Proposals in a UN report before the next climate summit has shown that fossil fuel exploration should cease globally by 2030 and funding to rescue poor countries from the impacts of the climate crisis should reach $200bn (£165bn) to $400bn a year by the same date.
The report found that countries were still “way off track” to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement and much more action would be needed to make it possible to limit global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels.
Published on Wednesday, the UN’s synthesis report on the global stocktake will form the basis for discussions at the Cop28 conference in Dubai, which begins at the end of November. The global stocktake is a process mandated under the Paris agreement, intended to check every five years on countries’ progress on meeting their emissions-cutting goals.
Reacting, Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, said that the report offered a range of actions for governments to consider. “[These are] clear targets which provide a north star for the action that is required by countries,” he said.
Greenhouse gas emissions are still rising but there is broad agreement they must peak by 2025 at the latest if there is to be a chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C.
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“This is a major opportunity being presented for the course correction that is so urgently called for,” Stiell said. “[The report] lays out elements that can be incorporated into a response.” But while most countries agreed on the need to change direction, he said, there was “significant divergence” on how to achieve the changes needed.
Other proposals in the report include a tripling of renewable energy capacity and a doubling of energy efficiency globally by 2030. It was the second of two documents that will underpin discussions at Cop28. The first also contained proposals to phase out fossil fuels – a highly contentious issue that was sidelined at the last two UN climate summits, Cop27 in Egypt last year and Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021.
However, there is no guarantee any such proposals will make it into any final outcome from the two weeks of negotiations at Cop28 or even that they will be on the official agenda for the summit.
It is expected that the global stocktake papers will be discussed next week at technical meetings of UN nations, and again at a “pre-Cop” meeting in Abu Dhabi at the end of this month. Stiell said it was for governments to determine what they would put on the agenda at Cop28, and for the host country, the United Arab Emirates, to “shape what form this takes”.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
