At last the elephant in the room has been acknowledged. Almost three decades after the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change was agreed, and at its 28^th progress meeting, states have for the first time agreed it would be a good idea to move away from the fossil fuels that are the major cause of climate change.

For that horribly belated acknowledgement of the obvious, the COP28 climate summit, recently concluded in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), may have a place in history, as the place where a line in the sand was drawn on the fossil fuel era. But it may also be looked back on as just another in a long and continuing series of failures to get to grips with the climate crisis.

Agreement awash with qualifications

What made COP28 more important than most was the global stocktake – the first comprehensive assessment of the state of play since the 2015 Paris Agreement. This is a key means by which the Paris Agreement’s ratchet mechanism – with states expected to identify where progress is lagging and intensify their actions over time – is to be achieved.

The stocktake made clear just how far off track the world is on the efforts needed to keep the end-of-century global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. It assesses that existing commitments, if achieved, will mean temperature rises of between 2.4 and 2.6 degrees. This would subject many more millions to catastrophes such as droughts, extreme weather, diseases, food shortages and loss of land due to sea-level rise, and potentially trigger tipping points for runaway climate change. There’s no way to prevent this without deep and rapid cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, and no way to make these without keeping fossil fuels in the ground.

The reason there’s finally some acknowledgement of this in an official agreement may well be that the UAE managed to persuade its more powerful ally, Saudi Arabia, that it was no longer politically tenable to keep blocking language on fossil fuels. But the cost of compromise is an agreement that still falls short.

Decisions at COPs are made by consensus rather than voting, so even though 130 out of 198 states backed a commitment to ‘phase out’ fossil fuels, others that have long dragged their heels were able to insist on the significantly weaker text of ‘transition away from’. The consensus is that the meeting was lucky to get that – in a widely condemned draft that circulated at one point, language was even vaguer and offered only a long list of options.

Still, the agreement is left with something of a shopping list, with states being called on to ‘contribute to’ transitioning away from fossil fuels as one of eight possible methods of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The Alliance of Small Islands States – many of which face an existential threat from sea-level rise – denounced a ‘litany of loopholes’ in the agreement.

The agreement’s reference to the need for ‘accelerating action in this critical decade’ is welcome, since for cuts to make a big difference, they’re needed now. But the reference to fossil fuels focuses only on their role in ‘energy systems’, an odd formulation that appears to leave ample scope to keep using them for anything else, including transport, industry and plastics production.

There are other escape routes for the fossil fuel industry. The next paragraph refers to ‘transitional fuels’, code for switching from coal and oil to natural gas. Countries could expand gas use and extraction and bang the drum about how they’re complying with the agreement, even though this isn’t going to make the level of difference needed – but it would keep big gas producers wealthy.

And then there’s the agreement’s reference to the potential for carbon capture and storage, something pushed by the oil and gas elite, with the UAE to the fore, even though scientists say the technology is unproven, likely unscalable and potentially only ever partly effective. It’s a comforting fantasy to enable continuing extraction.

There are many other problems. In a positive, the agreement commits to tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency, but with detailed numerical targets absent and baselines left undefined, it gives considerable scope for states to mark their own homework. The text on coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, goes no further than at COP26. In the agreement’s only other reference to fossil fuels – on the huge problem of fossil fuel subsidies – the wording is also awash with qualifications, referring to ‘inefficient’ subsidies, with states free to interpret what this means.

Ultimately the text, while making some moves forward, shows how limited COPs are when it comes to breaking new ground and how hard it is to get any acknowledgement of the action needed to meet the scale of the crisis. Petrostates and fossil fuel corporations are doing everything they can to continue their lethal and lucrative business for as long as possible.

That determination was reflected in the fact that there were at least 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists present at COP28, including many who were part of state delegations – an almost fourfold increase on the previous record, set just a year before at COP27. Clearly, global temperatures aren’t the only records being smashed. Their desperation not to see change was also revealed in leaked letters from the OPEC cartel of major oil and gas producers, which urged its members to reject any text targeting fossil fuels.

There were also a record number of agribusiness lobbyists present, this being the first time food was on the COP’s agenda, and they got what they came for, with the agreement saying little about the need to cut food systems emissions, particularly in the beef industry.

The end result is that, after the hottest year on record, plans for a massive expansion of fossil fuel extraction will continue. That includes Adnoc, the UAE’s state-owned oil and gas company, to which COP28 head Sultan al-Jaber returns. Following the summit he confirmed the corporation’s plan to boost its investments in oil and gas extraction. While al-Jaber won praise from some quarters for his diplomatic efforts, ahead of the meeting he also faced accusations that the UAE planned to use the summit to strike oil deals and during COP28 appeared to deny climate science about the need to cut emissions.

Money matters

Money matters, and the news on the financing needed for climate transition was mixed at best. Ahead of the summit, a deal was struck on the fund to compensate global south countries for the loss and damage caused by climate change, confirmed on the first day of COP28 to look like an early success. But while any movement on this is welcome, civil society criticised the fact that the fund will, at least for the first four years, be hosted by the World Bank, albeit with its own board. Civil society had argued against this, not least because the World Bank has a track record of supporting environmentally destructive initiatives with poor human rights protections.

Another problem is that contributions to the fund are voluntary. With total pledges of around US$770 million to date, it’s far short of the billions needed.

Beyond this, one of the major demands of global south states going into COP28 was for much more funding for adaptation to help countries cope with the realities of climate change. But this was a big disappointment, with no real progress made.

There is a great injustice at play here, and horrendous hypocrisy on the part of global north states. Their early industrialisation, in many cases underpinned by colonial exploitation, is the foundation of their present-day wealth. It’s also the cause of the historic greenhouse gas emissions that largely created the climate crisis.

