly two-week event called COP28.
The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) dates to 1992 and calls on nations to work to avoid dangerous human interference with the climate system. This is the 28th annual conference of the 198 participating nations, or parties, in the framework, thus the name Conference of Parties, or COP28.
The parties in the framework produce treaties and agreements to carry out their work, the most important of which is the Paris Agreement reached at COP21 in 2015. In Paris, all participating countries agreed to limit warming beyond pre-industrial levels to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
In Dubai, negotiators will get a report on the lackluster progress to meet the Paris goals, then hash out ways to reduce emissions and limit warming in the short time left while aiding adaptation to the effects of warming already underway.
Here are the five main issues and key players to watch at COP28.
Global Stocktake
COP28 will bring the first "global stocktake" on progress to meet the Paris Agreement, a report card of sorts on how nations are doing in their pledges and commitments to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause warming. By all indications, this will not be the kind of report card a student would be happy to bring home.
The highly regarded environmental think thank World Resources Institute found in a recent report that global efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius "are failing across the board." Only sales of electric vehicles are on track to meet required targets; every other indicator is lagging far behind the pace and scale needed. Delegates will hear plans to triple deployment of renewable energy by the end of the decade and—as we learn below—phase out fossil fuel use.
Person to watch: U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has not been shy about scolding nations to do more to reduce emissions.
"We cannot address climate catastrophe without tackling its root cause: fossil fuel dependence," Guterres said in a recent statement.
Fossil Phase-Down
Past COPs have failed to win agreement to end or even phase down the use of coal, oil and gas responsible for most of the greenhouse gas emissions warming the planet. At COP28, expect another attempt to ratchet down fossil fuel use against the backdrop of a host country that is deeply invested in oil and gas.
The U.N. Environment Programme recently issued its latest "production gap" report on the distance between where nations are and where they need to be on fossil fuel use to meet the Paris Agreement targets. The report finds that collectively the countries in the agreement still have plans that would produce more than twice the fossil fuels by 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Far from ending the use of fossil fuels, many nations still subsidize their development, mask the true costs of their use and offset their price to consumers. In the Glasgow Climate Pact adopted during COP26 in 2021, nations agreed to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. But a study this year found that fossil subsidies roughly doubled from 2021 to 2022 globally in response to disruption to the global energy market by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Person to watch: Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber is both the CEO of the UAE's National Oil Company, ADNOC Group, and COP28 president, an apparent conflict that has brought sharp criticism from environmental advocates such as Al Gore. But Al Jaber's supporters point out that he also led the country's renewable energy company, Masdar.
Health Connection
This year's COP will for the first time devote a full day to the health impacts of climate change and the ways that climate action and public health improvements overlap.
Climate change is already exacerbating public health impacts from storms, drought, heat waves and other extreme weather events, and projections show a much higher toll in the decades to come if warming continues unabated.
Conversely, actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from dirty fuel sources can also bring dramatic public health improvements. Particulate matter and soot from fossil fuel combustion contribute to millions of deaths each year while also adding to warming. But few countries have explicit steps to reduce soot, also known as black carbon, in their Paris Agreement action plans.
A recent report by the climate solutions research group Project Drawdown outlined several ways to reduce black carbon. Cleaner cooking and home heating fuels could have a substantial impact in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where wood, charcoal and other solid fuels are used in some 2 billion homes. Cleaning up older diesel engines can remove most of the black carbon from transportation sources.
Person to watch: Dr. Vanessa Kerry directs the Program in Global Public Policy and Social Change at Harvard Medical School and is the World Health Organization's first special envoy for climate change and health. In her interview with Newsweek, Kerry stressed the win-win opportunities to protect lungs and the climate.
Natural Solutions
Forest ecologists around the world contributed to a recent study that found that the world's forests could absorb about 328 billion tons of carbon emissions if they are sufficiently protected and restored. That's just one example of the nature-based solutions to climate change that also include the carbon-absorbing abilities of grasslands, mangroves and oceans.
Past COPs have resulted in support for reducing deforestation and degradation of forests, but the funding mechanisms to support conservation are not up to the task and carbon credit markets are riddled with loopholes.
Conservation scientists want COP28 to produce more funding to keep standing forests intact and to recognize the important links between biodiversity and the carbon storage services nature provides.
Person to watch: Razan Al Mubarak is president of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the world's largest network of conservation scientists and policy experts. She is also a member of a wealthy and politically connected family in the UAE. In her interview with Newsweek, Al Mubarak argued for greater support for nature-based climate solutions.
Climate Funding
Carbon dioxide persists in the atmosphere for a long time, and the historic emissions from centuries of fossil fuel use by wealthy developed countries play a large role in current and future warming. Meanwhile, many of the earliest and most severe impacts of climate change, such as sea level rise, drought and heat, are striking the world's least developed nations, which contribute less to the overall amount of CO2.
A tenet of the UNFCCC is that wealthy nations should therefore assist less-developed ones in both adaptation to climate change impacts and the shift to cleaner energy sources.
Negotiators reached a framework deal this year for the World Bank to host a "loss and damage" fund to help vulnerable countries manage extreme weather events. But the details are unclear and the last talks leading up to COP28 saw rancorous disagreement over just how the program should be funded.
Person to watch: Former U.S. Secretary of State and Senator from Massachusetts John Kerry now serves as the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate. The U.S. has balked at earlier efforts to commit funding for climate damages.
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