Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen is traveling to Dubai for the opening of this year’s UN climate conference, COP28. The conference on tackling and mitigating the climate crisis begins Thursday in the desert metropolis and is scheduled to last two weeks. Van der Bellen will deliver a speech to the assembled heads of state on Friday and will meet, among others, with UN Secretary-General António Guterres for bilateral talks.
Austria will also be represented at COP28 by Environment Minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens) and Finance Minister Magnus Brunner (ÖVP). The role of this year’s president is particularly controversial: COP president Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber runs the UAE’s state oil company, Adnoc. In the run-up to the conference, according to the BBC report, confidential documents came to light that allegedly showed that Al Jaber had used his role to promote fossil fuel deals. A conference spokesperson described the documents as “incorrect.”
To keep the Paris Climate Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees within reach, global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 43% by the end of this decade, compared to 2019 levels. , according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). ). The exit from fossil energies is fundamentally important. Despite urgent warnings from scientists, global emissions of climate-damaging greenhouse gases have increased more or less consistently and reached a record level.