Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’

behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels

The president of Cop28, Sultan Al Jaber, has claimed there is “no science” indicating
that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5C, the
Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal.
Al Jaber also said a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable
development “unless you want to take the world back into caves”.
The comments were “incredibly concerning” and “verging on climate denial”,
scientists said, and they were at odds with the position of the UN secretary general,
António Guterres.
Al Jaber made the comments in ill-tempered responses to questions from Mary
Robinson, the chair of the Elders group and a former UN special envoy for climate
change, during a live online event on 21 November. As well as running Cop28 in
Dubai, Al Jaber is also the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state oil
company, Adnoc, which many observers see as a serious conflict of interest.

00:07:39
Cop28 president refuses to commit to phasing out fossil fuels – video
More than 100 countries already support a phase-out of fossil fuels and whether the
final Cop28 agreement calls for this or uses weaker language such as “phase-down”
is one of the most fiercely fought issues at the summit and may be the key
determinant of its success. Deep and rapid cuts are needed to bring fossil fuel
emissions to zero and limit fast-worsening climate impacts.
Al Jaber spoke with Robinson at a She Changes Climate event. Robinson said:
“We’re in an absolute crisis that is hurting women and children more than anyone …
and it’s because we have not yet committed to phasing out fossil fuel. That is the one
decision that Cop28 can take and in many ways, because you’re head of Adnoc, you
could actually take it with more credibility.”
Al Jaber said: “I accepted to come to this meeting to have a sober and mature
conversation. I’m not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist. There
is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil
fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C.”
Robinson challenged him further, saying: “I read that your company is investing in a
lot more fossil fuel in the future.” Al Jaber responded: “You’re reading your own
media, which is biased and wrong. I am telling you I am the man in charge.”
Al Jaber then said: “Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil
fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to
take the world back into caves.”
“I don’t think [you] will be able to help solve the climate problem by pointing fingers
or contributing to the polarisation and the divide that is already happening in the
world. Show me the solutions. Stop the pointing of fingers. Stop it,” Al Jaber said.
Guterres told Cop28 delegates on Friday: “The science is clear: The 1.5C limit is only
possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce, not abate. Phase
out, with a clear timeframe.”
Bill Hare, the chief executive of Climate Analytics, said: “This is an extraordinary,
revealing, worrying and belligerent exchange. ‘Sending us back to caves’ is the oldest
of fossil fuel industry tropes: it’s verging on climate denial.”
“Al Jaber is asking for a 1.5C roadmap – anyone who cares can find that in the
International Energy Agency’s latest net zero emissions scenario, which says there
cannot be any new fossil fuel development. The science is absolutely clear [and] that
absolutely means a phase-out by mid-century, which will enhance the lives of all of
humanity.”
Prof Sir David King, the chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group and a former UK
chief scientific adviser, said: “It is incredibly concerning and surprising to hear the
Cop28 president defend the use of fossil fuels. It is undeniable that to limit global
warming to 1.5C we must all rapidly reduce carbon emissions and phase-out the use
of fossil fuels by 2035 at the latest. The alternative is an unmanageable future for
humanity.”
Dr Friederike Otto, of Imperial College London, UK, said: “The science of climate
change has been clear for decades: we need to stop burning fossil fuels. A failure to
phase out fossil fuels at Cop28 will put several millions more vulnerable people in
the firing line of climate change. This would be a terrible legacy for Cop28.”
Otto also rejected the claim that fossil fuels were necessary for development in
