Photo: Ryan Carter / UAE Presidential Court. Retrieved from reuters.com
Money pledges grabbed the spotlight again at COP28 in Dubai on Monday as delegates turned their focus to the yawning gap in the need for climate finance and what’s on offer.
The United Arab Emirates, the host of this year’s conference, pledged $270 billion in green finance by 2030 through its banks, and several development banks made fresh moves to scale up their funding efforts, including by agreeing to pause debt repayments when disaster strikes.
But leaders of the region’s biggest economy and the world’s biggest oil producer Saudi Arabia have so far not attended the U.N. summit, in sharp contrast to their participation in last year’s COP27 conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
On Monday, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, energy minister and the key climate negotiator, for the kingdom, was a no-show at the Saudi Green Initiative. De facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman also did not deliver a speech to world leaders as scheduled on Friday.