COP28

💬 The #COP28 refuses to finish and continues lurching like a headless chicken 🐔, something that does not surprise many of us. But why? 💭 Why is it so difficult to reach agreements? 🤔 Well, one of the keys to understanding how this macro conference works lies in its origins...⏳

🌐 The COPs are a type of UNCCC (United Nations Conference on Climate Change), which are the meetings of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), which is like a club ♣ to which countries belong and where decisions are made about the climate crisis 🔥 and greenhouse emissions.

📖In 1995, at COP1, one of the first issues to be addressed was to establish internal regulations, to establish a decision-making process 👓. First, by default, consensus is taken: all parties must agree 🤝. So a consensus must be reached to establish another system (such as voting). This has never been done and consensus continues to be the format used. 198 parties, all of them with unlimited right to veto. It is not even necessary for a member to veto a decision to consider that there is no consensus, 🙅‍♀️ after the long hours of debate, it is up to the COP presidency to decide whether an agreement is reached or not. 🧐

This means that the debates are long and the conclusions are weak, since they tend to stick to the lowest common denominator. Like in the Paris Agreement 🥐 when the goal was set at a maximum increase of 2º 🌡 in average global temperature, instead of 1.5º 🌡 as many states proposed.

Papua New Guinea 🇵 and Mexico 🇲 proposed an amendment in 2011 that proposes a system where (if all attempts to reach a consensus fail) a majority is considered valid from 3/4, larger than the previous proposal of 2/3 .

The end of this COP28 is marked by the question of how and whether to include the “phase out” of fossil fuels ⛽ in the agreement. Even the wording of the text is a controversial point, something to be expected since the states of the #OPEC, the #UE 🇪 and the island states 🏝 (who are affected in greater proportion by the climate crisis), and the rest of the 198. 🌐

At the moment the points that have been established are tripling the renewable capacity 🌞, doubling efficiency ⚡ and the implementation of the Loss and Damage Fund 💸.

#UN #UNFCCC #CrisisClimate #FuelsFossils