As Cyclone Biparjoy approached southern Pakistan this week, top Pakistani negotiator Nabeel Munir told governments at mid-year UN climate talks in Bonn it felt like he was “conducting a primary school class”, amid squabbling over the meeting agenda. The evening before the two-week negotiations were due to end in the German city on Thursday, a...
SPIEF 2023: Brief Statistics SPIEF 2023 was attended by 17,000 participants (both physical and online) including 150 companies from 25 ‘unfriendly’ countries that have placed significant sanctions on Russia. The largest delegations were from the UAE, (over 500 participants) with other significant attendees being from the United States (200), China (147), and India (58). Roscongress,...
Russian President Vladimir Putin and President of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan shake hands during a meeting at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on Friday.Ilya Pitalev/Sputnik/Reuters Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look...
The world cannot afford this year’s climate summit to be a washout The United Arab Emirates is not the first petrostate to host a UN climate COP conference, nor the first authoritarian regime. Sultan al-Jaber, the oil executive it has picked to be president of this year’s COP28 meeting in Dubai, is likewise not the...
Climate activist says only ‘rapid and equitable’ phaseout will keep temperatures within 1.5C limit Rich countries are signing a “death sentence” for millions of poor people around the world by failing to phase out fossil fuels, the climate activist Greta Thunberg has told governments. She warned on Tuesday that with annual greenhouse gas emissions at an all-time high,...
African women trafficked into the UAE are forced into debt and subjected to threats and violence, as they are kept in sexual slavery. The case of Christy Gold, who has been charged with sex trafficking in Nigeria, highlights the torment endured by these women in the UAE. On a pleasure boat cruising Gulf waters near...
Fake social media profiles have been spreading propaganda messages about Cop28 and attacking criticism of its host, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), in what experts called an “organised” campaign. Purporting to be genuine people based in the UAE, scores of individual Twitter accounts publish similar positive content and defend the UAE in replies to posts...
Global public subsidies for fossil fuels almost doubled to $700bn in 2021, analysis has shown, representing a “roadblock” to tackling the climate crisis. Despite the huge profits of fossil fuel companies, the subsidies soared as governments sought to shield citizens from surging energy prices as the global economy rebounded from the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of...