Page 18 - Islands Business October 2023 edition

Cover
COP28 COP28

“In March, the temperature started going up and
off-scale, unprecedented. Every year, it’s going a
little higher from climate change. But now, it’s broken
away from where it should be and it’s way up. It’s five
standard deviations above the mean. And it’s never
happened before in history, and people don’t know
exactly why.”
- Dr Austin Kerby, coral reef restoration pioneer in
the Pacific and Caribbean for more than 30 years.

Photo: Manu San Félix, National Geographic Pristine Seas
Continued from page 15

“For the first time, the industry has been dragged centre
stage and exposed for being the heart of the problem,” Dr Alan Friedlander, chief scientist with the National
said Berman. “We can and we will build a coalition of Geographic Pristine Seas project
countries designing a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty to Photo: Steve Spence, National Geographic Pristine
stop the expansion and ensure an equitable wind down that Seas
is fast, fair, and financed. The fossil fuel industry won’t be
invited to the negotiating table. It’s clear that they will not
manage their own decline. They have manipulated climate
negotiations for decades and lied to us; it’s time to stop challenge of this scale alone.”
negotiating with them and start regulating them,” she told Al Jaber’s rhetoric may be pitched perfectly but his plans
reporters. to include oil and gas companies from around the world more
This was clearly a moment of buoyancy in decades of fully at the meeting this year has already framed problematic
feet-shuffling climate negotiations on the world stage, perceptions—especially when he heads the national oil
especially when the “overriding failure” of COP27 last year company in the United Arab Emirates.
was described in a final report on the meeting as “the lack of The COP meetings have come to be viewed with skepticism
a clear agreement to phase out fossil fuels”. for their failure to meet the climate challenge satisfactorily.
The report by the United Kingdom-based Environmental While the Pacific has achieved some important outcomes in
Investigation Agency, which covertly investigates and climate diplomacy, the trips to the meetings by government
campaigns against environmental crime and abuse, said that delegations are seen by many across the region as just one
“despite the support of 80 countries to include a phase- more taxpayer-funded junket.
down of fossil fuels in the text, it didn’t make it to the final For example, comments on Islands Business’s online
political decision—[and was] shut down by major exporting platforms included: “There’s nothing like a thousand people
countries.” flying around the world to say, ‘save the planet’. So many
meetings. So much self congratulation. Not enough change. Of
COP28 course, we would be worse off if there were no meetings, but
These developments have put the focus squarely on decisive the COP## have turned into a media show and a platform for
action against fossil fuel production and accelerating the political statements.”
transition to clean energy at the upcoming COP28 meeting A major review of the world’s climate actions since the
from November 30 to December 12 in Dubai. 2015 Paris Agreement concludes at COP28—and serves to
Outlining a comprehensive plan for this year’s COP in a define the COP28 agenda.
letter to delegates in July, COP28 President-Designate and The two-year Global Stock Take (GST) of the Paris
the United Arab Emirates’ Special Envoy for Climate Change, Agreement, launched at the COP26 in Glasgow, will assess the
Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber appeared to meet Guterres head-on by world’s collective progress towards achieving the goals of the
calling out the need to “reinvigorate the [COP] process and Paris Agreement.
restore hope through collective action”. Released in September, a key technical report on this first
Al Jaber said the “importance of collective action has never GST found that while parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement
been clearer. No country, company, or individual can address a have taken widespread actions to address climate change

18 Islands Business, October 2023