Megan Rowling

The COP28 U.N. climate summit in December produced the first global deal calling on countries to transition away from climate-heating fossil fuels in their energy systems.

The big question for 2024 is how to start putting that into practice quickly - and fairly.

With a raft of key global elections scheduled for this year, and a new agreement to "transition away from oil, coal and gas this critical decade" in hand after COP28 in Dubai, what will 2024 bring for climate action?

We asked top climate analysts and activists for their predictions, from potential "tipping points" to reasons for optimism, even as climate-changing emissions continue to rise:

The hard-won agreement at the COP28 climate summit to transition away from fossil fuels for energy was heralded as the "beginning of the end" for the production and use of oil, coal and gas, and a key step in limiting global warming.

But what does that mean for workers whose jobs and incomes depend on extracting polluting fuels from the ground, or burning them in power plants?

When Brianna Fruean, a young Samoan climate activist, and her exhausted colleagues from Pacific Island states realised the COP28 climate summit would not deliver a hard-fought-for agreement on a fossil fuel phase-out, there were tears.

"We are not fighting for ourselves. We are crying for our people," said Fruean, reflecting the strong emotions of many citizens of low-lying island nations hit hard by rising seas and more damaging floods and storm as the planet warms.

Developing countries with big oil, gas and coal reserves say they need more financial support to leave them in the ground

Sierra Leone student Henry David Bayoh is under no illusions about the challenges his West African nation faces from climate change, from vulnerable farmers struggling to grow crops in higher heat to city neighbourhoods hit by fatal landslides.

In the capital Freetown, where Bayoh lives in a low-lying community called Aberdeen near the ocean, sea levels are rising, beaches are being eroded and flash floods hit when it rains heavily.

Any global commitment to phase out fossil fuels - which could be agreed at the COP28 climate talks this week - needs to be carried out in a way that is fair and equitable for workers and their communities, said former Irish President Mary Robinson.

The climate justice advocate and former U.N. human rights commissioner said that any phase-out of coal, oil and gas should be "unconditional" and "very quick", in line with the Paris Agreement goal of keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Activists at the COP28 U.N. climate summit in Dubai said on Friday they had been unable to express their views freely on the Gaza conflict and that their climate protests had been affected by restrictions on when and where they could be held.

Tasneem Essop, head of Climate Action Network International, a network of civil society groups, said the U.N. climate secretariat (U.N. Climate Change) had prohibited demonstrators from using certain phrases with relation to the war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza, including "ceasefire now".

As governments haggled over the future of fossil fuels at the COP28 climate talks, scientists warned the natural world is in the danger zone for tipping points that could provoke "catastrophic" effects including mass migration, conflict and failure of food crops.

In a new report, more than 200 researchers found that five major natural systems are already at risk of crossing tipping points that would lead to abrupt or irreversible change, from the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melting to warm-water coral reefs largely disappearing.

Government pledges for climate adaptation at the COP28 summit have fallen far short of the target, with officials warning that resources to build resilience to wilder weather and rising seas could be diverted into a new "loss and damage" fund instead.

At a meeting at the Dubai talks late on Monday, rich countries offered only $160 million in contributions to the Adaptation Fund - barely half of its $300-million goal this year for projects such as flood defences and early-warning systems.