Negotiations continue on the final scheduled day of the UN Cop 28 climate summit in Dubai, UAE. Deep divisions remain with many countries calling for a phase out of fossil fuels, which other nations reject.
"The parties have deeply held and deeply split views, especially on the language around fossil fuels", Cop 28 director-general Majid al-Suwaidi said today.
The Cop 28 presidency released a draft negotiating text yesterday for the global stocktake — the main outcome for the summit this year, measuring progress against Paris Agreement goals.
Many countries felt that the text "didn't fully address their concerns", al-Suwaidi said. The text released yesterday called upon countries take action including reducing consumption and production of fossil fuels, to achieve net zero "by, before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science", but it did not mention a phase-out of fossil fuels.
"By releasing our first draft of the text, we got parties to come to us quickly with [their] red lines," al-Suwaidi said. The Cop 28 presidency team spent last night taking in feedback from all the parties, according to al-Suwaidi, and that has put them "in a position to draft a new text". An updated text should be released later today, but not before 18:00 Dubai time (14:00 GMT), according to Cop observers.
"The presidency is calling for the highest possible ambition of keeping the 1.5°C within reach," al-Suwaidi said. But "it's a question of how ambitious the parties truly are and where they want the balance to be", he added.
"There is a… supermajority [of countries] that do want more ambition on mitigation, adaptation, on financing, solving the problem and making sure we keep 1.5°C in reach", EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said earlier today.
"Once we have alignment on 1.5°C, I think it is easier to have alignment on all the other issues", Bangladeshi climate envoy Saber Hossain Chowdhury said. But "consensus has to be on what science says… we cannot afford trade-offs", he added.
The Paris Agreement sets a goal of limiting global warming to "well below" 2°C above pre-industrial averages, and preferably to 1.5°C. The current draft has that parties recognize "that limiting global warming to 1.5 °C with no or limited overshoot requires peaking in global greenhouse gas emissions at the latest before 2025", but some countries including in the Mideast Gulf region have long said that they want to keep to the language of the Paris Agreement.
Parties will work to achieve agreement "I hope in the coming hours", French energy transition minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said today.
