The two words island nations are begging to see in a global climate pact

DUBAI - Mona Ainuu wiped away tears as she reacted to a draft agreement at the U.N. Climate Change Conference here, her voice shaking as she contemplated her small island nation of Niue sinking into the sea.

“We’re drowning with sea level rise,” Ainuu, the Niuean minister of natural resources, told reporters. “We’re losing our land. We’re losing people. . . . My 12-year old, what am I going to say to her when I come back?”

Like Ainuu, many delegates from vulnerable nations voiced frustration and anger at the draft deal unveiled Monday night at the climate summit, known as COP28. Unlike previous versions, the document did not call for phasing out fossil fuels, the root cause of rising global temperatures that have wrought devastation across the globe in the past year.

Instead, the deal suggests “reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner” so that the world reaches net-zero emissions by mid-century. The language reflects a compromise among negotiators from nearly 200 nations, including fossil-fuel-dependent countries such as the United Arab Emirates - the host of this year’s talks and the world’s seventh-largest oil producer.

The draft agreement is nearly the last step before the conclusion of COP28, at which, under the 2015 Paris agreement, countries are supposed to address how to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Poor and vulnerable countries have pushed for the agreement to include a phaseout of fossil fuels as the best chance of hitting the 1.5C target, a threshold beyond which scientists have warned of catastrophic effects, including flooded coastal cities and mass die-offs of coral reefs.

Climate groups widely critiqued the text as being watered down, and they said it reflected the world’s reluctance to emphatically close out the era of coal, oil and gas. But the text, in even mentioning the desired reduction of fossil fuel consumption and production, would break new territory - if agreed to. No prior agreement from international climate talks, including the 2015 Paris accord, has directly taken on the topic of fossil fuels, instead focusing on the need to reduce emissions.

John Silk, minister of natural resources and commerce for the Marshall Islands, said the language would doom his country and “millions if not billions of the most vulnerable people and communities” around the world.

“The Republic of the Marshall Islands did not come here to sign our death warrant. We came to fight for 1.5 and for the only way to achieve that: a fossil fuel phase out,” Silk said in a statement, referring to the goal of the Paris climate accord.

The European Union also criticized the text, with its climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, calling it “clearly insufficient,” and noting pointedly that he wasn’t scheduled to depart Dubai until Friday.

“This text contains elements that we simply cannot accept,” he said. “We’ll talk as long as necessary.”

COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber, who also heads the UAE’s state-owned oil company, has pushed for the negotiations to end on schedule on Tuesday morning, despite these summits’ long history of running into overtime. On Monday night, Al Jaber implored delegates to accept the compromise.

“We have a text, and we need to agree on the text,” he said. “The time for discussion is coming to an end. And there is no time for hesitation. The time to decide is now.”

At the same time, Al Jaber acknowledged that “we still have a lot to do. You know what remains to be agreed, and you know that I want you to deliver the highest ambition on all items, including on fossil fuel language.”

Conference leaders see the draft agreement as an opening gambit subject to change. Al Jaber spent time after the draft’s release talking with other delegation heads about what could change, with another draft expected at some point later.

As part of the process all countries must agree to any deal, a requirement that has often led to sharp divides and historically limited progress in talks.

Li Shuo, the director of the China climate program at the Asia Society, said Al Jaber’s proposed text represented an attempt at compromise - and also an attempt at gamesmanship.

“If I was the presidency, I’d intentionally dig a few holes,” he said. “And then you can make a few changes and walk away as the good guy.”

In recent days, U.S. officials - representing the world’s largest economy and largest oil producer - had sought to find a compromise on the fossil fuel language with broader appeal. In briefings with environmental groups after the release of the text Monday night, U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry said he was still pushing for a fossil fuel phaseout, according to two people familiar with matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.

In a statement later, a State Department spokesman said the draft “seeks to balance a variety of interests,” but that the fossil fuels language “needs to be substantially strengthened.”

And as closed-door talks between delegation heads stretched past midnight here, Kerry told the other negotiators that they were in the midst of making “life and death decisions,” according to two people in the room who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private speeches. He said the draft agreement fails to forge progress that would limit warming to 1.5C.

“This is the last COP that can still keep 1.5 alive,” he said. “We’re on a course to places becoming completely unlivable.”

Global talks to ramp down fossil fuel use have stretched on since the 2021 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. Major oil producers such as Saudi Arabia and coal consumers such as India have resisted calls for a fossil fuel phaseout over that time, and the latest compromise shows how hesitant many of the world’s leading economies are to abandon the world’s leading source of energy.

The draft deal released Monday also calls for “rapidly phasing down unabated coal,” echoing the agreement in Glasgow two years ago. The word “unabated” refers to coal-fired power plants that are not equipped with technology to capture their carbon emissions, also known as carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS.

Some environmentalists view CCS as a false climate solution, saying it could prolong the life of polluting facilities for decades to come. They note that the International Energy Agency has warned that humanity cannot build any new fossil fuel infrastructure if it hopes to limit warming to 1.5C.

“Countries can’t CCS themselves out of the climate crisis,” said Vanessa Nakate, a Ugandan climate activist. “They can’t CCS themselves out of air pollution.”

Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia - the second-largest oil producer behind the United States - had strongly resisted a fossil fuel phaseout in recent days. The kingdom’s energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, told Bloomberg TV several days ago that his country would “absolutely not” endorse such language.

“The Arab group, and particularly Saudi Arabia here, has to make a decision whether they want to be part of this new modern energy system or not,” said Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s climate envoy. “Their choice is going to be consequential for the future of hundreds of millions of people.”