On November 30, the COP28 United Nations Climate Change Conference formally opened at Expo City, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Caribbean heads-of-state, government ministers, and advisors descended on Dubai two short weeks after the Saudi Arabia-CARICOM Summit in Riyadh.
At this stop on their Gulf tour, the familiar talk of climate debt financing, disaster relief, and environmental vulnerability from prior COP meetings took on a different tenor against the backdrop of the UAE. Condemned by many pundits as hypocritical at best (and Machiavellian at worst), the host country and world’s seventh-largest oil producer engaged in a public makeover as it prepared for the arrival of world leaders, diplomats, civil society organizations, and observers to the summit’s sessions and negotiations. This cleaning exercise involved a thorough greenwashing that swapped the image of an opulent petro-state for that of a champion of sustainability and renewable energy.