The irony of debating climate change, fossil fuels in Dubai

When Dubai is chosen as the venue for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or Conference of the Parties commonly referred to as Cop28, it rings alarm bells. Is Dubai the right place to plan a reduction in global warming? Or, how to ease out fossil fuels?

The Emirate, as part of the United Arab Emirates, is almost entirely built on fossil fuel wealth.

The UAE is the world’s seventh-biggest oil producer and has the 5thlargest gas reserves. Flaring of surplus gas, which is choking hundreds and is a practice banned 20 years ago, is widely prevalent all over UAE and Saudi Arabia.

It gets worse. The president of the conference is Sultan Al Jaber, UAE’s minister for advanced technology, and he is tasked with reducing climate change on the planet. The only difficulty is he is also the chief of the country’s national oil company, Adnoc.

It has also emerged now, based on leaked documents obtained by the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR), that the UAE planned to use preparatory climate meetings with various countries to promote deals for its national oil and gas companies.

The documents were prepared by the UAE’s COP28 team for meetings with as many as 27 foreign governments ahead of the COP28 summit and included “talking points”, such as one for China which says Adnoc is “willing to jointly evaluate international LNG [liquefied natural gas] opportunities” in Mozambique, Canada and Australia.

UAE’s COP28 representatives have not denied using the climate conference to further the country’s business dealings. The briefings show the UAE also prepared “talking points” on possible deals for its state renewable energy company, Masdar, ahead of meetings with 20 countries.

Finally, a ‘damages fund’

Al Jaber, on the other hand, insists he is all there. “Climate change is the common enemy, we must unite to fight it,” he says. The run-up to Cop28 has been roiled in controversy but it has been a smooth affair since it started. The first day in Dubai saw the conference approve the fractious ‘Loss and Damages’ or ‘Disaster’ Fund which has been on the agenda for the last few years. Some of the richer nations were quick to make their pledges. Hosts UAE was the first with $100 million, the European Union came in later with $245 million. The fund has collected $475 million so far.

It had been an uphill task. The ‘Loss and Damages’ Fund as a cess on the rich nations to mitigate climate disaster was first raised by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley in Glasgow (Cop26). She rightly argued that the destruction of the environment by capitalist development in the advanced countries – the Industrial Revolution – began global warming, and therefore it should be the rich nations who pay for cleaning up the mess.

What has been pledged so far is peanuts though considering the cost of environmental disasters. In 2020, it is estimated the loss due to climate and other natural calamities exceeded $220 billion. In the case of Pakistan’s floods last year, the World Bank estimated rehabilitation work would cost $16.3 billion. More than 33 million people were displaced and over 1,700 died. What is important though at this stage is that the poorer nations have been able to push through the principle of ‘the polluter pays’. They have a foot in the door, and over time the ‘Disaster Fund’ will grow.