We’re a week into the 28th Conference of the Parties, the UN’s annual climate summit, held this year in the city of Dubai. This year is the “global stocktake” where countries are supposed to show how far they’ve come in meeting the carbon reduction targets they set in Paris seven years ago. And the news isn’t good.

“Countries are still failing,” says Claire Stockwell, senior climate policy analyst at Climate Analytics, and lead author on the latest report from Climate Action Tracker, the premier, independent body for comparing how promises stack up against reality. 

“The targets and actions the governments put on the table have stalled. It's essentially the same report we put out three years ago in Glasgow. And so we need, at this meeting, governments to commit to a lot more ambitious action and targets, and that's going to start with making sure that in the final decision they agree to phasing out fossil fuels.”

So far more than 100 countries have called for an immediate end to all new oil and gas production and clear end dates for fossil fuel production. And more than 110 countries have pledged to triple renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency by 2030. 

The leaders of the two biggest emitters, the U.S. and China, are notably not attending this year, though both countries have high-level representatives at the summit. 

We spent a good portion of our show last week on the controversy around Sultan Al Jaber as COP28 president. And it seems like the fossil fuel industry has a larger presence at this conference than ever before. The CEO of ExxonMobil came to one of these conferences for the first time. 

There has been some progress from the industry, though far from enough: ExxonMobil and Saudi Aramco — two of the world's biggest oil companies — are leading a pledge to reach near-zero methane emissions by 2030. They've gotten dozens of other companies to sign on to it. And there's a satellite that will actually measure the leaking, to keep them honest.

Last year at COP27, one of the biggest outcomes was the creation of a loss and damage fund for rich nations to help pay poorer countries for the climate impacts their emissions have caused. As of this writing, country pledges are over $700 million, a bright spot in the early part of the conference.  

This week we’re featuring a few of the thousands of people who have traveled to COP28 to share their stories and pressure heads of state to be more aggressive in cutting climate-harming emissions. Those include a woman from Sudan who fled armed conflict with her baby, a Kenyan woman haunted by seeing animal carcasses by the side of the road in her country, and an Indigenous woman who did a crowdfunding campaign to get here. 

“The young generation is not the generation that caused climate change. But it's the generation that will have to deal with the [con]sequences of climate change. Yet we are not the ones making the decisions,” says Sudanese Climate Activist Nisreen Elsaim. 

These women have traveled thousands of miles to this UN climate summit in Dubai to share their experiences — and have their voices heard.

“Representation of Indigenous people is always a good thing, but it's not enough. I should be included for participation. I should be included to make sure that my demands are being heard. And I should be included to make sure that the next generation are also at the table,” says Chautuileo Tranamil, co-founder of Indigenous Liberation and Aralez.

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Climate Target Update Tracker

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