At COP28, global north states were broadly aligned in pushing for language on fossil fuel withdrawal – even though many are still falling short of emissions cuts targets and have delayed their phase-out plans, and some with oil and gas reserves, such as the UK and USA, plan increased extraction. Still they expect global south countries to skip a stage and switch immediately to renewables – but without ensuring the money to do so is available. Much of the financing on offer is in the form of loans that pile on top of already high levels of indebtedness, or investments that create opportunities for companies largely based in the global north.

There’s long been a particular shortfall on funding for adaptation, despite that fact that many global south states with historically low greenhouse gas emissions are expected to adapt rapidly to a problem they largely didn’t cause – but that disproportionately affects them. With debt already hindering their ability to adapt, more debt isn’t the solution.

The system is broken – and that didn’t change at COP28. The text of the agreement recognises that trillions of dollars are needed – it just doesn’t say how they’ll be mobilised. On adaptation, it only urges global north states to put together a report on their progress towards the target of doubling adaptation financing by 2025 – while noting that, even if this were achieved, there’s a need for much more financing beyond doubling current efforts.

Closed civic space

Many of the draft text’s references to human rights and justice never made it into the final agreement either. The text, for example, contains no mention of environmental and land defenders. This reflected denial of the huge role of civil society activists in pushing the need for climate action up the political agenda, and was a major missed opportunity to act on rising levels of repression of climate activism, including lethal violence against Indigenous and environmental land rights defenders and growing restriction of climate protests in global north countries.

Clearly the summit’s host had no interest in pushing for strong recognition of human rights. As civil society worked to highlight ahead of COP28, the UAE has closed civic space. Dissent is criminalised and activists routinely detained. There’s widespread torture in jails and detention centres and at least 58 prisoners of conscience are still held in prison despite having completed their sentences. Brazenly, during COP28, the authorities launched a mass trial of over 80 people on trumped-up terrorism charges.

This hostility towards civil society was carried into the summit, as it was when Egypt, another country with closed civic space, hosted COP27. Spaces for civil society events were isolated from the rest of the summit. Strict limits on protests were enforced, forcing protest organisers to clear tremendous hurdles on threat of expulsion if they didn’t comply. Due to heat levels, no protests were permitted at lunchtimes – normally a key opportunity to communicate with delegations. National flags were banned at protests, hindering people wanting to show solidarity with Palestine. There was extensive video surveillance inside the conference venue. Unusually, no protests took place outside the sole UN-administered official protest zone, so sure were people of the punishments that would follow. Self-censorship was inevitable.

Civil society’s broad view was that this was the most restrictive COP ever. And shockingly, it’s set to happen again for the third year running.

Towards Azerbaijan

COP30 in 2025 will take place in Brazil, offering a real opportunity to put protection of the Amazon rainforest and Indigenous rights front and centre. Civil society mobilisation will be crucial because that’s the summit where states are expected to present their updated national climate plans to take into the account the global stocktake.

But first there’s COP29 next year, and heading into the UAE summit, it wasn’t clear where it would be held. The principle of rotation between the UN’s five regions meant it was East Europe’s turn, but consensus also applies to the choice of hosts, and Russia blocked any hosting bid by a state opposed to its war on Ukraine.

Armenia and Azerbaijan both expressed an interest. Their long-running dispute over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh – within Azerbaijan’s borders but until recently a de facto part of Armenia – ended decisively in Azerbaijan’s favour this year following a military offensive that came after a long blockade. What followed was forced migration and ethnic cleansing, with almost all of the majority ethnic Armenian population fleeing out of fear of genocide.

Azerbaijan’s successful bid to host COP29 shows how it’s asserting itself as a regional power and shifting the dynamics, including by building relations with Armenia’s former backer Russia. Its victory lap has included a fresh wave of domestic restrictions against civil society and the media, on top of existing heavy repression. And although its relations with the west have been tested by its conduct of the conflict, it has a long history of ‘caviar diplomacy’: it invests substantial resources in burnishing its image, including by hosting prestigious international events in its extensively redeveloped capital, Baku.

All of this – its military superiority over Armenia, its diplomacy and its events-washing – is enabled by oil and gas wealth, the source of most of the government’s revenue, which it shows no intention of moving away from. Yet again, in 2024 a petrostate with closed civic space will host the world’s peak climate summit.

Reform needed

COPs are inadequate and on their own can never be enough – but they’re still the only annual opportunity for all states to sit around the table and negotiate on climate change. There’s a need for a reform, and a need for more priority to be given to reform ideas.

One obvious flaw is the requirement to work by consensus. UN General Assembly resolutions can be passed by a majority, and the same rule should apply to COPs so that states like Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia can no longer force a lowest-common denominator agreement. As far back as COP1 in 1995, procedural rules were put forward to allow voting when consensus can’t be reached – but oil states blocked them and all these years on, the draft rules have never been agreed.

Beyond this, fossil fuel lobbyists must be kept away from COPs and instead those on the frontlines, living with the impacts of climate change, should be given privileged access. At the very least there must be much more clarity about who’s involved and whose interests they represent.

COPs should no longer be held in petrostates, but in states that show climate leadership. Nor should they be held in states with highly restricted civic space – something characteristic of many fossil fuel superpowers – so that civil society can’t be denied the chance to mobilise fully. COP hosts should have to commit to respecting human rights and enabling full and diverse participation from domestic and international civil society, and be held accountable if they fail to do so. Ambitious agreements won’t result unless civil society is fully free to act as the world’s conscience and voice the demands for climate action humanity needs.