COP28 UN conference provides clear vision for a green future

Nearly 200 nations at COP28 United Nations climate change conference approved a roadmap for "the transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems", as the annual UN gathering, initially scheduled to close on Tuesday, finally wrapped up on Wednesday (local time) following intense overnight negotiations.

The conference, which took place in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, concluded with a decision on the world's first global stocktake, a comprehensive assessment of the progress made in achieving the goals of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, to ratchet up climate action before the end of the decade.

The stocktake calls on parties to take action toward achieving, on a global scale, a tripling of renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency improvements by 2030.

Parties with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will also strive to accelerate efforts toward the phase-down of unabated coal power, phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, and forge ahead with other measures that drive the transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner, with developed countries continuing to take the lead.

In his closing speech, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said the document signals the "beginning of the end" of the fossil fuel.

"COP28 also needed to signal a hard stop to humanity's core climate problem – fossil fuels and their planet-burning pollution," he said. "Whilst we didn't turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end."

Addressing the closing plenary, Zhao Yingmin, head of the Chinese delegation to COP28 and China's vice-minister of ecology and environment, hailed that COP28 has provided a general direction for the next phase of global climate action.

Zhao said the first-ever global stocktake of the Paris treaty has further consolidated the general global trend toward a green and low-carbon future.

Pierre Friedlingstein, a professor from University of Exeter and lead author of the Global Carbon Budget, welcomes the parties' consensus to transition away from fossil fuels.

"People will see this COP28 as success or a total failure. I'm on the positive side here," he said.

The final text gives a very clear message that was never present in any of the previous 27 UN climate change conferences. COP28 calls for a transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science, he noted.

Now countries around the world have to put these words into actions. "Let's stop blaming petro-states for selling fossil fuels, let's focus on making sure our governments give us the option not to buy them," he noted.

Monica Medina, president and CEO of Wildlife Conservation Society, notes that the consensus is progress "in a world full of conflict".

This consensus may mark the beginning of the end of the road for fossil fuels. "But we are gravely concerned that it does not take us far enough or fast enough to adequately address the climate crisis," she said.

The world must accelerate a just transition away from fossil fuels without any further delay, she said. But Medina also stressed, "We won't solve the climate crisis without a just and equitable phasing out of fossil fuels."