The 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference was held from November 30 to December 13, 2023, in Dubai, UAE. The conference is an annual event where governments come together to discuss policies to limit global temperature rises and adapt to impacts associated with climate change. The conference is also known as the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The goal of COP28 was to work together on solutions to tackle climate change, limit emissions, and protect the environment.
The conference was originally scheduled to end on December 12 but had to be extended following Saudi objections to the final agreement. On December 13, the conference president, Sultan Al Jaber, announced that a final compromise agreement between the countries involved had been reached. The deal commits all signatory countries to move away from carbon energy sources “in a just, orderly, and equitable manner” to mitigate the worst effects of climate change and reach net zero by 2050. The global pact was the first in the history of COP summits to explicitly mention the need to shift away from every type of fossil fuel, but it still received widespread criticism due to the lack of a clear commitment to either fossil fuel phase-out or phase-down. China and India did not sign the pledge to triple their output of renewable energy and committed to coal power instead. A powerful earthquake in Indonesia has killed at least 10 people and injured dozens.
