DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Countries moved closer to reaching what critics called a watered-down final deal Monday, avoiding calls from more than 100 nations to phase out planet-warming fossil fuels as United Nations climate talks in Dubai neared their culmination.
A new draft released Monday afternoon on what’s known as the global stocktake — the part of talks that assesses where the world is at with its climate goals and how it can reach them — called for countries to reduce “consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner.”
READ MORE: As climate talks enter final days, activists and officials urge end to fossil fuels
The release triggered a frenzy of fine-tuning by government envoys and gimlet-eye analysis by advocacy groups, just hours before the planned late morning finish to the talks on Tuesday — even though many observers expect the finale to run over time, as is common at the annual U.N. talks.
Small island nations, some of the most vulnerable places in a world of rising temperatures and seas, blasted the draft and were trying to decide their options. Final decisions by COPs have to be by consensus and objections can still torpedo this. Activists said they feared that potential objections from fossil fuel countries, such as Saudi Arabia, had watered down the text.
Anger grew as people had more time to read the document.
“What we have seen today is unacceptable,” Marshall Islands chief delegate and natural resources minister Samuel Silk said. “We will not go silently to our watery graves. We will not accept an outcome that will lead to devastation for our country, and for millions if not billions of the most vulnerable people and communities.”
“Here who is winning is the fossil capital,” said Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister. “We need a phase-out. We need to acknowledge 43% reduction (of fossil fuels) by 2030.”
European climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said “the text as it now stands is disappointing.” Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called the text “clearly insufficient and disappointing.”
Public negotiations took a break. U.N. officials aren’t sure when they will resume and if they will resume in public.
Delegations are meant to be reaching a deal that’s in line with capping warming by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) to stop the worst effects of climate change.
In the 21-page document, the words oil and natural gas did not appear, and the word coal appeared twice. It also had a single mention of carbon capture, a technology touted by some to reduce emissions although it’s untested at scale.
Activists said the text was written by the COP28 presidency, run by an Emirati oil company CEO, and pounced on its perceived shortcomings. It called for “phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption” but fell fall short of a widespread push to phase out fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal altogether.
READ MORE: Should fossil fuels be phased out or slowly phased down? Leaders to discuss at COP28
The COP presidency, in a statement, countered that the text was a “huge step forward” and was now “in the hands of the parties, who we trust to do what is best for humanity and the planet.”
COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber skipped a planned news conference and headed straight into a meeting with delegates just after 6:30 p.m. It was the second time for him to cancel in the day.
“We have a text and we need to agree on the text,” al-Jaber said. “The time for discussion is coming to an end and there’s no time for hesitation. The time to decide is now.”
He added: “We must still close many gaps. We don’t have time to waste.”
Critics said there was a lot to do.
“This text is a nightmare of weak proposals and internal contradictions,” said Tom Evans of the European think tank E3G. “The next 17 hours must see the champions of ambition rally hard.”
“The word ‘phase-out’ has been phased out,” said Li Shuo, director of the Asia Society Policy Institute. “We need to phase in the word phase-out. I think there’s still a chance for countries to do so.”
Added Andreas Sieber, a climate activists with 350.org: “What we have seen now is our fears come true.”
Jean Su from the Center for Biological Diversity said the text “moves disastrously backward from original language offering a phaseout of fossil fuels.”
“If this race-to-the-bottom monstrosity gets enshrined as the final word, this crucial COP will be a failure,” Su said.
The text “is extremely disappointing, concerning, and nowhere close to the level of ambition people around the world deserve,” said Rachel Cleetus, from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
But Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa said the “text lays the ground for transformational change.”
“This is the first COP where the word fossil fuels are actually included in the draft decision. This is the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era,” he said.
READ MORE: Climate change adaptation commitments so far lacking at COP28
The draft noted that some $4.3 trillion needs to be invested annually through 2030 in order to reach ambitions of net-zero emissions of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere by mid-century. It said financing needs for adaptation were but a fraction of current outlays.
At one event earlier Monday that included members of the presidency of the current and previous COP, climate activist Licypriya Kangujam came on stage to protest against the use of fossil fuels before being ushered away by staff.
Also on Monday, the latest text on the Global Goal on Adaptation — the text on how countries, especially vulnerable ones, can adapt to more heat, droughts, storms and other extreme weather — was released on Monday,
The adaptation is “utterly disappointing” and “an injustice to communities on the frontline of the crisis,” said Amy Giliam Thorp of Power Shift Africa.
“The text is even weaker, more vague in many areas, and lacking in ambition,” she said. “The negotiations and latest iteration of the text is set to corrode trust between developed and developing nations. A framework focused on action without concrete targets, especially to support developing countries, is pointless and toothless.”
Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio, a senior advisor for adaptation and resilience at the U.N. Foundation said “the new text doesn’t have the strength that we were hoping to see.”
“The language on financing of adaptation is wishy washy,” she said.
On Monday morning, visibly tired and frustrated top U.N. officials urged COP28 talks to push harder for an end to fossil fuels, warning that time is running out for action that could keep the world at or below the internationally agreed-upon warming threshold.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was “time to go into overdrive, to negotiate in good faith, and rise to the challenge.” He said negotiators at the COP28 summit in particular must focus on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and climate justice.
“We can’t keep kicking the can down the road,” Guterres said. “We are out of road and almost out of time.”
Associated Press journalists Olivia Zhang, Malak Harb, Bassam Hatoum and David Keyton contributed to this report.