poorer countries, saying that the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change “shows that the UN’s sustainable development goals are not
achievable by continuing the current fossil-driven high emission economies. [There
are] massive co-benefits that come with changing to a fossil-free world”.
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A spokesperson for Cop28 said: “The IEA and IPCC 1.5C scenarios clearly state that
fossil fuels will have to play a role in the future energy system, albeit a smaller one.
The Cop president was quoting the science, and leading climate experts.
“He has clearly said that the oil and gas industry must tackle scope 1 and 2 emissions
[from their operations], must invest in clean energy and clean technologies to
address scope 3 emissions [from burning fuels], and that all industry must align
around keeping the north star of 1.5C within reach.
“Once again, this is clearly part of a continued effort to undermine the Cop
presidency’s tangible achievements and a misrepresentation of our position and
successes to date.”
The spokesperson said the presidency had operationalised the loss and damage fund
with more than $700m, launched a $30bn private market climate vehicle, and
brought 51 oil companies to agree decarbonisation targets and 119 countries to sign a
pledge to triple renewable energy. “This is just the beginning,” the spokesperson
said.
Al Jaber is also head of Masdar, the UAE’s renewable energy company, but his
appointment as Cop28 president has been controversial. Shortly before the summit,
leaked documents showed that the UAE had planned to use climate meetings with
governments to promote oil and gas deals. Al Jaber denied having seen or used the
talking points in the documents. Adnoc also has the largest net-zero-busting
expansion plans for oil and gas, according to independent analysis.
The issue of a phase-out or phase-down is complicated by the terms not having
agreed definitions and by the highly uncertain role of technologies to “abate”
emissions, such as carbon capture and storage. “Keeping the Paris agreement targets
alive will require a full fossil fuel phase-out, not a vague phase-down relying on
unproven technologies,” said Otto.
More than 100 African, European, Pacific and Caribbean countries back a phase-
out of unabated fossil fuels. The US, the world’s biggest oil and gas producer, also
backs a phase-out. Others, such as Russia, Saudi Arabia and China, reject the call.
Both options are on the table at Cop28, as well as proposals to only mention coal, or
to not say anything at all about fossil fuels.
Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021 agreed for the first time to “phase down” coal use, but this
had been watered down from “phase out” at the last minute, bringing the Cop26
president, Alok Sharma, to tears.
In his conversation with Robinson, Al Jaber also said: “A phase-down and a phase-
out of fossil fuel in my view is inevitable. That is essential. But we need to be real
serious and pragmatic about it.”
“Hold on. Let me just explain,” he said. “The world will continue to need energy
sources. We [UAE] are the only ones in the world today that have been
decarbonising the oil and gas resources. We have the lowest carbon intensity.”
This refers to the emissions from the energy used to extract fossil fuels, not the far
larger emissions from burning the fuels. “There is no such thing as ‘low carbon’ or
‘lower carbon’ oil and gas,” said Otto.
Numerous commentators have said that negative or embarrassing revelations about
Al Jaber and Adnoc increase the pressure on him to deliver a strong Cop28 deal. The
Guardian reported recently that state-run UAE oil and gas fields had been flaring gas
almost daily despite having committed 20 years ago to a policy of zero routine
flaring.
The Guardian previously reported that Adnoc had been able to read emails to and
from the Cop28 office until the Guardian raised the issue in June and that the UAE
had also failed to report its oil industry’s emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas
methane.
Harjeet Singh, at Climate Action Network, said: “Cop28 must deliver a decision on
phasing out fossil fuels in a just and equitable manner, without any loopholes or
escape routes for the industry to continue expanding and exacerbating the climate
crisis.”
We need resources to fight health impacts of climate crisis, Africans tell Cop28
Continent must have more resilient health systems
and local vaccine manufacturing to prevent next
pandemic, says public health body


