Oil leader to chair Dubai climate conference

The chairman of the board of directors of the largest oil company in the United Arab Emirates will lead the international climate conference COP28. The conference is in Dubai at the end of this year.

Sultan al-Jaber (49) has been the Emirates’ climate envoy for many years and also heads the oil company Abu Dhabi National Oil, which now pumps around 4 million barrels of crude oil a day. The company has expressed an ambition to make only 5 million. He also leads Masdar, a multinational active in sustainable energy in dozens of countries.

In a statement to the Emirates State News Agency, Al-Jaber said “this will be a critical year for climate action”, underscoring the country’s “strong sense of responsibility and great ambition” in of climate change.

A spokesperson for the activist group Climate Action Network called Al-Jaber’s nomination “an unprecedented and alarming case of conflict of interest. There should be no room for polluters at a conference on the weather”.

Each year, the host country of the climate conference chooses the moderator, and the participating countries usually agree. Experts say it matters a lot who leads the talks: Briton Alok Sharma received good reactions to his – according to those present – ​​energetic and ambitious performance in Glasgow in 2021. A year later, the performance of the Egyptian minister Shoukry in Sharm-el-Sheikh criticized as chaotic and opaque.

The 28th edition of the COP (“Conference of the Parties”) climate conference will be held this year in Dubai from 30 November.