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UN Climate Summit
The United Arab Emirates on Thursday named a veteran technocrat who both leads Abu Dhabi's state-run oil company and oversees its renewable energy efforts to be the president of the upcoming United Nations climate negotiations in Dubai, highlighting the balancing act ahead for this crude-producing nation. Authorities nominated Sultan al-Jaber, a trusted confidant of UAE leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who serves as CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. That firm pumps some 4 million barrels of crude a day and hopes to expand to 5 million daily. Those revenues fuel the ambitions of this federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula as well as the production of more of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide that the UN negotiations hope to limit. But al-Jaber also once led a once-ambitious project to have a USD 22 billion "carbon-neutral city on Abu Dhabi's outskirts an effort later pared back after the global financial crisis that struck the Emirates hard beginning
Scientists around the world are warning governments who will be gathering in Montreal this week for the United Nations biodiversity summit to not repeat past mistakes and are urging officials to avoid trade-offs between people and conservation needs in a report Monday. The study published in the One Earth Journal found that even though there has been an increase in investment in conservation over the last three decades governments have not succeeded in bending the curve on biodiversity decline. The conference known as COP15, which begins Tuesday, hopes to set the goals for the world for the next decade to help conserve the planet's biodiversity and stem the loss of nature. So far the world has failed to meet goals set at previous meetings. The scientists proposed six areas for action for delegates working toward what's known as the global biodiversity framework. They include greater involvement of local communities and addressing both direct causes of nature decline such as the ...
The UN published an updated draft of the proposed deal of the climate summit in Egypt on Saturday. It makes no mention of the need to phase down all fossil fuels, one of the key demands this year, and reiterates the Glasgow Pact language on coal. Negotiators, however, said they have reached a tentative deal on the creation of a fund to address loss and damage, a term used for irreparable destruction caused by climate change-fuelled disasters. The success of the talks hinges on a separate loss and damage fund, the primary demand for COP27 from developing nations. The deal, however, is part of the larger agreement and has to be voted on by negotiators from nearly 200 countries. The Presidency consultations on the tentative deal were scheduled for 6:30pm (Egypt time), which means the closing plenary is now likely to take place on Sunday morning. Experts said no reference to oil and natural gas -- on which developed countries depend -- in the text is not in the interest of climate acti
A last minute fight over emissions cutting and the overall climate change goal keeps delaying a potentially historic deal that would create a fund for compensating poor nations that are victims of extreme weather worsened by rich countries' carbon pollution. Final discussions were put off for several hours late Saturday and into the wee hours of Sunday morning. Delegates, activists and others tried to grab catnaps on couches and chairs as negotiators kept looking for solutions. Promised documents outlining potential agreements kept being more wishes than reality. Bleary-eyed rumpled delegations began to fill the plenary room 4 am local time Sunday but so far few if any of them had seen the key document they were scheduled to soon decide upon. The international meeting run by the Egyptian presidency amid a lot of criticism had gone into extended extra time and threatened to be overshadowed by the beginning of the World Cup, where the United Nations Secretary-General had already fled .
A formal draft of an UN summit's climate deal that came out on Friday makes no mention of India's call for phase down of all fossil fuels. The draft showed little progress on key issues like loss and damage funding, adaptation fund replenishment and a new collective quantified goal on climate finance. It also omits references to the need for rich nations to attain "net-negative carbon emissions by 2030" and their disproportionate consumption of the global carbon budget, something that India and other poor and developing countries have stressed during the summit in Egypt. The 10-page draft document is a refined version of the 20-page "non-paper" or an informal draft published by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the climate change conference COP27 on Thursday. The "draft text on COP 27's overarching decision" reaffirmed that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius requires rapid and deep emission cuts. It puts a "placeholder" for funding arrangements
There would be no climate crisis if emissions of the entire world were at the same per capita level as India, Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said at the ongoing UN climate summit in Egypt on Thursday. Participating in a session on "Accelerating Resilient Infrastructure in Small Island Developing States" (SIDS) on the sidelines of COP27, Yadav said the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states clearly that the responsibility for warming is directly proportional to the contribution to cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide. All CO2 emissions, whenever they take place, contribute equally to warming, he said. "Considering per capita emissions, for an objective scale for comparison, India's emissions are, even today, about one-third of the global average. If the entire world were to emit at the same per capita level as India, the best available science tells that there would be no climate crisis," he added. At 2.4 tCO2e (tonne car
Rich nations are making a push to include language such as "major emitters and "top emitters" in the cover text of the ongoing UN climate summit in Egypt which is not acceptable to India, a member of the Indian delegation said. Developed countries want that all top emitters, particularly the top 20 including India and China, make intense emission cuts (to limit warming to 1.5 degree Celsius) and not just the rich nations which are historically responsible for climate change, the member told PTI on condition of anonymity. The cover text is being debated and reworked as ministers and negotiators from all parties try to reach an agreement by the summit's scheduled close on Friday. Providing details of the discussions in a blog post, Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said the progress on key issues at the ongoing UN climate summit has not been good due to the "divergence of views on some fundamental approaches to climate issues". Key issues that remain unresolved include ...
The BASIC group, comprising India, China, Brazil and South Africa, has called out rich nations' "double standards" at the UN climate summit in Egypt, saying they have backtracked on their commitment to provide finance to developing countries to fight climate change and have increased consumption and production of fossil fuels instead. "BASIC countries are gravely concerned that developed countries are still not showing leadership or responding with a matching progression of effort. There has been backtracking on finance and mitigation commitments and pledges by developed countries," the four countries said in a joint statement. "There has also been a significant increase in the consumption and production of fossil fuels in the past year by developed countries, even as they continue to press developing countries to move away from the same resources. Such double standards are incompatible with climate equity and justice," the statement said. The ministers of BASIC countries met on the