Africa’s leading public health body is using the first ever health day at Cop on 3
December to call for increased funding to fight the health impacts of the climate
crisis on the continent and create more resilient systems to ensure it is prepared for
the next pandemic.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) launched the
second phase of its three-year, $1.5bn Saving Lives and Livelihoods drive this week,
but its director general, Dr Jean Kaseya, said multiple disease outbreaks combined
with the growing burden of non-communicable diseases and recovery from Covid
means that much more financial support is needed.
“We want our partners to understand that in Africa we are doing our best to provide
funding to tackle these issues but we need more money from multilateral
mechanisms such as the [World Bank] pandemic fund, [the US aid fund] Pepfar and
the Global Fund,” said Kaseya.
“Between January and November 2023, Africa faced 158 disease outbreaks. These
come immediately after Covid when economies were almost destroyed. Now
countries have to respond to these outbreaks.”
He added that the climate crisis is a leading contributor to the problem, including
the current rise in cholera cases. “Today we have 18 countries affected by cholera
with 4,000 deaths; we have dengue in west Africa killing people.”

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He added that Africa needed a resilient health system to be able to cope with every
outbreak. “Each outbreak we miss can become a pandemic – and that is the major
concern we have today. We don’t want the next pandemic to come from Africa due to
climate change. This is why we are pushing for more funding.”
The 2013-2016 Ebola epidemic as well as Covid revealed the extent of Africa’s health
insecurity, said Kaseya, and highlighted the need for African manufacturers of
vaccines and other medicines. Speaking this week at the Conference on Public
Health in Africa in Lusaka, Zambia, Kaseya likened the drive for local manufacturing
to “Africa’s second independence”.
“When we had Covid, we discovered that Africa was abandoned. We saw we were not
independent. Africa begged the world to get even masks and gloves.”
Only 1% of vaccines used in Africa come from suppliers on the continent. Africa
CDC’s goal is that by 2040 at least 60% of all vaccines used in Africa will be home-
produced.
“[Local manufacturing] will build our economy; it will create jobs; it will be an
opportunity for innovation, and it will contribute to peace and security because we
know when people have jobs and access to a number of commodities they are not
fighting,” said Kaseya.

Africa CDC director general Dr Jean Kaseya during the Lusaka conference
Africa CDC is also supporting a drive to train thousands of new health workers to fill
gaps in expertise. “Less than 10% of African countries are able to respond to a major
outbreak with a skilled health workforce,” said Kaseya. “Africa requires 6,000 field
epidemiologists, yet we currently only have 1,900. Additionally, the continent needs
25,000 frontline epidemiologists, but we presently have just 5,000.”
National governments are being encouraged to finance Africa CDC’s vision for a
resilient health system across the continent, but budgets vary widely from country to
country, and Covid and the climate crisis have taken a toll on economies.
“My message to Cop28 is we want Africa to be heard. We want to say: ‘Listen, we are
bringing evidence on how climate change is affecting us directly and indirectly.’
Every year Africa is losing 5 to 15% in GDP from climate change. When you are
losing that you don’t have enough [budget] for health,” said Kaseya.

Faroe Islands farmers charge a fee to

access beauty spots as visitor numbers
soar
A tourism boom to the North Atlantic islands, fuelled by social media, has resulted
in some landowners taking measures to get a share of the revenues

The first snows have fallen on the sharp ridge below the 700-metre summit of
Víkartindur. Walking the village path towards Saksun, we looked across to the ridge
of peaks that run along the spine of the neighbouring island of Eysturoy. The jagged
landscape was bathed in golden winter light and in the distance the Atlantic was a
giant silvered mirror.
We saw no one else on the eight-mile walk, just a few white mountain hares darting
among the rocks. As it is hunting season, my local guide, Høgni Reistrup, had
checked with local farmers that no one would be shooting where we were walking.
Hiring a guide makes sense on these steep slopes where the weather is notoriously
changeable, and mists can descend quickly.
With about 300 days of rain a year, the rise of tourism in the Faroe Islands has been
something of a novelty. Numbers have doubled over the past eight years, largely
thanks to innovative social media campaigns showing craggy peaks, cuddly sheep
and rustic wooden houses. But, whether tourists should pay to walk in these
mountains and sheep pastures is a hot topic.
Currently, anyone, local or foreigner, can walk along countryside village paths, but
many of the places made famous by social media influencers are on private land
where there is no automatic right to roam. Some farmers are now taking advantage
of ancient Faroese land law to cash in on the increasing number of walkers wanting
to explore the dramatic landscape.
Charges have been introduced at several tourist hotspots (usually 200 Danish króna
– about £23), including at the famous “floating lake” at Trælanipa, the lagoon at
Saksun, and the sea stacks at Dunnesdrangar. Next summer there are plans to
charge walkers to hike the Faroes’ highest peak, the 880-metre Slættaratindur.
Meanwhile, the most westerly island, Mykines, has already introduced a £60 tourist
fee and restricted access to the puffin nesting areas that attract many thousands of
visitors. Landowners say the money is in compensation for disturbance to farming
and wildlife.

