Vanesa Castán Broto

After an intense night of negotiations in Dubai (United Arab Emirates), the countries participating in COP28 reached a historic agreement by mentioning for the first time "moving away from fossil fuels" in the Global Stocktake document - the assessment of progress made towards achieving the climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement. The agreement comes after the first draft presented by the presidency did not make this mention - it referred only to "reducing consumption and production" of these fuels - which was described as "unacceptable" by countries such as Spain.

Almost a decade after the previous edition, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has presented the synthesis report of its sixth assessment cycle (AR6) on Monday in Switzerland. "This synthesis report underlines the urgency of taking more ambitious action and demonstrates that, if we act now, we can still secure a sustainable and liveable future for all," said IPCC chair Hoesung Lee. 

The document includes the main findings of the three Working Group reports of 2021 and 2022 (Physical basis, Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability and Mitigation of climate change) and the three special reports of 2018 and 2019 (Global warming of 1.5°C, Climate change and land, Ocean and cryosphere in a changing climate). With this document, which is primarily addressed to policy makers, the IPCC closes its sixth assessment cycle.

After two long weeks of negotiations and outside the official deadline, COP27 has reached an agreement to create a loss and damage fund to help the most vulnerable countries face the impacts of the climate crisis. However, other issues such as greater ambition in mitigation strategies to avoid exceeding 1.5ºC of warming and less dependence on fossil fuels have not achieved the commitment of all parties. 

The Global Carbon Project (GCP) today releases its Global Carbon Budget 2022 report. The main conclusion is that there is no sign of a decrease in global CO2 emissions and, at current levels, there is a 50 % chance of exceeding 1.5°C warming in nine years. The results will be published in the journal Earth System Science Data.