by Climate Spotlight Staff
More than 70,000 delegates are believe to be in attendance at COP28, being hosted in Dubai, UAE. The oil-rich country has pumped significant funds into ensure the best of comforts for participants.
Dubai’s Expo City, for all intends and purposes, is looking more like a trade show, or circus, than a high level conference of parties to address the most significant threat of our time.
Some may consider the vast participation a sign of success, an indication that the climate conversation have finally hit critical mass. But the pomp and circumstance at the conference and its countless “sideshows” seem to take away from focus of the task at hand. The first COP in 1995 in Berlin was a pretty low-key affair compared to where we are in 2023, to say the least.
At the opening ceremony, COP28 presidency Sultan Al Jaber urged participants to include fossil-fuel interest in talks and at the table.
The optics of this reality presented would cause any lucid thinking individual to do double take. Jaber is the head the UAE national fossil fuel and renewable energy companies. Many have long seen the COP process as a sort of “lobbyfest” for polluters to ingratiate themselves with stakeholders under the guise of address climate change.
In the words of Jessie J and B.O.B, its all about the money.
But Jaber, in his opening ceremony speech called the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold the “NorthStar” that will guide his presidency. Whether this will be the case is yet to be seen, so far, more and more weightless pledges continue to to flow freely. The leaders of the most vulnerably countries, who come to these conferences to also secure finance and have the climate plight of their nations recognized are weary.
One Caribbean leader described the feeling as “pledge fatigue” – a concept that anyone that have been involved in the COP process can relate to at some level.
At this start of this conference, more pledges were made to capitalize the Loss and Damage Fund. It’s time to start writing those checks…
And the parties continue to spend huge sums to fly and “put up” representative at these COPs – this year’s is said to have the most participants, and as a result, demanded the most air travel, hotel accommodations, etc. etc. The carbon footprint of the COPs have to be calculated and released by the UNFCCC for the process to be view from a lens of honesty.
It’s easy to jump on a plane each year to a next country and talk about addressing the issue of climate change – it’ll be much more difficult to truly get the boots on the ground to realize the changes governments commit to making.