Puffins on Mykines, the most westerly of the Faroe Islands. Photograph: Nicol Nicolson
Tourism now turns over almost £100m per annum – about 6% of the islands’ GDP.
There are just 55,000 Faroese, but visitor numbers are around 110,000 annually,
most of them arriving in June, July and August. This figure includes about 40,000
who visit for a few hours on cruise ships. A new tourism strategy launched this
month aims to make the most of the idea that for visitors and locals alike, the islands
embody the concept of “Heim” (home).
Guðrið Højgaard, the director of Visit Faroe Islands says the aim is that local people
should own at least 80% of the tourism industry. She accepts, however, that the
speed of tourism development has taken the islands by surprise. “The last thing we
want is for Faroese people to see tourists as a problem.”
As numbers have risen, I’ve had to take on guides. It’s fair that farmers get a share of tourist
revenue
Jóhannus Kallsgarð, farmer
I’ve been walking in these mountains for more than a decade, and have seen a
degree of tension arise between the business of tourism and Faroese farmers.
Recently, for the first time, two hikers were fined by police for trespassing after
refusing to pay to visit one of the most popular viewpoints in the islands. It
happened on Kalsoy, now known informally as the “James Bond island” because it
was used as the location for the climax of No Time to Die.
The local farmer, Jóhannus Kallsgarð, has enterprisingly erected a granite
gravestone marking Bond’s fictional resting place, and his clifftop pasture attracted
more than 15,000 walkers this summer. He charged a fee of 200 Danish króna this
year, and a shuttle-bus service was introduced to relieve pressure on the tiny inter-
island car ferry that brings visitors to the island.

Headstone on Kalsoy marking the fictional grave of James Bond, erected by farmer
Jóhannus Kallsgarð. Photograph: Joana Kruse/Alamy
“My family has farmed here for 15 generations, and as a boy I barely saw outsiders in
the village from one month to the next. We welcome tourists, and in 2019, I took
more than 200 walking groups to the lighthouse,” Kallsgarð says. “As numbers have
increased, I’ve had to take on guides to help people hike safely, as every year we have
guests slipping on the path and injuring themselves. I think it’s fair that farmers get
a share of tourist revenue.”
I don’t like the idea of paying a fee to visit nature. But protecting the land is necessary –
perhaps through a government tourist tax
Óluva Zachariasen
The issue of whether too many tourists are having an effect on the land is being
debated. Høgni Hoydal, the minister for trade and industry, says plans will be put
before parliament to regularise the issue of public access to the land. “Farming was
our life-blood for centuries,” he says, “and our oldest written document is the ‘Sheep
Letter’ from 1298, which sets out the rules about compensation for trespass. But if
tourists pay a fee, or environment tax, then we need to ensure the money is used to
protect nature. And, I don’t think people should be charging without offering a
service.”

Saksun is among the islands’ best spots. Photograph: Caroline Brundle Bugge/Getty Images
According to the tourist board, the issue of public access must be decided by the
politicians. “Almost all of our land is reserved for sheep,” says Højgaard, “and we
recognise that our historic relationship with these animals is part of what makes the
Faroes an authentic destination. However, we’re in control of how quickly tourism
numbers will continue to rise, and I don’t think we have too many. It’s in balance.”
The numbers of tourists at the most popular spots remains relatively small, with
about 80 people a day climbing Slættaratindur, and about 2,500 walking up the
mountain in August. Inevitably, this far north, the increase in boots on the ground
leads to erosion.
Óluva Zachariasen is a keen walker and a sheep owner who has set up a countryside
association to draw attention to the issue among Faroese walkers. “In principle, I
don’t like the idea of paying a fee just to visit nature. However, where there are high
numbers of tourists or hikers of any nationality, protecting the land is necessary,
perhaps through a government tourist tax. It’s an emotive cultural issue for us
Faroese, and we have a long history of disputes in our islands over grass and soil.”
The trip was provided by Guide to Faroe Islands . Smyril Line sails twice weekly
from Hirtshals in Denmark with seven-night packages including ferry (plus
vehicle); seven nights’ accommodation in Tórshavn from £1,032pp

