The conference presents an opportunity to come up with pathways for countries looking to transition away from fossil fuels, and eliminate some of the barriers that encourage fossil fuel reliance.
“The point of it is to be able to get into some of the tricky questions about how to phase out fossil fuels,” says Leo Roberts, associate director for energy transitions at E3G, a climate change think tank.
That includes discussions on how to phase out systems that encourage fossil fuel reliance—like investor-state dispute settlement systems, which allow big companies to sue governments for adopting environmental protection laws, or creating preferential trade agreements for countries that are committed to the transition.
“They’re not just things that one country can do by itself,” says Alex Rafalowicz, executive director of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative.
The conference sets the stage for states to come together to develop a treaty on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Organizers hope to establish, within a year, formal negotiations for a Fossil Fuel Treaty, a binding international framework that would manage a fossil fuel phase-out. A second international conference hosted by the Pacific Island nation Tuvalu, will be hosted within the year.
Read the full article here
