DUBAI: Up to 200 global leaders will join over 80,000 delegates gathered in Dubai for the UN climate conference as governments prepare for negotiations on whether to agree, for the first time, to phase out fossil fuels – the main source of global warming.

With finance also high on the meeting agenda, the COP28 presidency has published a proposal on the eve of the summit for countries to formally adopt the outlines of a new UN fund to cover losses and damages in poor countries being hit by climate disasters like extreme flooding or persistent drought.COP28 President designate Sultan Al-Jaber.

COP28 President designate Sultan Al-Jaber urged delegates as well as oil companies to work together at UN climate summit. He said, “we must ensure that this cop delivers the most ambitious global stocktake possible.”

He stressed that the UN climate summit us committed to unlocking finance to ensure that the global south does not have to choose between development and climate action.

While Al-Jaber hailed the initiative of national oil companies to step up, he said “it is not enough.” “They can do more, every nation, every sector and every one of us has an urgent role to play.”

“We can bring mitigation, adaptation and means of implementation which includes finance under one umbrella,” according to Al-Jaber, who also runs state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

“I ask you to start this COP with a new mindset, adopt different thinking, be flexible. Ensure the most ambitious global stocktake. I want this COP to be the COP that maximizes mitigation on momentum,” Al-Jaber said.

Al-Jaber said the ‘role of fossil fuels’ must be part of climate deal. “It is essential that no issue is left off the table,” according to the UAE official. He also said that “let this be the COP where we deliver our promises from the $100 billion on loss and damage.”

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Sameh Shoukry, the COP27 president

“Rather than increasing climate finance from developed countries, actually, it is decreasing in relation to growing needs and the increasing growth of financing in developing countries,” said Shoukry, the COP27 president.

The UN’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai opened Thursday with a moment of silence for the victims of the conflict in Gaza.

Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian foreign minister who chaired the previous COP talks in Egypt last year, urged delegates to “stand for a moment of silence” in memory of two climate diplomats who recently died “as well as all civilians who have perished during the current conflict in Gaza”.

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An early breakthrough on the damage fund — which poorer nations have demanded for years — could help grease the wheels for other compromises to be made during the two-week summit.

The UN and hosts the UAE say the COP28 talks will be the most important since Paris in 2015, when nations agreed to limit global warming to well below 2°Celsius since the preindustrial era, and preferably to a safer limit of 1.5°C.

Scientists say the world is not on track to achieve these targets and nations must make faster and deeper cuts to emissions to avert the most disastrous impacts of climate change.

A central focus will be a stocktake of the world’s limited progress on curbing global warming, which requires an official response at these talks.

“Right now, we’re taking baby steps where we should be taking great leaps and great strides to get us to where we need to be,” said UN climate chief Simon Stiell on Wednesday.

The COP28 climate conference should aim for a complete “phaseout” of fossil fuels, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres earlier said, warning of “total disaster” on humanity’s current trajectory.

“Obviously I am strongly in favor of language that includes (a) phaseout, even with a reasonable time framework,” Guterres said.

Climate change is the biggest threat to human health in Africa and the rest of the world, the head of the continent’s public health agency said.

Mitigating that risk was top of his agenda, Jean Kaseya, the director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said as he headed to the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.