From carbon capture to King Charles: what to look out for at Cop28

King Charles and other world leaders

King Charles is one of the world’s most recognized and respected voices on the environment and was a key figure at the Paris climate summit in 2015 and the Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021. Last year, Downing Street stopped him from attending the Cop27 in Egypt. Now he’s back, at the request of the United Arab Emirates’ ruling family, who enjoyed a cordial horse racing relationship with the late queen. Listeners will be able to compare his opening speech at the World Summit on Climate Action with King’s first speech at the opening of Parliament, in which he was required to read out Rishi Sunak’s plans for more oil drilling in the North Sea.

Sunak will also attend Cop28, probably in the hope that fellow invitee Bashar al-Assad of Syria will miss it. The Pope goes, and the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, but Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, presidents of the world’s two biggest emitters, send envoys instead.

Food

According to estimates, a third of the world’s food production could be at risk if temperatures continue to rise. Agriculture is also a major contributor to the crisis: methane – a potent greenhouse gas – comes from livestock; Nitrous oxide – another greenhouse gas – comes from the use of fertilizer; and huge carbon sinks are lost when forests, wetlands and peatlands are converted to crops.

Yet food was largely missing from previous police officers. This time, leaders will be asked to sign a special food declaration, to be issued near the start of the conference, and a few days later the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization will set out for the first time its roadmap on how the world the world can feed a growing population while staying within the temperature limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Health

Health, another neglected topic hit hard by the climate crisis, will be spotlighted during Cop28, with a day dedicated to the topic. Heat waves are now so intense that they threaten workers in the fields with heatstroke, floods and droughts threaten people with disease and water scarcity, while vector-borne infections such as malaria, dengue and Zika, which once flourished only in some regions, are spreading. Doctors and health experts are increasingly concerned about the climate crisis: a recent report for the medical journal Lancet shows that the health of billions of people is at risk.

Methane

Cutting emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that is about 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide but which breaks down much faster in the atmosphere, could reduce the rise in global temperatures by about 0.3 degrees Celsius in the coming decades. That would be a significant help in the effort to stay within the crucial limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But methane levels have risen, and fossil fuels – which leak the gas – are among the main culprits. The UAE will hold its first methane summit during Cop, during which countries and oil companies will be asked to draw up plans to tackle the problem.

Decarbonization accelerator

Holding a climate summit in a major oil-producing country may seem like a contradiction. Sultan Al Jaber, president of Cop28 and CEO of the UAE’s national oil company Adnoc, doesn’t see it that way. He believes he can bring oil companies and oil-rich countries to the table in a way others could not. He will bring together a group of oil companies in a “decarbonization accelerator,” promising reductions in emissions associated with their extraction activities. However, this may not apply to the most important impact of their activities on the climate: the emissions from the combustion of their products.

Loss and damage

When climate-induced extreme weather strikes poor countries, it could delay development by years and wipe out hard-won prosperity gains. Last year, for the first time, rich countries agreed that a new fund should be made available to the poorest and most vulnerable, for the rescue and rehabilitation of affected communities. For months this year, there was debate over how such a fund should work, until a blueprint for a compromise was drawn up a few weeks ago. Actual funds are still lacking: developed countries are expected to contribute, and major developing countries and oil-rich governments are encouraged to do so. Innovative sources of new financing, including windfall taxes on oil and gas profits, taxes on shipping and frequent flyer levies, are also being suggested.

Global inventory

This year will see the first “global stocktake” under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, a comprehensive assessment of the progress – or lack thereof – that countries have made towards their emissions reduction targets. We know we’re way off on keeping the world within 1.5 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels, so the stocktake won’t yield any real surprises. But it will act as an important lever within the UN process to force countries back to the negotiating table over the next two years with new plans for much more stringent emissions reductions.

Phasing out fossil fuels

It may seem strange that almost three decades of climate talks have not led to an agreement on tackling fossil fuels, which are the main source of the problem. But such is the power of fossil fuel producers that it was not until 2021 in Glasgow that a police “cover decision” – the main legal text resulting from the annual Conference of the Parties under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – included a resolution on fossil fuels, in which case a pledge to phase out coal. Last year at Cop27, more than 80 countries tried but failed to make a decision to phase out all fossil fuels. This year the battle will continue and may come down to the language used: will it be a complete phase-out of all fossil fuels, as campaigners want, or the weaker “unabated fossil fuel phase-out” that some countries say is more likely?

Carbon extraction and storage

Relentless refers to the use of technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) to remove emissions from the atmosphere after the fossil fuels have been burned. Some countries would like to use the technology to keep their oil and gas operations running, but scientists warn this is unrealistic: nowhere is the technology used on a commercial scale, after twenty years of development, and it is extremely expensive and only feasible in some geologies. Campaigners fear oil-producing countries, including the UAE, will try to use it as a smokescreen for their continued glut of fossil fuels. Britain is also betting a billion pounds on CCS.

The UK

Rishi Sunak’s U-turn on green policy, which the Independent Commission on Climate Change warned could damage Britain’s ability to meet its legally binding target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050, will see his presence on Eclipse Cop28. The pledge to maximize the use of the North Sea, after the International Energy Agency warned that no new oil and gas exploration must take place if the world wants to stay within the 1.5 degrees Celsius limit, was a provocation for Britain’s former allies Britain in the climate fight – although the US, despite Joe Biden’s green Inflation Reduction Act, is also expanding production. Lord Stern, the climate economist, denounced the government’s “backsliding” in a speech to the House of Lords earlier this month. Labour’s Ed Miliband will also attend Cop28.