10,000 naps a day: how chinstrap penguins

survive on microsleeps
Scientists studying the birds in Antarctica have found they snooze for 11
hours a day without falling deeply asleep

Spending your nights sleeping for just four seconds at a time might sound like a
form of torture, but not for chinstrap penguins, which fall asleep thousands of times
a day, new research finds.
Scientists studying the birds on King George Island in Antarctica found they nod off
more than 10,000 times a day, allowing them to keep a constant eye on their nests,
protecting eggs and chicks from predators. In total, the birds manage 11 hours of
snoozing a day – without ever slipping into uninterrupted sleep.
“Humans cannot sustain this state, but penguins can,” said lead researcher Paul-
Antoine Libourel from Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre. “Sleep is much more
complex in its diversity than what we read about in most textbooks.”
Researchers previously looked at penguin sleep in the 1980s, which involved
capturing them, putting them in a shelter and watching them. They reported
fragmented sleep for short periods of time, which they called “drowsiness”. In the
latest research, experts found that this fragmented sleep was sustained for the whole
day, showing the penguins are not “nodding off” into deeper sleep.
“Sleep in breeding chinstrap penguins was highly fragmented under all conditions
and positions on land,” researchers wrote in the paper, published in the journal
Science. The findings suggest “microsleeps can fulfil at least some of the restorative
functions of sleep”. The penguins studied could sleep standing up or lying down.

Chinstrap penguins ‘sleeping’ on King George Island in Antarctica. Photograph: Paul-

Antoine Libourel/Science
Sleep seems to be ubiquitous among animals, but it makes them vulnerable to
predation because they lose the ability to respond quickly to the outside
environment. Libourel said: “Sleep is at the core of animal behaviour, and is also
under selective pressure. Most sleep research is conducted in rats, mice and
humans, but working on other species shows us at what point sleep is affected by
environmental change.”
The researchers studied chinstrap penguins in the wild using electroencephalogram
(EEG) monitoring and continuous video footage. Microsleeps were shown by sleep-
related brain activity and eye-closure. They noted a slight increase in the depth of
sleep at around noon, when risk of predation could be at its lowest.
For chinstrap penguins, one parent sits on the nest for several days at a time while
the partner is away feeding. Extended sleep may put their eggs or young at risk of
predation by brown skua birds or other penguins.
The researchers studied 14 penguins incubating eggs, out of a colony of more than
2,700 breeding pairs. The discovery that these birds are doing thousands of
microsleeps lasting only four seconds is “unprecedented, even among penguins,”
researchers wrote.

Fragmented sleep is thought to enable the penguins to stay more alert while protecting their
eggs and young. Photograph: Christian Åslund/Greenpeace
Studies have shown some species routinely sleep very little, seemingly without
negative costs to their performance while awake. African bush elephants sleep on
average for two hours day, and mostly while standing up, one study found.
Sometimes they went 48 hours without sleeping.
In some species there are differences between the sexes: male fruit-flies need more
than 10 hours sleep a day, while females are fine on four, and can survive on less
than 15 minutes’ sleep without it seeming to impact their chances of survival.
Giant frigatebirds can spend months on the wing during ocean migrations. During
this period they can sleep for less than an hour a day, while still navigating and
hunting. When they get back to the nest they stock up on sleep, snoozing for nearly
13 hours a day.
Researchers wrote in the paper, published in the journal Sleep Advances: “Taken
together, these systems challenge the prevalent view of sleep as an essential state on
which waking performance depends.”
“The data reported by Libourel et al could be one of the most extreme examples of
the incremental nature by which the benefits of sleep can accrue,” the researchers
Christian Harding and Vladyslav Vyazovskiy wrote in a related article published by
Science. They say the paper calls into question how much sleep can be altered before
the benefits are lost.
They added: “Proving that sleeping in this way comes at no cost to the penguin
would challenge the current interpretation of fragmentation as inherently
detrimental to sleep quality.”
Rainforests provide a public good. The
world should pay to conserve them
An ambitious Brazilian plan launched at the COP could help

