The report, titled COP28 Progress or Regression? was published by Turkey’s Uskudar University in partnership with the UN-Accredited Caribbean ASEAN Council. It compares the four previous COP summits to the agenda of the current COP28 presidency across four key areas: emissions reduction targets; renewable energy targets; climate financing; and what the COP presidency itself has done or is doing in setting an example on these areas.
The report finds that across these categories, the COP28 presidency has established by far the most ambitious climate action agenda ever to be proposed at a UN climate summit since the first one was held in 1995 in Berlin.
Amidst rising skepticism from environmental campaigners which has cast a shadow over this year’s pivotal UN climate talks to be held in Dubai in December, this groundbreaking new analysis reveals that the climate action plan revealed by the COP28 presidency earlier this year is in fact far more developed and concrete than previous COP agendas.
The report concludes that the COP28 plan includes a number of core goals which have never been discussed at previous COP summits, including a landmark proposal for a global target of tripling renewable energy capacity which would lead renewable costs to plummet to about a quarter of the cost of fossil fuels today.
Other game-changing goals include brokering agreements on phasing down the use of fossil fuels (the first time an oil producer has endorsed such an idea), phasing out all fossil fuels producing emissions that are not captured, as well as restructuring international financial systems to make trillions of dollars of climate financing available for developing countries.
The report also compares the actions of the UAE with the actions of previous presidencies, concluding that COP28 represents a huge milestone in action by the presidency before a COP is even started.
The UAE’s hosting of the COP28 summit has sparked controversy due to its being the seventh largest oil producer in the world, and the third largest in the Middle East. It has come under particular criticism over the plans of ADNOC, the state-owned oil company, to invest $150 billion to expand oil and gas production.
Yet this report reveals for the first time that the COP28 presidency is mobilising far more support for renewables than previously recognised. The analysis shows that altogether, through a combination of domestic and international expansion plans, along with active partnerships, the UAE is mobilising renewable energy projects worth over $300 billion out to 2030 – a sum which vastly outweighs the volume of sums invested by previous COP presidencies. This is equivalent to what the entire world was spending on renewable energy in a single year from 2014-2019.
“I decided to embark on this project because I was deeply concerned that the intense polarization and skepticism around COP28 will damage and derail the careful negotiations we need to reach what could be the most ambitious global climate deal in history”, said report author Professor Ibrahim Ozdemir.
“COP28 is the world’s last chance for a global deal to avoid dangerous climate change. And while we might want the plan on the table to be even more robust than it is, I want my fellow climate campaigners to realize that however imperfect, this is the best plan we’ve ever had in history at the UN level. It is the first time we’ve ever had the prospect of getting countries to agree to global commitments on renewable energy growth, and getting rid of fossil fuels whose emissions are not being captured. If we fail to broker an agreement on the COP28 proposals, one has to wonder if there will be any hope at all of averting dangerous climate change. But if we succeed, we will have a strong platform to keep on fighting at the international level.”
The report is a joint publication of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Uskudar University (Istanbul, Turkey) and the Caribbean ASEAN Council (Rosea, Commonwealth of Dominica), with contributors from Turkey, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Nigeria, Kenya, Chad, The Gambia and Bangladesh.
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