Combat local weather change with out slowing development, says UAE’s COP28 chief
The struggle in opposition to world warming shouldn’t be on the expense of financial development, the UAE oil chief who will lead this yr’s UN local weather talks stated on Monday.
Sultan Al Jaber, the United Arab Emirates’ particular envoy for local weather change and CEO of oil big ADNOC, stated the vitality transition wanted to make the planet “wealthier and more healthy”.
“We have to maintain again the worldwide rise in temperatures to 1.5 levels (Celsius), with out slowing financial development,” he advised a commencement ceremony on the Mohamed Bin Zayed College of Synthetic Intelligence.
“We have to drive an inclusive vitality transition that leaves nobody behind, particularly within the World South. We have to make our planet wealthier and more healthy on the identical time.”
Al Jaber’s appointment as president of COP28 in November and December has been criticised by activists who stated it threatens the “legitimacy” of the worldwide discussion board in opposition to local weather change.
The minister of business and superior know-how is a veteran of COP conferences and heads a number one renewable vitality firm. His appointment was welcomed by US local weather envoy John Kerry.
The final UN local weather talks, held in Egypt in November, ended with a landmark deal to create a “loss and harm” fund to cowl the prices that creating international locations face from climate-linked pure disasters and slower impacts like sea stage rise.
However observers had been left disillusioned that little progress had been made on decreasing planet-heating emissions from fossil fuels.
The UAE, one of many world’s greatest oil producers, argues that crude stays indispensable to the worldwide financial system and is required to finance the vitality transition.
The Gulf monarchy is pushing the deserves of carbon seize — eradicating carbon dioxide as gas is burned, or from the air.
It’s additionally spending billions to develop sufficient renewable vitality to cowl half of its wants by 2050, and is focusing on net-zero home carbon emissions by that yr — which doesn’t embody air pollution from the oil it exports.
Earlier this month, the United Nations local weather chief Simon Stiell advised AFP that COP28 comes at a “pivotal second” however that Al Jaber had expressed “an openness to make this a transformative COP”.
The UAE’S internet hosting of COP can be a possibility to ask “onerous questions” about local weather change and the hydrocarbons business, he added.
mah/th/fz