Uruguay prepares to participate in the United Nations Climate Change Conference of 2023, more commonly known as COP28, which will take place from the 30th of this month to December 12th in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a headquarters that generated controversy.
The COP28 conference on strategies to contain the climate change and adapt to its effects begins this week in Dubai with the promise to “unite, act and deliver” on the progress made in previous editions, but against a background of worsening of the climate crisis, with heat waves, fires, droughts and floods increasingly frequent, among other climatic phenomena.
Abandon the use of fossil fuels responsible for the greenhouse effect, finance the energy transition, share responsibilities between developed countries – the historical polluters – and emerging countries – those that generally suffer the most from the ravages of climate – are some of the pending issues of the meeting.
Uruguay’s position
In the middle of this month, the Ministry of the Environment announced that a meeting was held between the head of the portfolio, Robert Bouvier, the Minister of Economy and Finance, Azucena Arbeleche; the Minister of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries, Fernando Mattos; the minister of foreign affairs, Omar Paganini and the undersecretary of the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining, Walter Verri.
There, they made the decision to transmit at the COP the consolidation of a National Agenda with a focus on accelerating the necessary economic, social and cultural transformations that allow sustainable productive development of our country, incorporating comprehensive mitigation and adaptation measures to the climate change.
Bouvier assured that the meeting “was very important to generate a institutional coherence regarding the government’s participation in the COP and what will be the most important points that each of the portfolios will raise in their participation in the event.”
“It is very important to achieve a common position regarding access to financing and cooperation, since, as you know, as President Lacalle recently said in his speech at the UN, Uruguay It is a country that is doing things well, but because of that, we are marginalized in terms of financing,” the minister added.
A host that raises doubts
United Arab Emirates, one of the 10 largest oil producers of the world and, therefore, opposed to a rapid abandonment of fossil fuels, will be the host of the event and the one who will set the agenda for the debate.
Meanwhile, the Emirati Minister of Industry, Sultan Ahmed al Jaberis the president of COP28 and CEO of Adnoc, the UAE’s state oil and gas company, exposing a conflict of interest and revealing the growing influence of the lobby of the fossil fuels at the COP, something that had already been seen at last year’s COP27 in Egypt.
Source: Ambito
