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Nearly 80 Nobel prizewinners and former world leaders have hit out at the removal of a specific mention of fossil fuels from the draft of a UN climate pact at the centre of a summit in New York next month.
The initial draft negotiating text for the UN’s ambitious Summit of the Future included a reference to “accelerating” a “transition away from fossil fuels”.
This matched the agreement already struck between almost 200 countries after negotiations at last November’s UN COP28 conference in Dubai.
But revisions to the text to be put forward in the separate pact in New York have excised any reference to fossil fuels, instead calling for climate action “on the basis of the best available science”.
Alarm was raised by a group of climate leaders, including former president of Ireland Mary Robinson — who clashed with the COP28 president in the UAE over the need to phase out fossil fuels to limit global warming — as well as Bangladesh chief adviser Muhammad Yunus, and former Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven.
“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,” said the former leaders and collection of Nobel prizewinners in a statement.
“We call on the United Nations to ensure that the Pact for the Future includes robust commitments to manage and finance a fast and fair global transition away from coal, oil and gas extraction in line with the 1.5C limit agreed to by nations in the Paris Agreement.”
The burning of fossil fuels is the biggest contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions behind global warming. Scientists say emissions must be cut by 43 per cent by 2030 to keep the rise in the global average temperature to 1.5C. It has already risen at least 1.1C during the industrial era.
The UN’s Summit of the Future will see all the member states meet and agree a text aimed at tackling a range of global issues, including sustainable development, technological co-operation and climate change.
Billed by the UN as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to enhance co-operation on critical challenges”, the organisation said the goals of the summit and its resulting pact were to “reinvigorate multilateralism”, “restore trust” and “boost implementation of existing commitments”.
It will also be the last formal opportunity for climate discussions ahead of the UN COP29 summit to be held in Baku in November, when another petrostate will host the negotiations.
The failure to refer to fossil fuels in the pact in New York would risk “sending a signal that the world is uncertain about the need to phase out fossil fuels”, said Alex Rafalowicz, director of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty campaign group.
“It’s extremely concerning that the text doesn’t even contain the language agreed in Dubai last year,” he added, referring to the last November’s COP28 agreement, known as the UAE Consensus.
As part of the consensus, countries agreed to take actions including “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”.
It also recognised that targets should be set “in light of different national circumstances”, acknowledging that poorer nations may find cutting emissions more difficult than wealthier countries.
The UN did not respond to request for comment.
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