The United Arab Emirates said on Thursday that Sultan Al-Jaber, the head of state oil giant ADNOC, will act as president of the COP28 climate conference that it is hosting this year, Reuters has reported.
Jaber is the UAE’s minister of industry and technology as well as its climate envoy. He will help develop the COP28 agenda and play a central role in intergovernmental negotiations to build a consensus, his office explained.
The UAE is a major OPEC oil exporter. It will be the second Arab state to host the climate conference after Egypt hosted the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) last year.
Some officials have criticised the outcome of the COP27 conference. Fossil fuel producers, they said, benefited from sympathetic treatment from Egypt, a natural gas exporter and frequent recipient of Gulf funds.
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