Although the United Arab Emirates is the world’s seventh largest oil-producing nation,oil exports today account for less than 30 per cent of its GDP,a figure the futuristic petrostate is anxious to promote as it races with frenetic pace to diversify its economy and attract foreign investment.
The figure was rattled off more than once at the COP28 UN climate summit which Dubai hosted over the past two weeks – much to the criticism of climate advocates and green groups sceptical of the UAE’s objectives after it appointed the head of the country’s state-owned oil company Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber to shepherd the talks.
This was my first experience of a COP event,which at times seemed like a giant airport arrivals hall,jutting up against an energy industry trade fair,colliding with an environmental jamboree – with a smattering of world leaders and delegations thrown in. And of course,there was no avoiding the cloud of the war in Gaza hanging over the event and threatening to distract progress.
By all accounts,this 2023 edition was the largest COP event ever,with more than 100,000 people on site at its peak. You had to wonder about the carbon emissions involved in just getting everyone to the Gulf city for the affair,many on private jets.
In a country where organised political groups are effectively outlawed,I was particularly eager to see how the event’s designated protest zone would function. AsThe New York Times put it this week,COP28 brought “the rare spectacle of political mobilisation to the UAE,the authoritarian host”.
Most days at Dubai’s Expo City,I happened upon one activist group or another:the protesters in Hazmat suits decrying the climate “crime scene” in Africa;the 12-year-old advocate who had travelled from India to bellow passionately into a megaphone about the colliding crises of flood,drought and air pollution consuming her home.
The task of getting 200 countries to all agree on how to solve the climate crisis seemed gargantuan at the start of COP28. This week,the scale of the challenge came into even sharper focus when,in the summit’s final hours,a new draft text was proposed that lacked any calls for the rapid phase-out or phase-down of fossil fuels,bitterly dividing negotiators.
It wasn’t until a day after the talks were due to have ended and following two marathon nights of tough negotiations thata compromise resolution was finally reached supporting a “transition away from fossil fuels” – a result the UAE presidency claimed as a win. But while it may be the first time in COP history that the agreed text among nations directly mentions the prime underlying cause of climate change,it also includes support for the use of controversial abatement technologies like carbon capture and storage:a cop out,climate activists say,that will extend the life of fossil fuels.
Australia’s Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen conceded the agreement did not go as far as some wanted but said it still sent a clear signal of a world in agreement that “our future is in clean energy and the age of fossil fuels will end”.
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It’s a long way from the impasse between voting blocs at the start of the week when Australia,along with the US,UK,Norway and Canada,refused to support wording put forward by oil rich nations that failed to address fossil fuels. But while the final agreement may be a diplomatic win for the UAE,many nations will head home from Dubai disappointed that the language is too weak for the scale of the crisis upon us.
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