COP28 summit forced into overtime as fossil fuel talks divide nations

The COP28 climate talks went into overtime on Tuesday and countries engaged in shuttle-diplomacy to seek a new draft agreement and try to close a rift over ending the world’s use of fossil fuels.

Many nations criticised a draft text for a deal released on Monday for failing to call for a “phase-out” of oil, gas and coal. The United Arab Emirates’ COP28 Director General Majid Al Suwaidi said the aim of the text was to “spark conversations”.

“By releasing our first draft of the text, we got parties to come to us quickly with those red lines,” he told reporters.

Negotiators from the nearly 200 countries at the Dubai summit are attempting to agree a global plan of action to limit climate change fast enough to avert more disastrous flooding, fatal heat and irreversible changes to the world’s ecosystems.

Al Suwaidi said the COP28 presidency aimed for a "historic" result that included mentioning fossil fuels - but that it was up to countries to agree.

Deals at UN climate summits must be passed by consensus.

Then individual countries are responsible for delivering the deal, through national policies and investments.

Germany’s Climate Envoy Jennifer Morgan said the talks had entered a “critical, critical phase”.

“There is a lot of shuttle diplomacy going on,” she said on X, formerly known as Twitter, referring to fast-paced meetings between countries to hunt for compromise.

The draft released on Monday triggered negotiations that ran overnight into early Tuesday. The text had suggested eight options countries “could” take to cut emissions.

One was “reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050”.

That would be the first time in history that a UN climate summit has mentioned reducing use of all “fossil fuels”.

But the move fell short of the “phase-out” of coal, oil and natural gas or the emphasis on cutting their use this decade, which scientists say must happen to avoid climate change escalating.

Negotiators were waiting for the new text on Tuesday, when the COP presidency wanted the summit to end. COP summits rarely finish on schedule.

“I’m worried ... because it’s very obvious that we need more ambition,” Denmark’s Global Climate Minister Dan Jorgensen told Reuters. “I haven’t given up yet of course, we still think this is possible.”

Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change.