EsadeGeo - EsadeGeo Daily Digest, 28/11/2023

Financial Times - Kenza Bryan, Simeon Kerr, James Politi and Raya Jalabi / UAE planned to use COP28 summit for oil deals, documents show

 

• The United Arab Emirates planned to use meetings about the COP28 climate summit it is hosting later this week to pitch oil and gas deals to foreign governments, according to leaked briefing documents obtained by the non-profit Centre for Climate Reporting alongside the BBC.
• Sultan al-Jaber, president-designate of this year’s UN climate summit, has called for a “phaseout” of fossil fuels globally. But his position as head of COP28 while also leading the UAE state oil company Adnoc has attracted criticism from politicians in the US and Europe because of the perceived conflict of interest.
• Documents posted online on Monday appear to show plans for Jaber to discuss fossil fuel deals with 15 countries including China, Brazil, Germany and Egypt. The documents have not been verified by the Financial Times. A spokesperson for COP said the documents were “inaccurate”, “unverified” and had not been used by COP28 in meetings.
• The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which oversees the summit, did not reply to a request for comment. Its website states that the role of the COP president, who hosts the climate change conference every year, includes “raising ambition to tackle climate change internationally”.

 

The Guardian - Lisa O'Carroll / David Cameron to visit Brussels in official role for first time since Brexit

 

• David Cameron will return to Brussels on Tuesday in an official capacity for the first time since his doomed campaign for Britain to remain in the European Union.
• The former prime minister, who made a surprise return to frontline politics this month when he became the UK foreign secretary, will attend a Nato meeting of foreign ministers to discuss issues including ammunition supply to Ukraine and the alliance’s continued presence in Kosovo.
• He is also expected to try to squeeze in a meeting with Maroš Šefčovič, the vice-president of the European Commission responsible for the Brexit deals, before or after the two-day summit.
• Referring to the tortuous years-long negotiations surrounding the UK’s departure from the EU in 2020, one diplomat likened Cameron’s visit to the EU headquarters to a “divorcee returning to the family home”.

 

Financial Times - Mehul Srivastava, Chloe Cornish and Andrew England / Israel-Hamas truce extended by 2 days as more hostages released

 

• Qatar said mediators had secured a deal to prolong the temporary truce between Israel and Hamas by two days to allow the release of more hostages held in Gaza.
• The announcement on extending the original four-day pause to the Israel-Hamas war, which was due to end on Monday, came after Benjamin Netanyahu’s government faced mounting domestic and international pressure to provide more time for hostages to be freed.
• The Israeli military said on Monday evening a further 11 hostages had been released by Hamas. Qatar said Israel had freed a further 33 Palestinian prisoners.
• Majed al-Ansari, spokesperson for the Qatari foreign ministry, announced the agreement “to extend the humanitarian truce for an additional two days in the Gaza Strip” as part of his country’s mediation between Israel and Hamas.

 

South China Morning Post - Biman Mukherji / Can Cop28 elbow out fossil fuels amid ‘aggressive’ plan to triple renewable energy by end of decade?

 

• Global leaders are expected to thrash out a pact to triple renewable energy output at the Cop28 summit in Dubai on November 24-29, but such a deal would ultimately be unproductive if they cannot agree on a path to simultaneously phase out fossil fuels, analysts say.
• “For some governments, it is a loophole where they are going to say, ‘We are going to aggressively pursue renewable energy’. But the bit they don’t say is that’s in addition to fossil fuels,” said Polly Hemming, director of the Australia Institute’s Climate & Energy programme.
• More than 60 countries have already agreed to back the deal, spearheaded by the European Union, United States and United Arab Emirates, to triple renewable energy this decade ahead of the summit, according to a Reuters report.
• A deal to significantly boost renewable energy has been in the making since the beginning of the year, and in September, the Group of 20’s New Delhi declaration included an agreement to triple its production. However, member nations have failed to agree on a timeline to reduce fossil fuels output.

 

 

Our opinion reads for today:

 

• Project Syndicate - Shlomo Ben-Ami / The False Choice Between Palestinian and Jewish Liberation
• Bloomberg - David Flicking / China Is a Rich Country. It Can No Longer Cry Poor on Climate