Germany and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will each provide 100 million U.S. dollars to the newly established fund to support poorer countries in dealing with irreversible impacts of climate change, the governments announced on the opening day of the UN climate change conference COP28 in Dubai.

“At COP28, we need to move from words to action,” said German development minister Svenja Schulze. “This is why today, the UAE and Germany declared to stand ready to kickstart the new fund for responding to loss and damage with 100 million US dollars each.” She called on other countries to also make pledges for the fund, which was agreed by governments today. NGO’s welcomed the agreement and the first pledges for the fund. This was “an important step towards more climate justice,” said Laura Schäfer of Germanwatch, saying the contributions by Germany and the UAE were “a noteworthy first step.” Oxfam’s Jan Kowalzig said other industrialised countries were now under pressure to follow suit. “This should create a confidence-building dynamic that can contribute to a successful overall outcome of the conference.”

Governments from around the world are ready to use COP28 to tackle the issue at hand, despite multiple other crises going on, German special climate envoy and state secretary Jennifer Morgan said.

“Our headlines are full of wars and natural disasters that spell humanitarian suffering,” she said. However, “what I’ve sensed here since arriving yesterday is a very strong determination to focus on this crisis here and now,” Morgan said at a press conference in Dubai. She called on governments to be united on this. The German government’s goals for COP28 included setting up the fund to support vulnerable countries dealing with losses and damages from climate change, agreeing to accelerate the energy transition away from fossil fuels and finding more clarity on how the transition can be financed, Morgan said.

COP28 is taking place in Dubai, UAE, from 30 November to 12 December. Global cooperation on climate change has taken on a new sense of urgency as 2023 has seen many climate records shattered, with unprecedented air and ocean temperature anomalies and low sea ice coverage. However, negotiations at COP28 are set to be exceptionally difficult, complicated by new geopolitical realities, which are exemplified by tensions between western countries and Russia, or around the violent conflict in the Middle East.

In Dubai, governments will take stock of how far the global community has come since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015. The process named “global stocktake” (GST) is meant to set the stage for climate action in the coming years and ensure more ambition in the future. Morgan called the GST the “heart of the Paris Agreement.”

The global stocktake is far from the only issue on the table. The German government underlined its support for three key outcomes it seeks at COP28: tripling renewable energies by 2030, doubling energy efficiency and gradually phasing out fossil fuels.

A fierce debate about a possible agreement on phasing out fossil fuels is set to be a major component of COP28. EU leaders agreed to push for a world-first global deal to phase out the “unabated” use of coal, oil and gas, which many producing countries could oppose. Russia has already signalled it would block a deal.

“We will surely be among the more ambitious part of those negotiating in Dubai,” a German government official told journalists in Berlin. “However, we are realistic.” At the level of the G20, governments agreed on a language that had called for a phase down of fossil fuels, not a phase out, as countries including Russia had opposed a more ambitious phrasing, the official said.