The Global North Is Alienating the Global South Before COP28 Even Starts

The much-awaited 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP28, in the United Arab Emirates arrives at a turbulent yet pivotal point for international climate action. The previous year has seen alarming climate-related crises and weather extremes. It seems increasingly likely the world will breach the 1.5 degrees Celsius climate threshold by 2027. Countries have done little to increase climate commitments or cut emissions. COP28 has a colossal and critical role to play. This year’s COP will mark the conclusion of the first Global Stocktake, the main mechanism for tracking progress under the Paris Agreement. It is also an opportunity to deliver groundbreaking climate action and climate justice for the global south.

Yet in the lead up to COP28, two opposing positions on its role and credibility have arisen, from camps which should be on the same side: criticism, articulated mostly by climate activists from the global north, and enthusiasm, displayed by those in the global south.

On the one hand, COP28 has faced a storm of skepticism from green campaigners and some elected officials mostly in the global north because its host, the United Arab Emirates, is a major oil-producing state, and because the president of COP28, Sultan Al Jaber, who is also the head of the UAE state-owned oil company ADNOC, has advocated that fossil fuel industries must be part of climate action. At the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin in May, Al Jaber said the world must focus on “phasing out fossil fuel emissions”—not their use—through decarbonization and carbon technologies that reduce fossil fuels’ carbon footprint, as one of the main energy transition pathways. He mentioned other pathways include scaling and phasing up viable, affordable zero-carbon alternatives, but that “the energies used today”—the majority of which is fossil fuels—“will continue to be part of the energy mix for the foreseeable future.” A crescendo of boycott cries followed, especially when ADNOC, the UAE national oil firm, was found to be engaged in correspondence on COP28, raising questions about influence over its agenda. This November, a week prior to the start of the COP, the European Parliament voted for an official COP28 position to push for an end of global fossil fuel subsidies (many of which are prevalent in developing countries) by 2025.

On the other hand, voices in the global south believe that COP28 is a beacon of hope for them to deliver on pressing issues unresolved in COP27, ranging from climate finance to technology. While not a homogenous group, the global south broadly comprises a wide range of developing countries with different circumstances and development levels. Yet over time the term has become synonymous with the Group of 77, a coalition of 134 postcolonial and developing countries which originally united in 1964. Although very active in climate negotiations, the G-77 and China bloc (a negotiating bloc in climate conferences) has struggled to be heard at some of the past COPs. Indeed, in an earlier summit of G-77 and China, the U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres announced that “the world is failing developing countries,” and members called for a new world order with equality for the global south. Moreover, Al Jaber’s address at a G-77 and China summit promised that COP28 will focus on real results for the global south. That COP28 is the first COP to host a G-77 summit is evidence of that intention.

Certainly, there are conflicts of interest between oil producers and climate action. It might not come as a surprise that leaked briefing documents reveal that the UAE plans to discuss hydrocarbon and renewable deals during COP28 with 15 nations, including both hydrocarbon producers (like Canada, Australia, Mozambique, and Colombia) and net-importers (like Germany and Egypt). In fact, these deals are parallel to the UAE’s existing strategies and energy mix, which includes fossil fuels, as well as renewable energy, nuclear, and technology investments. It is similar to the UAE’s current energy strategy as well, such as ADNOC’s $150 billion announced investment in 2022 to increase oil and gas production capacity and investments in 2018 (along with Saudi Aramco) in Nigeria’s oil company.

Sizable yet smaller investments in renewable energy are also part of that strategy, such as the Green Finance Framework and ongoing investments in renewable energy projects by Masdar (the UAE state-owned renewable energy company) in 20 countries for over a decade, as well as pledges to invest $4.5 billion in clean energy across Africa. In addition, the UAE will represent the position on fossil fuels of fossil fuel-dependent economies—Gulf Cooperation Council members and beyond—and of major oil and gas companies. Their position centers on reducing fossil fuel emissions, rather than reducing their use, through the use of carbon capture, utilization, and storage technologies. These technologies are currently unaffordable or unavailable at scale, hence the skepticism about the seriousness of fossil fuel producers about climate action.

Yet dismissing COP28 on the basis of its oil-producing host is hypocritical and dangerous, and could obstruct, or even cripple, climate negotiations on matters of importance for the global south and larger global climate action. There are three reasons why this skeptical stance can and should be set aside.

First, criticism of COP28 based on the UAE’s oil production singles out global south producers and increases global south alienation. Large hydrocarbon producers from the global north have been spared such criticism, including Scotland, host of COP26 and Europe’s largest oil producer and its second-largest gas producer (notably, COP26 was called out for being the most exclusionary COP meeting ever). There also was not much similar criticism of the Netherlands, host of COP6 in 2000, or Canada, host of COP10 in 2005.

