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UAE says work is 'far from over' ahead of passing on COP presidency to Azerbaijan

'We will continue to work with the world in order to slash emissions,' Chief Negotiator for COP28 said

Ahead of UAE's handing over COP presidency to Azerbaijan, a top Emirati official has vowed to continue to work in helping the world reduce carbon emissions, stressing that the UAE's work was far from over.

“We will continue to work with the world in order to slash emissions, supercharge adaptation, deliver on the UAE Consensus, and achieve what we call Mission 1.5,” Hana Al Hashimi, Chief Negotiator for COP28 told Khaleej Times.

COP29 will take place in Baku, Azerbaijan from November 11 to 22, as countries will work to build on the historic UAE Consensus that was reached last year.

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The most ambitious and comprehensive set of negotiated outcomes to come out of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process since COP21, the consensus called on all parties to transition away from fossil fuels and to triple renewables and double energy efficiency globally by 2030.

“We will continue to play a bridge-building role and continue to engage closely in standing up for the Global South. We will look at how we can have a solutions-oriented, development-oriented approach that looks at the opportunities that there are through climate action and how we can build development models on that. I'm excited for it," Al Hashimi said.

COP, which stands for Conference of Parties, sees 198 governments assess global efforts to advance the Paris Agreement and the Convention and limit global warming to 1.5°C.

The Emirati spirit

According to Al Hashimi, the Emirati spirit played a significant role in the historic achievement at COP28. “All of this was brought together really with the Emirati spirit,” she said.

“One of the real game changers in this process, when it looked like it wasn't clear how we were going to have an outcome, was that the COP President convened a Changemakers' Majlis. This is rooted in Emirati tradition and brought together all leaders in order to have a frank, open conversation on solutions, to be able to get things across the road, balancing both what science said we had to do, and the need for equity and leaving no one behind. This really helped us get us across the line.”

However, she admitted that there were several challenges too. “We had to really bring the world together,” she said. “We had the challenge of having the first ever global stocktake ... It was a two-year process that brought in inputs from the technical sectors, from political sectors, from all countries to be able to come and say what is going to be our roadmap to keep 1.5℃ in reach.”

She added that the biggest challenge was that it was a consensus-based approach. “You have to have an agreement that the whole world is aligned with,” she said. “But how do you get all 198 parties to agree on one text? We had a team of really dedicated Emirati leaders in their respective fields that came together and was absolutely determined to work with all countries in order to derive the shared vision that Dr Sultan Al Jaber had requested, the global trajectory that our leadership expected, and to be able to deliver a very successful outcome.”

Memorable moments

For Al Hashimi, the most memorable moments during COP28 were when the gavel went down. “There were two times when the gavel went down and really made history,” she recalled.

“The first was the operationalisation of the fund for responding to loss and damage, and then seeing the ambition to capitalise the fund as well. The second was with the gavelling of the historic consensus, including the global stocktake, which not only included unprecedented language on a just, orderly and equitable energy transition but a whole package of what needs to happen for nature, for industry, for finance and how countries are going to work together on this.”

She said, as a nation, it was a proud moment as climate change was extremely personal to the UAE. “We're looking at extreme heat and water scarcity,” she said. “This is something that we in the UAE have been paying close attention to for a long time. Just a couple of decades ago, 70 per cent of our economy was dependent on hydrocarbons, and today 70 per cent of our economy is separate from hydrocarbons.”

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