A Brilliant COP Agreement? It Depends Who You Ask

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Key Points

After tense and protracted negotiations, delegates at the United Nations climate conference COP28 have agreed on a deal that calls on countries to transition away from fossil fuels..

But delegates have warned that parts of the text are still not strong enough, and that the real work of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is still ahead of us...

Going into the conference, many delegates had hoped that the final deal would ask countries to phase out fossil fuels altogetherperhaps an unlikely prospect given that this COP was hosted by the United Arab Emirates, a major oil-producing state and OPEC member..

An earlier draft of the agreement was greeted with widespread disappointment as it contained only a weak reference to reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels and a list of actions that countries could take to reduce emissions...

The agreement made at COP is not legally binding, but countries should use it to inform their own climate plans and reduce their own emissions in line with the ambition set out in the final text...

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