It took an outcry from 77 Nobel laureates and world leaders, but governments negotiating a new United Nations declaration on climate change, sustainability, and peace have reinstated language on a fossil fuel phaseout that they’d dropped from a previous draft.
But the revised text is still a step back from the heightened sense of urgency that world leaders agreed to at last year’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai.
The latest draft, released Thursday states that world leaders “decide to… transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly, and equitable manner, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science,” Climate Home News reports. But that reference did not show up in a version of the document that circulated over the summer.
The back and forth on the text comes less than a month before UN Secretary-General António Guterres convenes the Summit for the Future Sept. 22-23, a high-level event meant to mobilize governments, UN agencies, civil society organizations, academic institutions, and the private sector around a future vision of global cooperation. The final declaration for the event has been under negotiation for close to a year, with Germany and Namibia coordinating the work.
“Last January, they released a ‘zero draft’ based on member states’ initial inputs and submissions from civil society, academia, and the private sector. It included a reference to countries ‘accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems’,” Climate Home writes. “But any mention of fossil fuels disappeared from a second draft published in mid-July following another round of consultations.”
The pushback came in the form of a letter to governments from Nobel winners, including Bangladesh interim leader Muhammad Yunus and former Irish President Mary Robinson, coordinated by the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT) Initiative.
“We are gravely concerned that the draft Pact for the Future does not even mention fossil fuels, one of the greatest threats facing the world today,” the leaders wrote. “The extraction and burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of the climate crisis, fueling extreme weather, fires, lethal heat, droughts, and flooding that are threatening lives and livelihoods around the planet.” Those activities also “undermine all 17 Sustainable Development Goals, including jeopardizing public health, fuelling conflict, exacerbating social inequalities, and threatening biodiverse ecosystems worldwide.”
Climate Home says the latest version of the Pact for the Future “closely mirrors the landmark agreement struck at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai last year with the exception of a call to ‘accelerating action in this critical decade’, which is absent from the draft.”
The new Pact for the Future draft still “cements the [COP28] commitment,” said FFNPT Initiative Executive Director Alex Rafalowicz. “If the language stays, it’s clear there’s no going back.”
But while “this is a first step,” he added, “declarations alone will not suffice. We need to build on this outcome with immediate, decisive action and concrete plans.”
