COP28 Outcomes and the Way Forward

The achievements of COP28 would have been worthy of applause at the beginning of the 21st century, but are now insufficient to address climate change.

[This text has been written by Desislava Petrova with Ivana Cvijanovic and Xavier Rodó's collaboration.]

COP 28 is historic in its recognition for the first time of the need for rapid and drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and the “transition away” from fossil fuels. It actually points to a future without fossil fuels, which is very ambitious politically. In addition, the recommendation for tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency capacity is crucial and very welcome. However, for COP28 to be truly seen as a step forward, action should be taken immediately, and a lot of work needs to be done. In fact, the ultimate cost for continued inaction will be the general decrease of our quality of life, and tragically, the loss of life. According to a recently published report in November 2023 (UNEP emissions gap report), the world is not on track to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement from 2015, and we are now on a path to nearly 3ºC of warming by 2100.

For COP28 to be truly seen as a step forward, action should be taken immediately, and a lot of work needs to be done

Health, for the first time at COP28

Health was for the first time a key topic at COP28, and it has been officially recognized that the climate crisis is also a health crisis. It has become evident that global collaboration will be needed to identify the health risks associated with climate change, and to clearly pinpoint the health benefits that will come with tackling global warming. However, until the world continues to rely on fossil fuels for its energy, the negative health impacts will continue to rise. Hence, health should be treated as a meaningful measure of progress in regards to how the climate crisis evolves.

Health was for the first time a key topic at COP28, and it has been officially recognized that the climate crisis is also a health crisis

Vague, ambiguous measures

While COP28 is a historic step politically, from a scientific point of view it is disappointing. Unfortunately, in the final agreement there are no clear requirements for nations to start cutting emissions on a large scale from 2024 (indeed to half them by 2030), and the proposed measures are vague, ambiguous and lack a definite timeline. The remaining carbon budget that the world currently has in order to have a 50% chance of staying below 1.5ºC of warming is 5-8 years with the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions. This means that fossil fuels should be eliminated between 2030 and 2040, much earlier than the agreed net zero by 2050. Just to put things in perspective, there are currently 40 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide more in the atmosphere than last year, and one third of a trillion tonnes more than in 2015 when the Paris Agreement was signed. Thus, there are substantial emissions that will continue in the near future and that will require huge efforts to offset, even if indeed global emissions peak by 2025 as is needed and recognized by COP28. Ecosystem and forest restoration, along with other sinks for carbon can be enhanced, but cannot remove the carbon that is already in the atmosphere and the carbon that will still be emitted until we finally reach net zero, supposedly by 2050. Carbon capture technologies will surely have to play their role, but these are still far from a scalable commercialized use, not to mention their financial costs.

While COP28 is a historic step politically, from a scientific point of view it is disappointing

Pending issues

In addition, the lack of clearer commitments in the agreement for financial aid to the developing countries in their transition to renewable energy, along with the lack of a net zero target for methane, are very concerning, since this lack jeopardizes the actual reduction of greenhouse gases. Overall, the targets mentioned by COP28 mainly focus on “energy systems”, and not so much on other sectors such as agriculture (from which methane is released), which points to the fact that climate change is still not seen as a systematic problem that encompasses every aspect of life. Furthermore, the transition away from fossil fuels surely involves the removal of trillions of dollars given as fossil fuel subsidies every year, and the timeline for such abolishment or redirection of subsidies is also not clear in the text of the agreement. These subsidies could go to help poorer countries transition their energy systems and adapt to the worst impacts of climate change that already cost a lot for some front-facing island nations, for example.

The world is heating much faster than the COP is able to respond to, and COP28 represents a very small step in the right direction at a time when we needed a giant one

Towards future COP

Therefore, the achievements of COP28 would have been worthy of applause, if they took place in the beginning of the 21^st century. Now, they represent a small and insufficient step towards addressing the risks of climate change. Moreover, it starts to appear that the COP meetings are unable to deliver the results, and to stir the action needed to address the climate emergency that we now face. So even though we know and finally recognize what needs to be done in order to decarbonise, we do not seem to treat the problem with the urgency that is signaled by the IPPC reports. The time for an appropriate response and action is rapidly running out. In other words, the world is heating much faster than the COP is able to respond to, and COP28 represents a very small step in the right direction at a time when we needed a giant one. True, we finally have a political recognition of the need to move away from fossil fuels, but this is something that scientifically has been obvious for more than 30 years. Understandably, the diplomatic process of aligning so many countries to the admission of the need to abandon fossil fuels represents a huge challenge. Therefore, future COP meetings should consider majority consensus coalitions, because there surely will be states that will never agree to fully phase out of fossil fuels.