Dubious about a colossal oil producer spearheading the next UN climate summit? Enter the United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of the world’s biggest oil producers, which holds the reins of the COP28 conference to be held in Dubai in December.
Yet while the UAE’s leadership at COP28 is rightfully controversial, it is also a milestone.
Dismissing it outright could cripple pivotal global negotiations — especially those regarding the welfare of Global South nations on the front lines of climate change, many in Africa.
Calls to boycott COP28 are reaching a crescendo. More than 130 members of the US Congress and the European Parliament have demanded the removal of UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, the oil executive leading the upcoming talks.
Although no government is formally boycotting the summit yet, leading climate campaigners and environmental groups are urging more action.
Belgian Minister of Environment, Justice, Tourism and Energy Zuhal Demir — who also skipped COP27 — has said she would skip the summit, and others could well follow.
While skepticism of the UAE’s role as COP president is understandable, many of my fellow environmental activists fail to recognize that if we make perfect the enemy of good, we will have neither.
For the first time, a major national oil producer has publicly demanded that the world agree to a “phase down” of fossil fuels by 2050. That call to reduce oil, gas and coal production is on the agenda even before COP begins. Also important is the UAE’s appeal to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030, and then double it again by 2040.
Is this fast or big enough to avoid climate change? No, but it is more ambitious than the EU’s renewable energy plans, and no previous UN climate summit has come near to endorsing such a goal.
Of course, the details must be scrutinized. Many argue for the complete “phase out” of fossil fuels. Even UAE Minister of Climate Change and Environment Mariam Almheiri earlier this year acknowledged the need to “phase out oil and gas in a just way.”
However, rightly demanding more does not mean losing sight of the stunning implications of what the UAE’s COP presidency calls for. If COP28 yields an accord to eliminate all “unabated” fossil fuels by 2050, it would put Big Oil on notice. That makes the upcoming meeting a historic opportunity to push closer to completely phasing out oil and gas.
This is also the first time a COP presidency is putting its money where its mouth is on climate financing for developing nations. Last year, the UAE launched the Partnership for Accelerating Clean Energy with the US, catalyzing US$100 billion for 100 new gigawatts (GW) of clean energy in the US, UAE and the developing world by 2035.
Masdar, the UAE’s state-owned renewable energy company, which COP28 President Al-Jaber founded in 2006, is rapidly becoming one of the biggest investors in renewable energy across Africa. During the UAE’s COP presidency, Masdar has signed deals in Angola, Uganda and Zambia to build 5GW of renewable energy, 2GW in Tanzania and 10GW in Egypt.
Which COP presidency has ever done anything like this? Yes, Western politicians are right to ask hard questions of an oil producer in charge of a climate change summit, but what have they done to help Africans fight climate change?
The lack of financial support from richer countries — despite bearing primary responsibility for carbon pollution — to developing nations that are the most vulnerable to climate impacts is a grim legacy of the racist inequalities of the colonial order.
Previous COPs have struggled to even get climate-financing pledges on the table. It is widely known that the US$100 billion pledged at the last COP (which remains undelivered) is grossly insufficient.
COP28 is the first where structural bureaucracies preventing progress on climate finance are being tackled. Previous summits failed to deal with major structural and systemic barriers to climate financing, which is something African leaders and campaigners have been voicing for years without being heard.
The COP28 presidency’s announcement of a high-level group of economists and other experts, chaired by world-renowned British climate economist Nicholas Stern, to create a road map for reform of international finance at the summit, is a crucial step forward.
Al-Jaber has also endorsed the radical “Bridgetown Initiative,” created by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley to free up as much as US$1 trillion in climate financing, 10 times more than what is been pledged. If ratified at COP28, the plan would make it easier for developing nations to fight global warming while postponing debt repayments during climate disasters.
So green campaigners calling to boycott COP28 could harm developing countries that need climate financing. If governments heed such calls and refuse to participate in key negotiations, there would be no global deals made that are needed to push these initiatives through.
With parts of Africa suffering horrendously from climate change — as illustrated by five years of consecutive drought in the Horn of Africa — the opportunity for a climate-financing breakthrough at COP28 cannot be allowed to go to waste. The UAE is the first COP presidency prioritizing a deal to actually deliver money to developing nations. Jeopardizing this would throw the world to the flames.
The need for global solidarity around COP has a personal resonance. My grandfather, former South African president Nelson Mandela, sought unity for a shared purpose amid challenging adversities, and there is perhaps no bigger test of global cooperation than the upcoming COP28 summit.
Of course, his legacy was not just unity — it was discernment, too. One should not shy away from critically assessing and challenging. Campaigners and politicians are right to call out and question — but not at the expense of progress, and not at the expense of the world’s poorest nations.
Ndileka Mandela is a writer, social activist and head of one of South Africa’s most prominent rural upliftment organizations, the Thembekile Mandela Foundation, which focuses on education, health, youth and women’s development in rural villages. She is one of South Africa’s best-known feminists and the eldest grandchild of Nelson Mandela. She is on the board of several non-governmental and philanthropic organizations and is an outspoken supporter of the #MeToo movement, using her platform to combat stigma surrounding sexual violence. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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