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Do 70,000 people really need to be at a climate confab?
The expanding crowd risks overshadowing the purpose and turning the meeting into another celebrity-studded gathering of rich people.
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COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber speaking at the opening ceremony of the climate summit in Dubai on Nov 30.
PHOTO: AFP
Mark Gongloff
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How many people do you think it takes to hammer out a global climate agreement? 500? 5,000? 50,000? Apparently, the correct answer is 70,000.
That’s about how many people are expected to turn up in Dubai over the next few weeks for COP28, the latest United Nations climate confab, which started on Nov 30. This is up from 49,704 at COP27 in 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and 38,457 at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland. Attendance has more than tripled since 2019. In COP’s early years, attendance averaged just 5,000.
