Climate action: Much like the ozone layer, CoP-28 has three gaping holes

livemint.com:

bits and bobs but, overall, nobody has actually gained. The United Nations began the annual climate change conference almost three decades ago to limit greenhouse gas emissions and decelerate global warming. It did not take long for global politics to hijack the entire process, and to suborn the multilateral process with a predominantly Western development model.

This process of global political concessions and conciliations has left three large holes in the Dubai declaration, enabling the climate summit to indulge in the theatrics of a make-believe consensus, but stunting its ability to achieve substantive climate targets. One glaring omission is the lack of any mention of how climate action will be financed. While CoP-28 is being feted for mentioning fossil fuels for the first time in nearly 30 years, radio silence has greeted its unprecedented decision to drop all pointed references to financing.

The text retains only vague allusions. Copenhagen’s 2009 CoP first wove in the fiction of $100-billion financing every year till 2020, which 2015 Paris CoP renewed and extended to 2025; but Dubai seems to have formally buried the original idea of climate justice. There is perhaps a belated realization that developed nations collectively mobilizing financing for climate action by developing nations was always a non-starter.