DUBAI – UN leaders on Dec 11 urged an end to obstruction, hours before a deadline for a deal at a climate summit in Dubai, as oil producers resisted historic calls for the world to wind down fossil fuels.

Flying back to Dubai after a sleepless night for negotiators, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for “maximum ambition and maximum flexibility” to reach an agreement that can find consensus among the nearly 200 countries present at the summit.

“We are in a race against time,” Mr Guterres told reporters. “It’s time to go into overdrive to negotiate in good faith.”

Spurred by pleas by low-lying island nations that fear for their very existence, the conference in the glitzy metropolis built by oil money is considering the first-ever call to exit oil, gas and coal, the main culprit in the planet’s climate crisis.

Neighbouring Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, has led opposition, with the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) cartel urging its members to vote against a phase-out of fossil fuels.

Without naming countries, Mr Simon Stiell, head of the UN’s climate body, called on all sides to remove “unnecessary tactical blockades” holding up a deal.

Mr Guterres called on negotiators to have a “single-minded focus on tackling the root cause of the climate crisis – fossil fuel production and consumption”.

Offering flexibility, he said that the call for action “doesn’t mean that all countries must phase out fossil fuels at the same time”.

But any agreement, he said, must preserve the ambition of checking warming at no more than 1.5 deg C above pre-industrial levels – the increasingly elusive goal blessed by the 2015 Paris Agreement to avoid the worst ravages of climate change, including worsening storms and droughts and rising sea levels.

Down to two issues

Mr Stiell said that the summit disagreements narrowed down to two issues – fossil fuels and speeding up climate finance by wealthy nations to worst-hit developing countries.

The summit leadership is expected to release a new draft text on Dec 11.

The annual Conference of the Parties, or COP, has rarely finished on schedule in its 28-year history, but COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber has called on countries to wrap things up on time on Dec 12.

Dr Al Jaber, the head of the national oil company of the United Arab Emirates, has repeatedly promised to deliver a historic deal and urged countries to find a “consensus and common ground” on fossil fuel.

“Failure is not an option,” he said on Dec 10.

Saudi Arabia has called for COP28 to take into account its “perspectives and concerns”, and fellow Opec member Iraq has also publicly rejected an exit from fossil fuels.

But veteran climate campaigners and negotiators say the world has never been so close to a deal on winding down oil, gas and coal.

The pressure is now on Dr Al Jaber – whose role as oil executive has caused angst among climate campaigners – to make the final edits to a deal that would bring a consensus.

China-US cooperation

The last draft agreement released on Dec 8 includes four different paths out of fossil fuels, but it also has a fifth option: leaving the issue out of the final deal.

China, the world’s biggest emitter, was also initially seen as hostile to a phase-out but has since been working to find a compromise.

China and the United States, the largest historic emitter, during pre-COP28 talks in November in California agreed to speed up the deployment of renewable energy to gradually replace oil, gas and coal.

The Dec 8 draft deal includes similar language on the need to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030, to “displace fossil fuel-based energy”.

The US, whose climate envoy John Kerry celebrated his 80th birthday on Dec 11 during the Dubai negotiations, has surprised some observers by also throwing its weight behind a phase-out.

But the United States is the world’s largest oil producer, and the Republican Party includes staunch opponents of curbing fossil fuels. AFP