How businesses can benefit from COP28

COP28 will be a milestone moment when the world will take stock of its progress to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. We who live in the UAE can be sure that the COP28 UAE Presidency will work to ensure that together, every possible action is taken to get the world back on track by 2030 and will represent the UAE’s enduring commitment to addressing the climate crisis and accelerating progress towards a better, more secure and prosperous world.

A global meeting such as this takes money and time, not just on behalf of the host nation but also all the countries attending. As witnessed at COP26 in 2021 (Glasgow) and COP27 in 2022 (Sharm El-Sheikh), COP28 will bring a significant number of delegations from industry, government and academia from across the world, the UAE is expecting over 70,000 delegates, including over 140 heads of state and government leaders.  So, is it worth it?

It will be if it manages to keep alive the goal of limiting long-term global temperature rises to 1.5C. This was agreed upon by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015, and it is crucial to avoid the most damaging impacts of climate change, according to the UN’s climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Bringing together the governments of nearly 200 countries, and the biggest companies in the world, offers the potential for truly global agreement on many matters. The agreement reached in Paris, for instance, according to the UN, has driven “near-universal climate action”.

Keeping that goal alive will be the main benefit for the world, and that is of course the priority for the event. But my personal experience of previous such meetings (I was heavily engaged with COP26 in Glasgow, and have been travelling to Davos for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting since 2008) leads me to believe that there will be many more benefits for us locally. It is not just the number of people who will be visiting but the type of visitor and the power and resources they control.

On numbers alone, the visitors will be significant. Back in Glasgow in 2021, COP26 brought together 120 world leaders and over 40,000 registered participants, including 22,274 party delegates, 14,124 observers and 3.886 media. A total of 49,704 people attended in 2022, meaning that COP27 surpassed COP26 status as the largest in history by more than 10,000 participants. And now, over 70,000 participants, including world leaders, NGOs, private sector representatives, indigenous people and young people, are expected at COP28.

The last time we had this many visitors from so many countries was when we staged the Expo. But that was over six months – this time, they are all being crammed into two weeks. Our visitors will also be very senior, arguably more so than at the Expo – heads of state and government ministers from almost 200 nations, plus the CEOs of the world’s largest companies.

The UAE is a fabulous country with inspired and visionary leadership and one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, but it doesn’t usually attract this many very senior and powerful people, let alone all at the same time. We are not big enough, with a population of 10m, to be at the top of the list for trade agreements, and are in no need of aid, so attention often goes elsewhere. But for two weeks in December, anyone who matters, anywhere in the world, will be here.

As I said, I am usually in Davos every January to ensure that I can see a lot of key people at the same time. McKinsey published an article this year explaining the phenomena that is Davos, with McKinsey senior partner Enno de Boer describing the meeting as “business speed dating on steroids.”

McKinsey senior partner Tracy Francis says that the value of the Davos meeting is in “the human interaction of a multitude of different types of entities—start-ups, nonprofits, governmental organisations, businesses. There is a lot of talk about a new world order, but I do think that just being together in person and exchanging ideas increases connectivity.” This is what COP28 will bring to the UAE.

So this is the time, if you have a business and are trying to get the attention of a foreign government or a global CEO, to find out when they will be here and ask to meet them. You also need to make sure that your business is visible. 

Here at Heriot-Watt University Dubai, we will be running a Climate Hub for the whole two weeks where visitors can base themselves, and we will be showcasing CleanTech companies and their technology. We also have a schedule of daily events that will mirror and complement the themes of COP28, at our state-of-the-art campus, conveniently located just 20 minutes from Expo City Dubai.   

We hope to be somewhere with lots of activity, and all visitors are welcome. Being part of the UAE at such an exciting moment is something that we should all seek to benefit from.