(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



No finance? No fossil fuel phase-out [1]

['Brandon Wu']

Date: 2023-12

An exit from coal, oil and gas must happen equitably, or it will not happen at all

Brandon Wu is director of policy and campaigns for ActionAid USA.

The closing days of the COP28 U.N. climate negotiations have been heavily focused on language around phasing out fossil fuels. That we are having this conversation at all counts as a minor victory, given that the words “fossil fuels” did not even appear in any legal text in the U.N. climate process (UNFCCC) until only two years ago.

But this is not an easy matter. While developed countries - somewhat hypocritically, given that many of them are the largest fossil fuel producers and have the largest oil and gas expansion plans in the world - have been pushing for the fossil fuel phase-out language, many developing countries have been a bit more reticent.

The Africa Group in its final-day press conference was quite explicit in its reasoning: fossil fuels are a source of badly needed revenues. If they must avoid extracting those fossil fuels, they need international support to replace those revenues and to transition into a different and more sustainable economic pathway.

Unfortunately, developing countries simply have no trust that rich countries will deliver the money they need for the energy transition. For decades, rich nations have failed to provide climate finance at the scale needed - or even the scale they themselves promised (i.e. the infamous $100 billion per year by 2020).

Now, they are sowing further mistrust by trying to weaken any new language about climate finance across all the UNFCCC negotiating tracks. For example, the U.S. successfully led a push to ensure that the language in the Governing Instrument of the new Loss and Damage Fund does not even mention developed countries as contributors at all, but merely says “The Fund is able to receive contributions from a wide variety of sources.”

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.context.news/just-transition/opinion/no-finance-no-fossil-fuel-phase-out

Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/