UAE faces ‘pressure’ as COP28 host as ‘crucial’ summit to be ‘turning point’ in holding polluters accountable

United Arab Emirates will face “a lot of pressure” as the host of this year’s COP28 conference as it “could be a turning point” for major polluters to face their responsibilities, a climate expert has said.

Yamide Dagnet, director at Open Society Foundations, said this year’s climate conference in late November to early December will be “challenging” as the Emirates is an oil and gas producing country, but says “we need to focus on the opportunity that it could leverage.”

It comes after climate campaigners slammed the country’s decision to appoint Sultan Al Jaber, an oil executive, as the conference’s president. Jaber is the minister for industry and advanced technology, but is also chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) - one of the world’s biggest oil producers.

Ms Dagnet said the appointment is “provocative and holds risk” but the “reputational stakes are real” and she believes the country “will want to shine from this challenge.” She added: “We need to propose a solution and not just look at the risk. It is going to be tough but that needs to be the way forward.”

But GreenPeace UK told NationalWorld it is “alarmed” at the appointment of an oil company CEO to lead the global climate negotiations.

Tracy Carty, Global Climate Politics at Greenpeace International, said it “sets a dangerous precedent, risking the credibility of the UAE” and “there is no place for the fossil fuel industry in the global climate negotiations.”

‘Accountability is going to be at the forefront’

This year’s COP28 UN climate summit in Dubai will be vital after the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report which warned that policies in place by the end of 2021 would likely see temperatures exceed the 1.5C global warming threshold this century.

Ms Dagnet said “accountability is going to be at the forefront” with Paris Agreement goals “going to be tested for the first time” and the IPCC report “serving as the scientific backdrop for the conversation.”

She said the first global stocktake is going to take place under the presidency of the Emirates where “we’re supposed to look at where we are, where we need to be and how to get to where we need to be.”

It will help cover what is needed when it comes to reducing emissions, how to build resilience, how to align financial flows and make sure that they are used for sustainable development purposes and to meet our climate goals.

Ms Dagnet told NationalWorld that finance “is always kind of an elephant in the room but there is no way around it” and we need to “align financial flows to really get to where we need to be.”

She said the issue of loss and damage “will be on the table” - with the fund established at COP27 needing to be “operationalised” and “accessible”. The loss and damage fund aims to provide financial assistance to nations most vulnerable and impacted by the effects of climate.

Professor Chris Hilson, Director of the Reading Centre for Climate and Justice at the University of Reading, added that there will also be “political elephant in the room” at the conference in the form of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

He said: “That has pushed global energy prices up, and a newly resurgent ‘energy security’ frame has, in the short term, helped rescue fossil fuels. UAE’s responsibility must be to emphasise the temporary nature of the need for more fossil fuels, especially gas in Europe.

“This cannot and should not last – and neither must it be used as an excuse to open up new oil and gas fields which will then have a lifetime well beyond the temporary.”

‘It needs to lead to course correction’

Governments and the fossil fuel industry will be under pressure at this COP conference to decarbonise the industry.

Ms Dagnet said that COP28 will be crucial in making “major polluters face their responsibilities, and to transform the way they are contributing to the solutions.”

She added that she would like to see this year’s conference “lead to some course correction” on the “problematic trend that we’ve witnessed” and what safeguards need to be put in place.

She said that two years after COP28 “countries need to come back and say we’ve revised ambitions and stepped up ambition - after some backsliding that we have seen over the past few years.”

“I don’t want them coming back with some greenwashing”, she added.

It would mean COP28 demanding countries to submit improved climate plans covering now to 2030 – and for plans that cover 2030 to 2035 being consistent with rapidly phasing out fossil fuel use before 2050.

Ms Carty said that COP28 needs “to conclude with an uncompromised commitment to a just phase out all fossil fuels: coal, oil and gas.”

Ms Dagnet added: “Coal needs to be phased out, we need to also move away and reduce the use of all the fossil fuels, so they will be under pressure. It is important that you don’t judge a COP on a yearly basis, it’s a cycle.

“The outcome of these climate plans may be seen even further down in the COP conference in Brazil in 2025. The signals it is going to create for policymakers are going to be important.”