
Read the joint statement from climate justice community worldwide demanding historical polluters deliver on their commitments
“COP28 is running into overtime, but your time is up to deliver climate justice”

Lidy Nacpil – Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development
“The governments of the richest countries in the world shamelessly refused to acknowledge the Global North’s historical and continuing responsibility for the climate crisis while making outrageous claims to championing ambition. There cannot be ambition without equity, and no equity without the delivery of their full climate finance obligations. The likely failure of this COP is not just simply a lack of progress, but will actually set the world back and the Global North, especially the US must be held accountable”.

Meena Raman, Head of Programmes, Third World Network
“Developed countries who have portrayed themselves as climate champions have to walk the talk now to rapidly phase out fossil fuel production and consumption on an urgent basis and must take the lead as is required by them, given their historical responsibility. They are already bursting the carbon budget for limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degree C with their unjust emission reduction targets, and hollow net zero pledges which symbolize carbon colonialism, as they also increase fossil fuel expansion in their countries. It is time to stop charade and pretense.
We are most disappointed that the Dubai Global Stocktake outcome has not recognised the need for developed countries to provide the support needed to developing countries in respect of the much needed transitioning away from fossil fuels and for meeting the adaptation needs, including for the Loss and Damage Fund. Instead, we see escape routes being set in place across a wide range of decisions to dilute their commitments and divert attention to the private sector and the multilateral development banks for the provision of climate finance. This is highly regrettable. Scaled-up ambition on finance is much needed to secure the high ambition in developing countries. Otherwise, any lofty global targets will only remain a pipe dream.”
Paloma Jofre, Earth in Brackets – Climate Youth
“The global north is pushing for a fossil fuel headline out of COP28 so they can walk out as climate heroes. We, students from all over the world based in the US, do not believe them. We are incredibly concerned that a fossil fuel phase-out language with loopholes and false solutions is a death sentence for many in the Global South. What the world needs is a fossil fuel phase-out rooted in equity, technology transfers, and grant-based finance. This means a FAIR, FAST, FULL, AND FUNDED FOSSIL FUEL PHASE-OUT.”

Asad Rehman, Executive Director, War on Want
“Where we needed justice, equity and ambition, instead we got watered down texts that are license to continue to pollute and will leave the poor behind and our planet on fire.”
Like Emperors with no clothes, countries claimed that their north star is the 1.5°C target, but this rang hollow when the UK, USA and EU point blank refused to even discuss cutting their own emissions in line with fairness and science.
COP28 was time to walk the walk and not simply talk the talk. The signal that the era of fossil fuel pollution is over won’t be because of weak words in a text, or hollow statements here in Dubai, but when the UK, USA and others not only announce an immediate halt to their huge rollout of even more deadly fossil fuels, stop banking on deadly false solutions and put hard cash on the table.

Hemantha Withanage, Chair of Friends of the Earth International
“We are incredibly concerned by the open door to false solutions like hydrogen energy, nuclear, and removals technologies like carbon capture utilization and storage.Even carbon offsets could still be used for ‘abatement’. We must be very clear: there is no justice, equity or fairness in any COP28 deal that lets in false solutions. We do not need dangerous distractions that are nothing more than green colonialism and are harming communities and ecosystems the world over.”

Rachel Rose Jackson, Corporate Accountability
“The US, joined by other Global North governments and Big Polluters, seems to have forgotten that this is not a game. The climate crisis is a reality where the stakes are life and death. Death not just for a few, but for millions of people. We cannot allow the UN climate talks to become a poker table where people’s lives are traded like chips while the polluting elite go all in on fossil fuels.
A COP flooded by more than 2,400 fossil fuel lobbyists and overseen by a fossil fuel executive delivered a text that might contain some key words, but on closer inspection is littered with their polluting rubbish, false solutions, and dangerous distractions that guarantee the continuation of the fossil fuel era. The United States, UK, EU, Norway, and others self-proclaim themselves climate ‘champions’, but yet again are twisting the outcomes of these talks so they don’t have to wean themselves off their fossil fuel addiction. They have bullied and blocked efforts to deliver the public finance, technology, and capacity we need to actually be able to deliver a just fossil fuel phaseout, and are yet again orchestrating their great escape from having to do their fair share by ripping equity out of the text.”

Teresa Anderson, ActionAid International:
“While the new text sends a signal that the fossil industry’s days are numbered, the wealthiest countries have clearly refused point blank to offer any new finance to help developing countries make these targets a reality on the ground. Rich countries want to have their cake and eat it. But they should remember – there’s no such thing as a free climate target. This text means that lower income countries already being pushed into debt by the cost of climate disasters may be forced to make impossible choices between economic security and climate action.
“The text has many loopholes and offers several gifts to the greenwashers, with mentions of carbon capture and storage, so-called transition fuels, nuclear power and carbon markets. Overall, it maps a rocky road towards a fossil free future.”

Eduardo Giesen, Regional Coordinator DCJ, Latin America and the Caribbean
“Once again, at COP28, the rich countries in complicity with the world’s economic elites, sacrifice the opportunity for real decarbonisation and a transition based on justice, equity, and sustainability. Through a terrible text —with misleading concepts like “unabated fossils”— wealthy nations promote the continuity of fossil fuels extractivism and false solutions. Carbon capture and storage, hydrogen production, nuclear energy and others, increase climate vulnerability and lead to the violation of the rights of communities and nature in the Latin American and the Caribbean region as well as the entire Global South.”
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