Source: AFP
They’re calling the giant climate business fair outside the United Nations’ COP28 talks in Dubai a “green belt”.
With the vast space of the former Expo 2020 given over to green — and not-so-green — companies to tout their climate credentials, the private sector has never been more warmly embraced at a climate summit than at the rich oil city state .
A staggering 400,000 visitors have signed up for day tickets to the futuristic jamboree, with booths touting the latest carbon sequestration technology in a vegetable garden struggling to survive the desert heat.
And that’s not counting the 80,000 people accredited to the talks themselves.
Corporate pledges have come thick and fast, with Dubai-based Emirates Airlines — which has its own stand — announcing its first flight on “100% sustainable jet fuel” and bank BNP Paribas saying it will gradually removes funding for projects related to coking coal mining.
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Others were more hazy. The PR teams of major companies feel they have to “come up with something during the COP,” sustainable finance expert Laurent Lascols told AFP. But most of the time they recycle “something they already have in motion”.
Source: AFP
However, Sanda Ojiambo, assistant secretary-general of the UN Global Compact, which tries to push companies towards sustainable development, praised the “very active and dynamic business movement happening at the COP.
“As long as it’s credible, tangible and transparent, I think it really continues to demonstrate long-term conversation,” he added.
But only 18 percent of large companies worldwide are cutting emissions “fast enough to reach net zero by 2050,” according to a report last month by consultants Accenture.
Another from the Boston Consulting Group found that just 14% had reduced carbon emissions according to their own ambitions over the past five years — and only one in 10 had measured them accurately.
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While COP28 Emirati president Sultan Al Jaber couldn’t be more business-friendly, experts say lingering suspicions of a conflict of interest — Jaber is also chief executive of the UAE’s national oil and gas company — put companies in a tricky position.
Large business commitments
Source: AFP
It is not as easy to make big announcements in Dubai “where you can be in the firing line” compared to COP26 in Glasgow, Lascols said, because the UK was “more of a model student in terms of the energy transition”.
“We asked ourselves” whether we should go to Dubai, admitted a spokesman for a major French group, before deciding to go ahead “because it’s important to take every opportunity to help move the lines forward”. Other companies interviewed by AFP took a similar stance.
But companies are also at COP28 to influence as well as sell, with a huge number of lobbyists in attendance.
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COP28 puts the spotlight on state-owned oil giants
And not everyone is trying to help escape climate responsibility.
More than 200 major companies including Ikea, Coca-Cola, Sony, DHL, Heineken and Nestle recently asked national leaders to set a timetable for phasing out fossil fuels – without using controversial sequestration technologies and carbon storage.
Many of them are also urging their energy suppliers to do the same and decarbonize their businesses.
Maria Mendiluce, head of We Mean Business, which coordinated the appeal, said we need to support companies that are trying to do the right thing. “We tend to focus criticism on those who do something … (but) we should highlight those who do nothing.”
Source: AFP