Cop28: UAE climate chief’s comments ‘incredibly concerning’ – as it happened

Closing summary

A run-down of today’s news, which was dominated by the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, for all the wrong reasons:

Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels
Fossil fuel phaseout is ‘required’ to reach Paris targets – report
Cop28 protesters call for ceasefire in Gaza
Indigenous groups condemn murder of activist in Peru
918 protected areas have ongoing or planned fossil fuel extraction projects – report
Sunak criticised for climate policies as Starmer stays in Dubai

When is a ‘protected area’ not a protected area? When there is oil involved.

A new study maps fossil fuel threats to biodiversity hotspots that are nominally classified as protected areas. Released today at Cop28, it shows:

Globally, at least 918 protected areas have ongoing or planned fossil fuel extraction projects within their boundaries, with a total of 2,337 active or proposed oil, gas, and coal extraction ventures within legally protected areas.
At least 50.8 Gt of potential CO₂ emissions from oil, gas, and coal reserves are on track to be extracted from projects within protected areas over their lifetimes, according to industry projections. This is more than three times the annual emissions from the US and China combined.
In the three largest pantropical forest basins, 300,000km² or 14% of the area of PAs, overlap with oil and gas blocks.