Kalain Ho­sein

Me­te­o­rol­o­gist/Re­porter

kalain.ho­sein@guardian.co.tt

As COP28, the in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate talks in Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, en­ters its fi­nal ne­go­ti­at­ing hours, hun­dreds of lead­ers of busi­ness, non-gov­ern­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tions and civ­il so­ci­ety groups have called on the leader of COP28 to sup­port keep­ing the plan­et's warm­ing be­low 1.5°C. Sci­en­tists have long re­port­ed glob­al warm­ing be­yond this lev­el will lead to ir­re­versible changes in the cli­mate sys­tem, lead­ing to high­er sea lev­els, more ex­treme weath­er, and hot­ter tem­per­a­tures.

With the to­tal num­ber of sig­na­to­ries reach­ing the thou­sands on Sun­day evening, the let­ter was de­liv­ered to COP28 Pres­i­dent Sul­tan Al Jaber on Fri­day.

The let­ter calls for "an or­der­ly phase-out of all fos­sil fu­els in a just & eq­ui­table way, in line with a 1.5°C tra­jec­to­ry – whilst en­sur­ing the tripling of glob­al re­new­able en­er­gy ca­pac­i­ty by 2030 from 2022 lev­els and the dou­bling of en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy."

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the signed groups want to see an "en­abling en­vi­ron­ment to scale up and shift pub­lic and pri­vate fi­nance, with de­vel­oped coun­tries tak­ing the lead in ac­tion and sup­port, putting a price on car­bon and tripling in­vest­ments for re­new­able en­er­gy."

The last ask with­in the let­ter calls for "the halt and re­ver­sal of de­for­esta­tion and land degra­da­tion as well as bio­di­ver­si­ty & oth­er ecosys­tem loss by 2030 and safe­guard­ing the ter­ri­to­ries of in­dige­nous peo­ples; en­sure re­silient food sys­tems and de­liv­er a strong glob­al goal on adap­ta­tion."

In a record­ed state­ment, the CEO of the Caribbean Cli­mate-Smart Ac­cel­er­a­tor, Rac­quel Moses, said, "The world and its peo­ple need the strongest pos­si­ble out­come to keep 1.5 de­grees with­in reach. But de­liv­er­ing on this his­toric task re­quires us to act like a team."

She added, "The sig­nals of trans­for­ma­tion and op­por­tu­ni­ty across sec­tors in so­ci­ety are all around us. At the same time, the cli­mate emer­gency is bit­ing hard­er than ever. It's up to us to seize this op­por­tu­ni­ty. Be­cause what is achieved here in Dubai must mark a lega­cy mo­ment, which de­ter­mines the fate of our fu­ture gen­er­a­tions."

Ac­cord­ing to Moses and the de­liv­ered let­ter, these out­comes must be sup­port­ed by the im­ple­men­ta­tion and ratch­et­ing of Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions and Na­tion­al Adap­ta­tion Plans well be­fore COP30 in 2025, which align with 1.5C and in­cor­po­rate mul­ti-stake­hold­er ef­forts with­in them.

Last Fri­day, the Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary of the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change, Si­mon Stiell, put coun­tries on no­tice that new Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions, which are goals each na­tion has to de­vel­op to curb green­house gas emis­sions, must be de­liv­ered by ear­ly 2025.

The move­ment sur­round­ing this let­ter is be­ing led by The B Team, a glob­al non­prof­it ini­tia­tive co-found­ed by Sir Richard Bran­son, founder of the Vir­gin Group and Jochen Zeitz, Pres­i­dent, CEO, and chair­man of the board of Harley-David­son.

This sto­ry was pub­lished with the sup­port of Cli­mate Track­er through the COP28 Cli­mate Jus­tice Re­port­ing Fel­low­ship.