What is COP28?
Conference of the Parties
COP28 is the United Nation’s (UN) 28th Climate Change Conference of the Parties. COP28 will build upon the outcomes of COP27 in order to tackle the climate emergency.
With the world experiencing record concentrations of greenhouse gasses, increasingly extreme weather events and an ever-growing energy crisis, COP28 will crucially work on accelerating action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The basics
What is sustainability?
Climate change refers to shifts in global or regional weather patterns. Climate change has been largely attributed to an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a result of the burning of fossil fuels.
Burning fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blank wrapped around the earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures.
Carbon neutral or carbon neutrality is the balance between emitting carbon and absorbing carbon emissions from sinks.
Carbon sinks are any systems that absorb more carbon than they emit, such as forests, soils and oceans.
Net zero is when the amount of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), that are removed from the atmosphere is equal to the amount produced by human activity. As per the Paris Agreement, we need to reach net zero by 2050 in order to avoid increasing global temperatures by 1.5C at the end of the century.
While net zero and carbon neutral are often used interchangeably, there are some important differences. Carbon neutrality is less prescriptive and includes the offsetting of residual emissions. It’s also used mostly frequently when referring solely to carbon dioxide emissions.
Significance of COP
Why does COP28 matter?
The planet is heating up to dangerously high levels which will cause devastation for everyone and everything on the earth. Action is needed to mitigate the effects of climate change and, for this to have an impact, this needs to be a global collaboration.
COP28 is bringing together governments and organisations from across the world together to encourage key decision-makers to take action to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Each and every one of us can do our bit to make a difference but, ultimately, it’s in the hands of the most powerful to drive wide-ranging, structural changes which can have a significant impact on the world’s emissions. This is why COP28 is so important to facilitate such discussions.
Climate catastrophe
Facts and statistics
Global temperature
0.87°C
since 1880
Ice lost
28 tr
tonnes between 1994-2017
Sea level rise
3.4
mm per year between 1993-2017