Despite Mounting Pressure and Momentum for Fossil Phaseout Globally, Once Again, the Talks Failed to Advance Urgent, Ambitious, and Equitable Climate Action

June 15, 2023

Bonn (GE) — Governments at the climate negotiations at the 58th session of the Subsidiary Bodies to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (SB58) shamefully failed to reflect the urgent need to tackle the key drivers of the climate crisis and agree on what is needed to limit global warming to below 1.5°C. Specifically, they failed to act in alignment with the scientific consensus on the need for an urgent, full, funded, and equitable phase-out of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas, including petrochemicals).

Lili Fuhr, Fossil Economy Program Director, reflected: “While the UN climate talks are mandated to deliver just and adequate climate action, they have utterly failed to do so. Even worse: UN negotiations have become a place flooded by fossil fuel lobbyists who water down policy decisions and promote harmful and ineffective approaches like carbon capture technologies, carbon offsets, CO2 ‘removal’, and geoengineering. This interference delays effective climate action and distracts from solutions that are proven and available at scale.” 

The conference in Bonn was a key moment to define decisions to be taken at the UN climate summit (COP28), which is scheduled to take place from November 30 to December 12 in Dubai, UAE. The COP presidency further undermines the legitimacy of the UNFCCC process, with Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, tasked with presiding over the outcomes of the climate negotiations. Having a petrostate with a deeply repressive government that is aggressively expanding its fossil fuel industry and promoting false solutions host the COP28, places the issues of a fossil fuel phaseout and the respect for human rights squarely on the agenda for all governments. 

Sebastien Duyck, Senior Attorney, said: “UAE’s history of repression and surveillance creates justified fear for climate advocates planning to attend COP28. We have witnessed harassment and intimidation of civil society and governmental delegates — in particular women — at UN climate conferences and the increasing criminalization and repression of climate activists in many countries around the world. We must reset the table. For climate policies to deliver just and effective action, the voices of those most impacted by climate harms and the fossil economy must be at the negotiating table, and human rights and fundamental freedoms must be protected and upheld before, during, and after the upcoming climate talks.”

Duyck continued: “Restoring the integrity and the legitimacy of these talks also requires reigning in on the corporate capture of the process. The decision by the UNFCCC Secretariat to request disclosure by all participants of their affiliation prior to participation is an indication that the pressure is mounting, forcing to shed a light on the undue influence that the fossil fuels industry has held over the climate negotiations for over the past three decades.”   

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