LONDON (dpa-AFX) – The next World Climate Summit President, Sultan Ahmed al-Dschaber, wants to make the role of the private sector the focus of the next UN World Climate Conference in Dubai. “We need a major course correction and a major effort to make progress. Governments cannot do this alone,” Al-Jaber said in an interview with The Guardian, which the newspaper published on Friday.
Al-Dschaber’s nomination as president-elect of the UN meeting triggered outrage in winter because he is chairman of the Emirati state-owned oil company ADNOC and industry minister of the United Arab Emirates. The Emirates are among the ten largest oil producers in the world. The world climate conference COP28 will open there on November 30 in the metropolis of Dubai.
“We need to get the private sector on board and free up the trillions of dollars that we need. That required a business plan, appropriate performance indicators and sufficient capital,” Al-Dschaber told the “Guardian”. The energy sector must be seen as a partner on the way to climate neutrality.
Criticism came from long-term participants in climate conferences: “This is a UN conference,” said Tasneem Essop, director of the umbrella organization Climate Action Network, which brings together a number of climate movements. “If he wants to interact with stakeholders and negotiate with fossil fuel companies, he can do it on his own time. He has to do it outside of the UN process,” she told the Guardian, referring to Al Jaber.
At the world climate conference, representatives from around 200 countries discuss, among other things, how the internationally agreed 1.5 degree target can still be achieved and how the worst consequences of the climate crisis can be averted./swe/DP/he