WASHINGTON: The US has hailed the decision to hold next year’s 28th UN climate change conference in the UAE.
Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said that fossil fuel economies should be encouraged to lead the transition to clean energy, the Emirates News Agency reported on Thursday.
“It’s very exciting that the UAE, an OPEC member, is going to host COP28, and it’s so important that you have an oil and gas producing nation step up and say we understand the challenge of the climate crisis,” he told Reuters.
“The UAE leadership has taken very smart steps because they know that what’s coming out of the ground is not forever, either physically or politically, and they’re looking at what the new world is going to look like.”
“If there are going to be new forms of energy, they want to be among the providers of it, just as they are today.”
Kerry said that this year’s COP27 conference, held last month in Egypt, nudged the world closer to the goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial times.
He praised the announcement of 30 upgraded national climate plans along with the summit’s headline agreement on “loss and damage” to help vulnerable countries reeling from climate-driven extreme weather and rising seas.
US climate envoy hails holding COP28 in UAE
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US climate envoy hails holding COP28 in UAE
- Fossil fuel economies should be encouraged to lead the transition to clean energy, says John Kerry
Extermination of Palestinians must stop: African Union chair
ADDIS ABABA: The “extermination” of the Palestinian people must end, the chairman of the African Union Commission Mahmoud Ali Youssouf said on Saturday as he launched the organization’s 39th summit.
“In the Middle East, Palestine and the suffering of its people also challenge our consciences. The extermination of this people must stop,” said Youssouf, who was elected to head the institution a year ago.
The Gaza Strip, a small territory surrounded by Israel, Egypt, and the Mediterranean Sea, has been under a very strict Israeli siege since the start of the war triggered by Hamas’s deadly attack on October 7, 2023.
That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.
Since then, at least 71,667 Palestinians have been killed in the small coastal territory by Israel’s retaliatory military campaign, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
He also touched on the multiple conflicts raging in Africa.
“From Sudan to the Sahel, to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, in Somalia and elsewhere, our people continue to pay the heavy price of instability,” Youssouf said.
The summit brings together heads of state from the 55 member states of the African Union over two days.
This year’s theme is water sanitation.
