Fossil fuels cited for first time in draft text of climate talks

The COP26 climate talks are in the final stretch.

Early on Wednesday, the British hosts of the conference released the first draft of the conference conclusion.

The cover text, which reflects the views of negotiators in Glasgow, gives the first clues as to what a deal might look like.

The draft will now be discussed and debated by delegates from nearly 200 nations, and will change as nations press their demands and work to a compromise.

There must be consensus from all nations for any final set of decisions to be adopted.

Any decisions made at COP26 would help implement the Paris Agreement, the world's main climate treaty, which enshrines temperature targets to limit global warming to well below 2 deg C above pre-industrial levels and to aim for 1.5 deg C, if possible.

Developing nations are unhappy about some aspects of the draft text, including fuzzy language around finance to help them green their economies and adapt to climate impacts.

There is not enough clarity on the amount and source of climate cash or how it will be mobilised. Other elements, though, may be grounds for some cautious optimism.

For instance, the draft text mentions fossil fuels for the first time in the nearly 30-year history of the United Nations climate conferences, with nations "called upon" to accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels.

But observers have noted the possibility that the sentence could be removed in the final iteration of the cover text as negotiations progress.

Ms Melissa Low, a climate policy observer from the National University of Singapore's Energy Studies Institute, said she expects there will be backlash from certain countries against the inclusion of this statement in the final text.

"The Paris Agreement allows for bottom-up nationally determined contributions - meaning nations decide, on their own terms, what they want to do for the climate," she said.

"It will be challenging to ask countries to phase out fossil fuel use when they get to decide their own climate pledges."

The language in the draft cover text can seem tentative, usually "urging", "inviting" or "calling on" nations to pursue certain climate actions.

Ms Yamide Dagnet, director of climate negotiations at think-tank World Resources Institute, said the language used in the draft cover text was not decisive enough.

She said: "What some countries want is more direct language, instead of just 'urging' or 'inviting', but also having programmes, having dates, deadlines and milestones to make it real."

Another new element in the draft cover text is the provision for national climate pledges to be updated yearly, whereas under the Paris Agreement, new climate pledges must be submitted every five years.

The first round of pledges was made in 2015.

This year's conference - which was postponed by a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic - marks the second round of submissions from countries, setting out national climate targets for 2030.

But Paragraph 30 of the seven-page document "urges" countries to revisit and strengthen their 2030 targets in their climate pledges by the end of next year.

Revisiting climate pledges yearly could spur countries to progressively ratchet up their climate ambition so the world has a greater chance of limiting warming to 1.5 deg C above pre-industrial levels.

But new research released during COP26 showed that temperature rise under the targets set by countries for 2030 would be more than 2.4 deg C above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century.

Climate impacts such as extreme weather events, droughts and wildfires are set to worsen with every degree of warming, climate scientists have shown.

So, certain countries, especially vulnerable nations that bear the brunt of the warming, want parties to come back every year to negotiate how to take stronger climate action so that the 1.5 deg C threshold can be met.

However, Ms Low noted that it could also be hard to get countries to reach a consensus on this issue as this was not what they had signed up for when they adopted the Paris Agreement.