Cop28 live: world leaders arrive for first day of vital climate change summit
What is Cop28 and why does it matter?
For more answers to your Cop28-related questions, including “Why do we need a Cop anyway?”, read more by clicking the link below.
Cop stands for conference of the parties under the UNFCCC, and the annual meetings have swung between fractious and soporific, interspersed with moments of high drama and the occasional triumph (the Paris agreement in 2015 ) and disaster (Copenhagen in 2009). This year is the 28th iteration, and promises to be a difficult follow-up to last year, when developing countries celebrated victory on key issues of climate finance .
For almost three decades, world governments have met nearly every year to forge a global response to the climate emergency. Under the 1992 UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC), every country is treaty-bound to “avoid dangerous climate change” and find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally in an equitable way.
So what is a Conference of the Parties? My colleague Fiona Harvey, Guardian environment editor and a veteran of multiple Cops, has written a handy explainer, setting out what it is all about. She writes:
Good morning! This is Damien Gayle, on the very first day of the 28th Conference of Parties climate change summit, or Cop28 . The Guardian will be liveblogging the negotiations throughout, as always, and we look forward to your contributions: please email me on with thoughts and suggestions. Alan Evans ( ) will be taking over the blog later on. Today, the first day of the conference, will be focused around the opening ceremony. Joe Biden and Xi Jinping will not be attending but other world leaders will be arriving today, including Rishi Sunak. Negotiators are hoping to make strong progress this Cop, and Sultan Al Jaber, the president-designate of the summit, has told my colleague Fiona Harvey that an “unprecedented outcome” that would keep alive hopes of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C is within reach. But it is all still to play for. The US’s veteran climate negotiator, John Kerry, speaking to journalists in Dubai yesterday, said: “I feel confident that we will make progress [at Cop28]. The question is: how much progress?”
