UAE proposes to host UN climate summit for second year as Russia blocks talks

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The United Arab Emirates has offered to host the second annual United Nations climate summit, but talks over who will lead the next round of key discussions on global warming remain deadlocked due to geopolitical tensions following Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The move will give the UAE significant influence over global climate policy during a crucial two-year period when the world needs to reach an agreement on efforts to curb climate change. The UAE will host the 28th meeting of the United Nations Conference of the Parties in Dubai later this year.

Next year’s COP29 will be hosted by Eastern European countries, part of a rotation of events hosted by different regions and countries that has attracted tens of thousands of participants in recent years.

The 23 countries of the COP (i.e. Eastern European countries) must reach an agreement on the host country.

However, after the war in Ukraine, Russia opposed any EU member state hosting the summit. Armenia and Azerbaijan had been the frontrunners until this month, but Baku’s occupation of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave has escalated tensions between the two countries and with Russia.

As the host country of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, if countries cannot agree on other options, Germany will become the default host country, while the UAE will continue to serve as the chairman.

But several people familiar with the discussions said the UAE was unwilling to host the talks unless it could also host the event.

The Office of the COP28 President stated that the organizers of the next United Nations Climate Summit need to follow due procedures to reach an agreement. “This is not even on our radar. We remain focused on ambitious climate action at COP28,” it added.

Meanwhile, two people familiar with the matter said Germany was “not keen” on hosting the summit at the UN Climate Change Framework Convention’s headquarters in Bonn, on the grounds that the city was not big enough to accommodate the large crowds that would swarm there. Its duration is two weeks.

“It is important that the EEG group makes a decision on the choice of COP chairman in accordance with the procedures of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,” the German foreign ministry said.

More than 45,000 people registered to attend last year’s Conference of the Parties in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and about 40,000 attended the meeting in Glasgow the year before.

Another solution to the deadlock would be for a country outside the Eastern European Group to offer to host and host the event.

While there is no deadline for agreeing a handover to the host of the next COP, the scale of the event and the complexity of the negotiations mean countries typically need a full year to prepare.

At this year’s COP28, the UAE will host talks between nearly 200 countries aimed at reaching an agreement on a so-called global emissions stocktake and making arrangements for a fund for loss and damage related to climate change.

Some national negotiators hope to include wording and a timetable for phasing out fossil fuels, as well as new targets after 2030, in a final deal.

In setting the COP28 agenda, president-elect Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber set a loose “mid-century” timetable for reducing fossil fuels produced without capturing emissions. The EU said it would also push to phase out so-called unreduced fossil fuels – those that do not capture emissions when burned – “by 2050”.