Tens of thousands of people are heading to Dubai in early December for COP28, the annual international climate summit convened by the United Nations. <\/p>\n
With time quickly running out to prevent fossil fuel pollution from causing irreversible harm, discussions between global leaders, negotiators, climate advocates and industry representatives have shifted to how the world should adapt to more deadly heatwaves, stronger storms and catastrophic sea level rise. <\/p>\n
Despite the widespread impacts of the climate crisis, the annual negotiations have been contentious. The road to consensus on solutions has proven rocky, and has highlighted divisions between rich countries \u2014 which emit a majority of the world\u2019s planet-warming pollution \u2014 and poor nations, which have contributed the least. <\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what to know about the world\u2019s most critical climate change conference. <\/p>\n
A little over 30 years ago, more than 150 countries signed a UN treaty to limit the alarming rise of planet-warming pollution in the atmosphere. While the science behind human-caused climate change was still young, scientists knew even then it would be life-changing. <\/p>\n
The first COP \u2014 the \u201cConference of the Parties\u201d to that agreement \u2014 took place in Berlin in 1995. Member states have been convening on climate change almost every year since. In 2015, at COP21, more than 190 countries approved the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, but preferably to 1.5 degrees. <\/p>\n
Although the Paris Agreement was a landmark moment and set the world on a path that scientists supported, it didn\u2019t get specific about how countries should achieve its goal. Since then, COPs have sought to make the plans attached to the Paris Agreement more ambitious and to be more specific about the changes society would need to make. <\/p>\n
The climate summit is hosted at a different location each year. While there have been other host countries mired in controversy, the backlash to this year\u2019s host \u2014 the United Arab Emirates \u2014 has been particularly sharp; not only is the UAE a major oil-producing nation, it has also appointed a top fossil-fuel executive as its COP president. <\/p>\n
In May, more than 100 members of the US Congress and the European Parliament called for Al Jaber to step down, claiming that his role could undermine negotiations. <\/p>\n
Heads of states and governments deliver speeches in the first days of the summit. More than 160 member nations, including the UK, France, Germany and Japan, have confirmed their attendance. <\/p>\n
Perhaps the highest-profile attendees will be King Charles III, who will deliver an address at the summit\u2019s opening ceremony, and Pope Francis, who will be the first pontiff to attend a COP. <\/p>\n
So far absent from the speaker list, which will be finalized November 27, are US President Joe Biden and China\u2019s Xi Jinping \u2014 the leaders of the world\u2019s top polluting countries. In mid-November, Biden and Xi pledged to significantly ramp up renewable energy in lieu of planet-cooking fossil fuels, and agreed to resume a working group on climate cooperation. <\/p>\n
Leaders from major oil-producing countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, Russia and Iran, are among those attending. <\/p>\n
There are concerns that the Israel-Hamas war could overshadow action on climate this year, particularly in the Middle East. But representatives from both Israel and the Palestinian territories are listed to speak in the first week. <\/p>\n
The UAE has also invited many fossil fuel executives to the climate talks, where they are expected to announce new commitments to decarbonize. A list of Wall Street financial heavyweights led by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink will also be present, after missing the summit in Egypt last year. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s been eight years since the Paris Agreement, yet the world has made barely any progress on slashing climate pollution, and the window is \u201crapidly narrowing\u201d to do so, according to the agreement\u2019s first scorecard \u2014 the global stocktake \u2014 which was published in September. <\/p>\n
COP28 will be the first time that countries will be going into the negotiation rooms with an analysis that shows how seriously off-track they are on their climate targets. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut it also offers a really interesting concrete blueprint [and] mountain of evidence on how we can get the job done, so it should be a wakeup call of what we need to do but with a roadmap to get there.\u201d <\/p>\n
Some of the biggest concerns that will take center stage in Dubai are continuations from COP27 in Egypt: finalizing a \u201closs and damage\u201d fund and discussing how to ramp down planet-warming fossil fuels. <\/p>\n
A major debate among the parties has been whether to \u201cphase out\u201d or \u201cphase down\u201d fossil fuels. At COP27, a number of nations, including China and Saudi Arabia, blocked a key proposal to phase out all fossil fuels \u2014 including oil and gas \u2014 and not just coal. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe most important thing is the outcome at this COP sends a really strong signal that the world must rapidly shift away from fossil fuels,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cI would note that it\u2019s important for the language to refer to all fossil fuels.\u201d <\/p>\n
Another focus this year will be on the so-called loss and damage fund, which countries included in last year\u2019s agreement. The fund would help shuttle money from the richest countries, which are responsible for the vast majority of the climate crisis, to poor countries, where the impacts have hit hardest. <\/p>\n
The goal is to get the fund up and running by 2024. With time running out, a special committee met in Abu Dhabi in early November and recommended the World Bank host the fund and serve as its trustee temporarily for four years. <\/p>\n\n
Tens of thousands of people are heading to Dubai in early December for COP28, the annual international climate summit convened by the United Nations. With time quickly running out to prevent fossil fuel pollution from causing irreversible harm, discussions between global leaders, negotiators, climate advocates and industry representatives have shifted to how the world should <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11892,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11891","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}