confidentially speaking
The Africa Confidential Blog
After COP28, next stop carbon pricing deal and ending fossil fuel subsidies
Blue Lines
The UN COP28 climate summit in Dubai is being heralded as a triumph by western nations and its Emirati hosts. That is largely because of the presence in the final communiqué of a commitment, albeit heavily qualified, to shift 'away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner'. It also allowed a compromise with international oil companies which have been promoting natural gas, less carbon-intensive than oil, as a transition fuel. Yet its envisaged pace of progress is far too slow for many African states hit hardest by climate change.
UN officials told Africa Confidential that progress towards a global carbon price and then tax – both are vital to raising finance for the transition and paying for loss and damage – needs to be turbo-charged. That lobby is getting louder, with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva insisting that ending the nearly US$7 trillion-a-year fossil fuels subsidies was essential.
African political leaders and civil society played a weightier role in these negotiations. They organised the launch of the Africa Green Industrialisation Initiative to discourage fossil fuels in oil-heavy African countries. But this will need massive investment. The funding pledges, some $700 million, to the Loss and Damage Fund dominated the start of the COP, but it is a derisory amount compared with the cost of the climate damage that needs to be repaired.
