Two Weeks Dedicated to Discussing Climate Change: COP28

Two Weeks Dedicated to Discussing Climate Change: COP28

The 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) was a two-week event from November 30 to December 12, 2023, attended by 197 countries to discuss global climate action for 2024. COP28 was hosted in Dubai, UAE, after the inauguration of the new UAE President and oil CEO, Sultan Al Jaber, who managed to smoothly conduct the entire event with minimal scheduling difficulties, a major feat from the past that allowed countries to discuss almost all of the issues on the agenda, summarized by Carbon Brief through this interactive table. The most significant accomplishment coming from the COP28 summit was the global stocktake on combating the use of fossil fuels.

The Global Stocktake

Arguably the most impressive decision since COP21, the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement instructed all the countries attending COP28 to contribute to the battle against fossil fuels. The stocktake is intended to occur every five years after this inaugural event and takes a global “directory” of all the information and resource (notably alternative fuel sources) advancements in a cycle. This means that the next stocktake, expected in 2028, will account for the developments since 2023; however, creating this directory is not the only issue, as it is necessary to implement solutions using the data. Al Jaber ambitiously encourages nations to focus on doubling or even tripling the emphasis on transitioning to alternative fuel sources to reclaim the limit of global temperature rise at 1.5 degrees Celsius. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that “greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 at the latest and decline 43% by 2030.” to limit the overall temperature rise to 1.5°C. The stocktake highlights how this is a massive challenge for developing countries and further calls for trillions of dollars in aid to these countries to pursue this goal of lowering temperatures. Now that COP28 has concluded, the next steps toward combating climate change will require utilizing the inventory defined in the stocktake, and the specific plan of action for the nations participating will be finalized by 2025.