What is it about?
This article reviews outcomes of the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP28) held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in late 2023. In particular, it considered the first Global Stocktake [GST] of actions taken by signatory nations to the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The GST examined the potential impact of bottom-up national pledges on ‘greenhouse gas’ [GHG] mitigation required to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the 21st Century. The achievements at COP28 were mixed, and disappointed many from the climate-vulnerable states at high risk from extreme weather events and rising sea levels. There is a significant GHG emissions gap between that needed to “keep 1.5°C alive” and climate actions identified in the GST. Nonetheless, the Parties agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems” in order to reach net zero GHG emissions (i.e., carbon neutrality) by 2050, and to triple renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency by 2030.
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Why is it important?
Several reports were published by international bodies ahead of the recent 28th UNFCCC Conference of the Parties [COP28] held in Dubai {United Arab Emirates [UAE]} over 30 November – 12 December 2023. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], in its most recent [2023] scientific assessment, asserts that human activities, principally through GHG emissions, have ‘unequivocally’ caused observed global warming since the mid-20th Century, with mean global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above 1850-1900 levels during 2011-2020. Global mean sea levels are continuing to rise, with the extent of Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice well below average.
Perspectives
This assessment sets out the background to what was achieved during the Dubai Climate Summit. Clearly, there are issues that will require more urgent attention from 2024 onwards. Although the climate science was referenced in the final text (COP28UAE, 2023c), there was insufficient action proposed to meet the 1.5-2°C pathways as recommended at the 2015 Paris Agreement. The emissions, adaptation, and finance gaps all need to be closed, largely with technologies and processes that are already known and tested. The next full GST will take place at COP30, to be held within the lower Amazon basin at the Brazilian city of Belém in late 2025. In late 2024, COP29 will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan [another petrostate], where the focus will be on securing a transnational climate finance fund in line with the scale and urgency of the challenge, estimated to be trillions of US dollars. For the intervening period, the work of co-ordination and monitoring of the outcomes from COP28 will be down to the no doubt over-stretched UNFCCC secretariat [now designated as UN Climate Change] and their Executive Secretary Simon Stiell from Grenada. The world will keep warming and hundreds of millions of people, as well as co-located wildlife, will suffer the effects of severe weather events, particularly in geographically vulnerable communities.
Professor Emeritus Geoffrey P Hammond
University of Bath
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Briefing: Stocktaking global warming: the outcomes of the 2023 Dubai Climate Summit (COP28), Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Energy, August 2024, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1680/jener.24.00005.
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