Know better. Do better.

Pick-your-own transition?

"We will not sign our death certificate," stated the Samoan chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), after the latest version of a potential COP28 climate talks decision was released in Dubai on Monday evening.

The nearly 40 member countries of AOSIS - who warn their very survival is at risk from rising seas fuelled by climate change - said they could not support an agreement "that does not have strong commitments on phasing out fossil fuels". And in its current form, it certainly does not.

After an earlier draft contained no less than four options based on a phase-out of fossil fuels and a fifth involving no mention of it at all, the compromise text last night contained weak wording that offered a "pick-your-own" energy section for countries to triple renewables by 2030 and/or reduce consumption and production of fossil fuels - or simply do nothing.

Worryingly, the text opens the door for countries to keep on producing oil, coal and gas by using carbon capture and storage to "abate" their emissions - a technology criticised by many scientists and energy experts who say it's too expensive and that plans to rely heavily on it to meet net-zero goals by 2050 are unrealistic.

The new COP28 text provoked shock and anger, including from European countries like Germany and Spain, whose negotiators said they'd keep talking for as long as it takes to get an ambitious deal with a chance of holding global warming to 1.5C. The United States also said stronger language was needed on fossil fuels.

Last night's ministerial consultations were "very intense" in the words of one talks veteran, and saw more than 70 nations and coalitions making interventions. A new text is expected later today, supposedly the final day of the COP28. It remains to be seen whether a fossil fuel phase-out will make it back onto the table.

So what's the issue, beyond the clear desire of major oil-producing nations like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Russia to keep pumping the black stuff out of the ground? Finance - or more precisely the lack of it  - to help debt-strapped developing countries transition to greener energy.

As former Irish President Mary Robinson told me here in Dubai, any global fossil fuel phase-out will need to be "just" and equitable. That includes support for people whose livelihoods now depend on high-carbon fuels and industries, as well as help to make renewable energy available to all.

"The money is very important, the finance - and I'm worried that we're not seeing enough emphasis on that," she said.

Adaptation ‘emergency’

Despite putting more than $650 million on the table for the new loss and damage fund at the start of COP28, wealthy countries have been widely criticised for their stinginess when it comes to providing the funding  needed for vulnerable countries to adapt to increasingly harsh and erratic weather and climate patterns.

Top officials in Dubai told us they're worried that donors could just shuffle the chess pieces, taking money from adaptation to pay for loss and damage – the unavoidable climate impacts when protecting oneself is no longer an option.

Meanwhile, the text on how to put into practice a global goal on adaptation - laying out new targets and ways to measure progress in different sectors like water, food and health - does not show how the growing gap in finance for this work will be plugged in the coming years.

With African negotiators saying they face an "adaptation emergency", the urgency of addressing the injustice of the climate crisis – that those who did the least to cause the problem are suffering the most - is now acute, and a failure to respond could hold back the transition to a net-zero world.

This comment piece for Context by the prime minister of Bangladesh explains the challenges for her climate-vulnerable country during what she says will be difficult years ahead.

Nature lends a hand

More encouragingly, there has been a coming together of the climate and nature protection agendas at COP28, with the charge led by nature-rich countries like Colombia.

The draft COP28 decision talks about the importance of making high-emitting food systems more climate-resilient and boosting protection for biodiversity and ecosystems, which are vital stores of planet-heating carbon.

And it's not just forests that play a major role in removing carbon from the atmosphere. Peatlands and mangroves, when in a good state, actually do it better.

Our correspondent Jack Graham went to the Shetland Islands in Scotland to report on a plan to restore its soggy peat bogs. And, here at COP28, he talked to a conservation warden on Tanzania's Mafia Island about efforts to keep the hidden treasure of its blue lagoon - its mangroves - intact.

Meanwhile, deals are being done thick and fast for rights to develop and sell carbon credits from large tracts of African land, from Nigeria, Rwanda and Ghana to Malawi, Mozambique and Kenya.

But as those countries line up to cash in on the global carbon offset market, concern is growing that the planned multi-million-dollar deals aimed at safeguarding their forests could threaten the land rights and way of life of people who live there, our Africa correspondents report.

See you next week – by which time we’ll know where the world stands on the future of fossil fuels.

Megan