Second, dismissing an oil producer’s climate actions implicitly absolves the UAE and by extension other high polluters from historical responsibility for climate change. While the UAE has the sixth-highest per capita in CO₂ emissions in the world, its cumulative CO₂ emissions are low and it also has ambitious climate action and net-zero emissions targets. Similar criticism can be applied to other high-emitting advanced economies, such as Australia (10th highest per capita CO₂ emitter), the United States (12th highest per capita emitter, second-largest emitter in 2021, and the single highest cumulative emitter to date with 25 percent of CO₂ emissions), or the European Union, which has also been an historically large polluter (collectively the second-highest cumulative emitter to date, with 22 percent of CO₂ emissions). Other global south countries have high total emissions, notably China (ranked 1^st in 2021 and 3^rd highest cumulative emitter at 12.5 percent of global CO₂ emissions) and India (ranked 3rd globally in 2021 with 3 percent of cumulative CO₂ emissions), from both local industries as well as Western multinationals. Effective climate action requires holding countries accountable. It also requires securing broad-based climate action by hydrocarbon producers without ignoring the progress that they have made. Dismissing them discredits their climate efforts and effectively absolves them and others from their responsibility.

Third, while abating fossil fuel use is critical for tackling climate change and reducing emissions to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius (especially given shortcomings in carbon capture technology), it is also unjust for many global south states. Fossil fuels offer an affordable solution to energy poverty, especially for developing countries and the 770 million people without access to electricity and the 2.5 billion people without access to clean cooking fuel. While renewable energy can be an affordable and a cleaner solution, it requires often unavailable infrastructure funding. Other developing economies, particularly in Asia and Africa, hope to develop their own natural resource endowments to drive economic development. The global north had its opportunity to industrialize without regard to climate change effects, and its prosperity benefitted from developing countries’ resources through colonization. For the global south, calls for climate action which deprive them of a potential source of economic development and energy access without providing funding is akin to asking them to fund the global north’s energy transition. These calls create a bigger wedge in climate negotiations.

This divide in positions on COP28 mirrors longstanding divisions on climate justice issues. The global south is home to over 80 percent of the world’s population, including those most vulnerable to climate change. Meanwhile, the global north has both historically and cumulatively generated greenhouse gas emissions that caused climate change, and has called for climate action and an energy transition that disadvantages the global south at least in the short term. Much of the global south lacks the finance and technology needed to achieve net-zero emissions. Tradeoffs, especially between energy transition and socioeconomic development, are real, leaving the burden of tackling climate change placed disproportionately on developing countries.

Notwithstanding variations in attitudes, attendance at COP28 is expected to be unprecedented. COP28 may well be the most influential climate conference to date. More than 160 heads of member states (known as the parties) will be attending COP28 and its various events, including the World Climate Action Summit. According to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an estimated 70,000 delegates will attend COP28, double the number of attendees of COP21 in Paris, the landmark summit during which the Paris Agreement was adopted. The delegates will represent not only parties’ leaders and negotiating teams, but also business leaders, young people, climate scientists, Indigenous peoples, journalists, and other experts and stakeholders.

Such attendance is also remarkable in light of the ongoing Israel-Gaza War. The war poses another intrusion on COP28, with the potential additional boycotts or flashpoints mostly from civil society, especially with the UAE being at the forefront of Arab normalization with Israel.

The high interest in COP28 reflects the importance of the issues to be discussed. It also indicates support from the global south for a host country seen as a member of the global south and their development issues.

The challenge and opportunity for COP28 is to balance necessities: advancing climate justice on one end, and advancing urgent need for climate action on the other.

For this balancing to occur, it is critical to make progress on issues that support both adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. With the conclusion of the first Global Stocktake, countries need to increase both finance and commitments to accelerate climate action. Progress is needed on the Loss and Damage Fund, a breakthrough agreed on in COP27 to support vulnerable countries hit hard by climate disasters. New pledges to the fund at COP27 totaled a meager $230 million. Thus, at COP27 the CMA (the conference serving as the meeting of the parties to the Paris Agreement) requested the U.N. Climate Change’s Standing Committee on Finance to prepare a report on doubling adaptation finance for consideration at COP28. Countries and companies are challenged to commit to and implement the Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan, agreed on in COP27, which calls for $4 trillion to $6 trillion a year to finance a global low-carbon economy.

Another key challenge for COP28 is the extent to which the parties will be able to hold advanced economies accountable on their broken COP15 promise in 2009 of channeling $100 billion in climate finance by 2025 (extended from 2020 in COP21 in 2015) to developing economies for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Funding from wealthy developing and high polluting global south states, like China and Gulf states, must play a role. This position is in line with that of the UAE and wealthy Gulf states which fund renewable projects globally. Funding from multinationals is another opportunity for climate finance that has yet to be tapped.

Finally, another key priority for the global south is technology transfer and capacity building, both of which can help expand low-carbon industries and adaptation to climate change. The COP28 presidency has called upon both private and public sector stakeholders to support such efforts on various fronts, from renewable energy to the food supply chain. One welcome initiative has been the UAE-U.S. Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate, or AIM4C, which advances technological solutions for food security and hunger eradication.

As the UNFCCC summary report on the first Global Stocktake states, “multiple crises cannot be ignored, neither can the opportunities for enhanced climate action.” To that end, COP28 can be successful if the parties collaborate to advance energy transitions, decarbonization, and fossil fuel abatement—while also advancing climate justice, adaptation, and support for the most vulnerable. Dismissal by the global north of COP28 because its host is an oil producer ignores this imperative.