Dec 2nd 2023

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At last, good news from the Brazilian Amazon. In the first eight months of 2023, the
pace of deforestation has fallen by nearly 50% compared with last year. This reflects
a change of government. Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president from 2019 to 2022, was
an outspoken chum of the loggers and ranchers who are slicing down and burning
the rainforest. Not only did he make no effort to stop them; he went out of his way to
hobble the agencies charged with policing environmental crimes.
His ejection by voters last year gave the Amazon a much-needed respite. His
successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, actually cares about conservation. As we report
this week, gun-toting federal agents are once again making a serious effort to shut
down illegal mining operations and blow up their equipment (see Americas section).

But muscle, on its own, is not enough. To establish something resembling the rule of
law in the Amazon, Lula is trying to clarify who owns it. This is long overdue.
Currently, at least 22 separate Brazilian agencies register land claims there. They
barely talk to each other, so vast swathes of the forest are subject to overlapping
claims. And a whopping 29% of the Brazilian Amazon is “undesignated”, meaning it
is public land but no one has decided whether it should be a nature reserve, an
indigenous reserve, or something else.
Deforestation tends to be worst in areas where property rights are hazy. A lack of
clarity about who owns a plot of forest makes it harder to assign blame for torching
it. And a tradition of local officials tolerating land-grabbing encourages more of it.
Ranchers seek to establish facts on the ground by chopping down trees, burning the
undergrowth and putting cows on the newly created pasture. Many hope that even if
their actions are illegal, they will eventually be recognised as the owners of the land,
because this has often happened in the past.
Lula is trying to change these incentives. He is pushing to designate undesignated
land as protected, and to integrate all the property registers into one coherent
system. It is a huge task, involving clever use of satellite data and digital technology.
It is also politically fraught, since many state and local politicians are cosy with the
farming and wildcat mining lobbies and will jealously guard their influence over how
land is apportioned. But it is an essential step towards imposing order on one of
Earth’s most important biomes. The Amazon is a huge carbon store, a treasure vault
of biodiversity and an essential regulator of the rainfall that feeds South America.
Losing it would be a global catastrophe–and scientists fear it may be near a “tipping
point”, when so much forest has disappeared that the water cycle that sustains it
breaks down.
Which is why the rest of the world should help pay to preserve it. At the cop on
December 1st, Lula asked for money to give local people in developing countries
economic alternatives to cutting down rainforests. His environment minister
outlined an ambitious plan: a $250bn fund that would pay a fixed sum per hectare of
forest to countries that prevent their forests from shrinking more than a very small
amount each year. The funding for this, Brazil hopes, would come from sovereign
wealth funds. Several African leaders are making similar appeals, some involving
debt relief in return for nature conservation (see Middle East & Africa section).

Lula is unlikely to raise $250bn—it is far more than has been offered before. And not
all the governments asking for cash are likely to spend it wisely. But there is a decent
chance that Brazil could make good use of external financing, which it sorely needs.
No amount of enforcement will stop people from chopping down trees if they see no
other way of making a living—illegal miners whose equipment is blown up by the
environmental police may simply go to work on beef farms carved out of the
rainforest. Also, if Lula’s efforts to save the trees are all stick and no carrot, he is
more likely to lose the next election to a more Bolsonaro-like rival. So rich countries
should chip in. And Brazil, for its part, should be more open to foreign advice,
expertise and help on the ground than it has been in the past. It is not too late to
save the Amazon, but the clock hands are whirring like the teeth of a chainsaw.
The rich world claims it has paid its
overdue climate debts
That will not stop countries squabbling over the bill for a hotter planet

image: getty images

Nov 23rd 2023
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Mission accomplished? Rich countries have at last met a promise to provide $100bn
a year of climate finance to poorer ones, according to estimates for 2022 from
the oecd, a club of mostly rich countries. That is two years late: the amount was
originally pledged in 2009, when it was supposed to arrive by 2020. It is also not a
sure thing. The oecd‘s figures are preliminary and may be revised.

