Sultan Al Jaber, the Cop president, engaged in shuttle diplomacy past deadline to finalise text on fossil fuels

Fiona Harvey and Nina Lakhani in Dubai
Tue 12 Dec 2023 13.30 EST

The hosts of the Cop28 climate summit will make a last-ditch attempt on Wednesday to forge a fresh deal on the future of the climate, after their original attempt was roundly rejected by rich and many poor countries.

A new text laying out a potential deal on fossil fuels was under preparation for more than 24 hours, as the fortnight-long talks stretched nearly a day past their official deadline of Tuesday morning in Dubai.

Sultan Al Jaber, president of the talks on behalf of the United Arab Emirates, engaged in an intense round of shuttle diplomacy throughout Tuesday and had meetings with heads of delegation singly and in groups planned until 3am on Wednesday.

Nations were still deeply divided over whether to phase out fossil fuels, after an initial text proposed “reducing both production and consumption of fossil fuels”. This was couched merely as one of a list of options that countries “could” act on, however, which was unacceptably weak to many vulnerable countries. A group of countries described the text as “a death warrant” for small island states.

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