The COP28, or Conference of Parties, begins on Thursday in Dubai and is meant to last 13 days, but climate negotiations often run past their official deadlines as countries haggle until the last minute to find a consensus.
COPs are the formal meetings of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), tasked with addressing human-caused global warming.
The UNFCCC organises nations into five groups: African states, Asian states, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Western Europe and "Other States", which include Australia, Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and the United States.
It also divides countries in three categories: developed countries, developed countries with special financial responsibilities and developing nations.
But various informal and formal clubs, which sometimes mix together wealthy and poor countries, have emerged over the years, with some nations working in more than one bloc.
This year's COP comes against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war and Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine, which have raised global tensions.
Climate negotiations were for a long time believed to be "immune" to world events as if they were "so important that they were protected from the frictions of current events", said Francois Gemenne, a political scientist and member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
"This is no longer the case," he told AFP.
Countries lumped together can also have diverging positions on climate issues.
"Developing countries are rarely unified," said Jennifer Allan of the International Institute for Sustainable Development.
"The fact that they've remained unified on loss and damage, for instance, that's rare," Allan said, referring to last year's historic agreement to set up a fund for poor nations devastated by climate impacts.
Here is a list of the main negotiating groups at the COP:
- G77 (and China) -
This group of 77 countries was founded in 1964 and has since grown to 134 countries, often aligned with China.
It is the largest negotiating bloc and functions throughout the UN system, beyond the UNFCCC.
Its party chair rotates annually, with Cuba currently at the helm for the first time.
- Least Developed Countries (LDCs) -
The LCD group consists of 46 countries and brings together -- as its name suggests -- the world's poorest nations. It is currently chaired by Nepal.
The topics at stake in the COP negotiations sometime result in the LDC taking a different viewpoint from the G77.
- Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) -
CVF brings together 58 countries with a combined population of 1.5 billion people that are highly vulnerable to the impacts of global warming.
Founded in 2009, it is currently chaired by Ghana.
- Small Island Developing States (SIDS) -
SIDS is a coalition founded in 1990 of 40 low-lying islands or archipelagos threatened by rising sea levels. It is chaired by Samoa.
Despite its small size, it is widely recognised for its vocal role in the climate talks.
- European Union (EU) -
The EU bloc groups the 27 member states to agree on one common negotiating position.
The presidency of the European Council is held by Spain until the end of the year.
- Umbrella Group -
This group formed following the 1997 adoption of the Kyoto Protocol and is made up of a number of developed nations: Australia, Britain, Canada, the United States, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Kazakhstan, New Zealand, Norway and Ukraine.
It is generally opposed to the G77 or the LCDs.
- BASIC -
The BASIC bloc groups four large newly industrialised nations: Brazil, South Africa, India and China.
It came together in 2009 during COP15 in Copenhagen.
- Independent Alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC) -
AILAC was established as a formal negotiating group in 2012 and represents a coordinated position for the countries of the North and South, including Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala (its current chair), Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Chile.
Ten key moments in the climate change fight
Paris (AFP) Nov 28, 2023 -
With UN climate talks to start in Dubai on Thursday, here are 10 key dates in the battle against global warming.
- 1988: Alarm bells -
Alerted by scientists to signs that the Earth's surface was warming, the United Nations in 1988 established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to investigate.
Two years later, the panel reported that heat-trapping "greenhouse" gases generated by human activity were on the rise and could intensify planetary warming.
In a series of studies, evidence accumulated that human activities -- voracious burning of coal, oil and gas; logging of rainforests and destructive farming practices -- were heating the Earth's surface, a prelude to disruptions of its climate system.
- 1992: Earth Summit -
An "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 created the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Since 1995, so called "Conferences of the Parties", or COPs, have been meeting to pursue that elusive goal.
- 1997: Kyoto Protocol -
In 1997, nations agreed in Kyoto, Japan, on a 2008-2012 timeframe for industrialised nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent from 1990 levels.
Developing countries, including China, India and Brazil, were not required to take on binding targets.
But in 2001, the United States, at the time the world's biggest carbon emitter, refused to ratify the protocol, which took effect in 2005.
- 2007: Nobel prize -
The IPCC reported in 2007 that evidence of global warming was now "unequivocal" and that extreme weather events would probably multiply.
In October 2007, the UN panel shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice president Al Gore for their efforts in raising the alarm about climate change.
- 2009: Copenhagen collapse -
Participants at the COP15 gathering in Copenhagen failed to achieve an agreement for the post-2012 period.
Several dozen major emitters, including China and the United States, announced a goal of limiting global temperature increases to two degrees Celsius (35.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels but were vague on how the goal was to be reached.
- 2015: Breakthrough in Paris -
In December 2015, nearly every nation on Earth committed to limit warming to "well below" two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
A more ambitious cap of 1.5 Celsius is also adopted as the preferred target.
- 2018: Greta Thunberg -
In 2018, Swedish teen Greta Thunberg started skipping school on Fridays to sit outside the Swedish parliament, demanding more substantive action to combat climate change.
Despite ending her Friday protests in 2023 after graduating, her protest inspired students worldwide to skip class each Friday in a bid for more efforts from global leaders.
- 2022: Record emissions -
In 2022, the International Energy Agency reported that global CO2 emissions would hit an annual record.
But at a COP27 meeting that year in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, participants failed to agree on more ambitious emissions cuts.
- 2022: Biodiversity deal -
An accord on biodiversity is reached in Montreal in December 2022, calling for the designation of 30 percent of the planet's land and oceans as protected zones by 2030, and an end of extinctions of threatened species due to human activities.
- 2023: New warning -
The United Nations warned that despite efforts so far, the world would see its first full year at 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the early 2030s.
According to the European Union's climate observatory Copernicus, global temperatures in the summer of 2023 were the hottest ever registered.
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