Still, the estimates may ease tensions between rich countries and poor ones ahead
of cop28, this year’s un climate summit in Dubai, which begins on November 30th.
The missed pledge had become a symbol of rich-world hypocrisy: urging poor
countries to forgo fossil fuels without providing the finance to help them achieve
that, or to help them adapt to the warmer planet brought about by its own coal-and-
oil-fuelled development. An indication, however tentative, that rich countries have at
last met the goal is better than none.
Developing countries will take a “trust but verify” approach, reckons Joe Thwaites of
National Resources Defence Council, an environmental pressure group. The
estimates are based on oecd projections published at the Glasgow climate summit in
2021. Since then, the spending data from multilateral development banks (mdbs)
and governments have been at the top end of those forecasts. And so the oecd judges
it likely that the $100bn pledge has been met. “I doubt they would say that without
feeling really confident,” says Mr Thwaites.
image: the economist

Even so, any self-congratulation by rich countries will be poorly received. As well as
being late, much of the money has come in the form of loans from mdbs that poor
countries must pay back, and that will take priority in any debt restructuring. Poor
countries will argue at this year’s cop that borrowing to fund climate investments
will make their debt burdens less sustainable, as they already struggle with high food
and energy prices and a strong dollar. At the Africa Climate Summit, where African
nations hashed out a common position ahead of cop, they called for a
“comprehensive and systemic response to the incipient debt crisis”, beyond the
existing system of dealing with national defaults.
Nor do the rich countries appear to have done well at “unlocking” private finance,
which they have often promised to do. Estimates of the amount of external finance
that countries in the global south will need to adapt to climate change tend to be in
the trillions of dollars. Stretched finance ministries in the global north suggest that
they will use scarce aid money to “crowd in” private finance rather than provide
everything themselves. The oecd, however, found that the amount of private-sector
funding mobilised by such wheezes amounted to just $14bn in 2021.
Rich countries will hope to avoid fraught arguments over money in Dubai. A deal
over climate pledges agreed by America and China last week has raised hopes of a
breakthrough. A similar bargain between the world’s two largest polluters preceded
the Paris climate agreement in 2015. Last year’s cop was dominated by negotiations
over “loss and damage”, or funding to compensate poor countries for the impact of
climate change rather than help them mitigate or adapt to it. The conference thus
failed to produce any commitment to a more ambitious reduction of the pace of
global warming. Ahead of this year’s cop, the eu has said it will make a “substantial”
contribution to a loss and damage fund, while John Kerry, America’s climate
negotiator, has said the country will pledge “millions”. That, along with rich
countries having finally met their $100bn pledge, could take the heat out of
arguments.
Yet now rich countries must agree on a new pledge by 2025, since the framework
they are currently following expires then. Technical discussions have so far been
“rudderless”, says Michai Robertson of the Alliance of Small Island States, a group of
countries that are vulnerable to climate change. There is no consensus on what
should count as climate finance, the period for which the new target should run or
who should contribute. Established in 1992, the group of donor nations excludes big
emitters such as China and fossil-fuel producers such as Saudi Arabia and the uae.
Rich countries sometimes venture that these countries, too, should cough up.
Disagreement also persists over the use to which any new money should be put. In
2021 rich countries pledged to double the amount of finance they provide for
adapting to climate change, as opposed to for reducing emissions. Such adaptation is
a priority for the poorest countries that emit little but are highly exposed to the risks
of a warmer planet. Meanwhile rich countries, accountable to climate-conscious
voters at home, are often more focused on getting middle-income countries to stop
using coal. The headline announcement at last year’s conference was a deal for
$20bn between a small group of rich countries and Indonesia to do exactly that.
Making good on overdue promises is a start. But there is no end in sight for the rows
over the bill for a hotter planet. ■
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