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UAE ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced that Dubai would host COP28 in November 2021. The UN climate change presidency is rotated around the world, with the UAE representing the Asia-Pacific region.

On the opening day, the COP28 presidency scored two big wins. First, it oversaw a new agreement on the operationalisation of a fund to pay for the loss and damage caused by climate change. (See: Loss and damage.)

(Some items, such as one on mountains and climate change and another on the impact of unilateral trade measures on climate action, were removed from the agenda, with the presidency promising they would be taken up elsewhere.)

In response to questions from journalists about his possible conflict of interest as an oil executive, he stated that he had invited countries to include the role of fossil fuels in negotiated texts, adding:

However, crisis gripped the presidency again when remarks Al Jaber made regarding the science of phasing out fossil fuels during a live online event in November resurfaced in a story by the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting. On video, Al Jaber said:

The COP28 presidency announced a series of ministerial pairings to take discussions forward, as usual at UN climate summits. (Unusually, the presidency appointed the ministerial pairings six months in advance in a bid to speed up progress.)

At a briefing held by Climate Action Network on day one of the talks, Romain Ioualalen, global policy campaign manager of NGO Oil Change International, said COP28 would only be a success if it delivered a decision on the phase-out of fossil fuels.

At the end of the first week of the talks, the second iteration of the stocktake text was passed up to the ministerial level, accompanied by a compilation of views that parties felt were not yet reflected.

The final text calls for the tripling of renewable energy capacity and doubling of the rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030, though without the specific numerical targets that had appeared in earlier drafts.

The next day, around two hours into the opening plenary, Al Jaber asked the hall full of officials whether there were any objections to this text. With no one raising any, he gavelled the decision through, prompting a standing ovation.

The loss-and-damage fund being launched marked the first time a substantial outcome had been achieved during a COP opening session. It was the result of careful groundwork laid by the presidency, amid concerns that this historically controversial issue would otherwise be used to derail negotiations.

Unlike other forms of climate finance, there is no firm obligation for developed countries to pay into the fund. It will, therefore, depend on the generosity of wealthy nations and any other sources of money that can be leveraged.

The US-based bank was perceived among developing country representatives and civil society groups as being too rigid in the ways it could accept and disperse funds, as well as charging high administrative costs.

The other major decision on loss and damage to emerge from COP28 concerned the location of the Santiago Network. Parties agreed to set up this institution in 2019 as a way to link countries with the technical know-how to deal with loss and damage.

In the end, developing countries in the G77 and China group were split over whether the network should be in the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) or a consortium of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS).

They wanted to ensure it was given equal weight with other big topics, such as mitigation and adaptation, in the document. This, they argued, would encourage nations to act on loss-and-damage in their future climate plans and provide adequate funding.

In the highly politicised environment of UN climate negotiations, developing countries wanted to make money a central part of the discussion. They reasoned that any ambitions set out in the framework would require major investment, which many of them could not afford.

As it stands, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that the adaptation finance needs of developing countries are up to 18 times higher than current flows of public finance from developed countries.

G77 countries wanted adaptation finance to feature prominently in the GGA framework, including a specific target for how much money should be provided. Developed countries indicated they wanted to see progress on the GGA, but did not want to focus on money.

There were reports of frustration from more climate-vulnerable groups, such as the LDCs and AOSIS, and speculation that adaptation could be used as a bargaining chip in wider negotiations. However, the LMDCs rejected the idea that the G77 was divided.

Finally, just two days before COP28 was officially due to end, a draft decision was produced by the presidency. It included three options concerning CBDR-RC, weaker language on finance and no mention of a financial target.

Many parties expressed their dissatisfaction, but said they could work with the text. Soon after the text emerged, Mokoena France, an adaptation negotiator with the LDCs from Lesotho, told journalists:

There was little in the text that compelled developed countries to provide more money to developing countries. Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, told Carbon Brief that the US had successfully led the opposition to adaptation finance in the negotiations.

(There was also an agenda item specifically on NAPs at COP28, but it ended up being kicked down the road into future talks, with nothing more than a procedural decision. Another adaptation agenda item, concerning the annual report on the Adaptation Committee, was also delayed until future meetings.)

At the climate negotiations in Bonn in June, an intense fight broke out over the agenda, which meant it was not accepted until the day before the two-week session was meant to close. This was due to a deadlock around whether the MWP should be added to the agenda, as, although mitigation is widely agreed to be vital, the economic toll of taking such actions could be a significant burden to many developing countries.

This position is well-founded. In a new report launched at the start of COP28 from the High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance, chaired by leading economists Vera Songwe and Nicholas Stern, the authors conclude:

The report emphasises that these nations will require around $2.4tn of investment a year by 2030 to meet their climate goals. As for where this money will come from, many of the ideas discussed in the report were also discussed throughout COP28.

These parties were tasked with providing at least $100bn of climate finance annually to developing countries by 2020 and until 2025. They have so far failed to do this and, in doing so, have contributed to a general lack of trust within this critical part of the UN climate system.

Developing countries, which expect to be the main beneficiaries of this new target, want to move faster on deciding its details. Developed countries, on the other hand, have been happy to delay discussions on anything substantial until they are forced to do so.

With little agreement among parties, the focus throughout much of the talks ended up focusing on how to continue with workshops. Ultimately, negotiators agreed to go beyond such technical discussions and make space next year to start work on a draft decision text ahead of COP29. Joe Thwaites, a climate finance expert at NRDC, told Carbon Brief:

The NCQG, along with the loss-and-damage fund, is an area where developed countries are keen to discuss expanding the climate-finance donor base. That is, broadening it out to include relatively wealthy emerging economies, such as China and the Gulf states.

Jonathan Beynon, a climate finance expert at the Center for Global Development, told Carbon Brief that disputes over who should bear responsibility for providing climate finance could be seen across many negotiating tracks at COP28:

This builds on a growing movement, led by Barbados and a handful of other nations from the global north and south, to reform the international finance system and help to raise the trillions of dollars that are needed for climate action.

Another venture, set up by France and Kenya, was termed the Taskforce on International Taxation to Enhance Development and Climate Action. This was intended to push for climate levies on aviation, fossil fuels and financial transactions, specifically.

Meanwhile, negotiators also discussed draft reports undertaken by the Standing Committee of Finance on ways to achieve Article 2.1c of the Paris Agreement, doubling adaptation finance and defining climate finance. These are all contentious issues in UN negotiations.

Scott told Carbon Brief that, in theory, discussions of this topic could cover the kind of systemic changes being discussed outside the negotiating rooms. However, developing countries have resisted developed-country efforts to raise this issue, viewing it as an attempt to divert the conversation away from the provision of traditional climate finance.

The Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on implementation of climate action on agriculture and food security (SSJW), agreed at COP27 last year, is the only formal UNFCCC workstream to address agriculture and food systems.

The goal of the SSJW negotiations at COP28 was to establish a roadmap for the joint work. There were three main elements to this: to agree on a set of topics for the three mandated workshops to be held under the joint work; to establish the online portal for submissions under the workshops; and to determine how the work itself should be carried out and synthesised.

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