COP28: Working Overtime, Countries Agree On Historic Deal To 'Transition Away From Fossil Fuels'

The relentless efforts of the COP28 Presidency, Sultan Al Jaber of UAE, paid off on Wednesday as some 200 countries agreed to a landmark climate deal that called for a transition away from fossil fuels, more than a day after the UN Climate Conference was originally scheduled to end.

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What COP28 deal says

Released in the wee hours, the text of the Dubai climate talks, the third draft after two were discussed threadbare and updated, called for a "deep, rapid, and sustained" reduction in planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5 degree Celsius pathways in a "nationally determined" manner, taking into account the Paris Agreement and their different national circumstances, pathways, and approaches.

How it will be achieved

The historic document laid an eight-point plan to achieve this, including a "transition away from fossil fuels" in energy systems in a "just, orderly and equitable manner", accelerating action in this decade to achieve net zero (balance between greenhouse gases emitted and removed from the atmosphere) by 2050.

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The proposal urged countries to accelerate efforts toward the phase-down of unabated coal power, a marginal step up from the 2021 Glasgow deal.

What is the timeline for the goal?

It calls for expanding action "in this critical decade" and recommits to no net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 to meet the increasingly elusive goal of checking warming at 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

The agreement also made the near-term goals more explicit in ending net emissions by 2050.

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It called for the world to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent by 2030 compared with 2019 levels.

Why the deal is historic

COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber called the deal "historic" but added that its true success would be in its implementation.

"We are what we do, not what we say," he told the crowded plenary at the summit. "We must take the steps necessary to turn this agreement into tangible actions."

Several countries cheered the deal for accomplishing something elusive in decades of climate talks.

"It is the first time that the world unites around such a clear text on the need to transition away from fossil fuels," said Norway Minister of Foreign Affairs Espen Barth Eide.

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EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra called the agreement "long, long overdue", saying it had taken nearly 30 years of climate meetings to "arrive at the beginning of the end of fossil fuels".

The deal, however, did not go live up to what many environmentalists and representatives of vulnerable countries were advocating for - phasing out of fossil fuels.

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