Cop28 president: world needs business mindset to tackle climate crisis

(The Guardian, 7 Apr 2023) Exclusive: Sultan Al Jaber aims to use UN talks to set out how private sector can limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The world needs a “business mindset” to tackle the climate crisis, the president of the next UN climate summit has said.

Sultan Al Jaber, the president-designate of the Cop28 summit to be hosted in the United Arab Emirates later this year, said he aimed to use the UN talks to set out how the private sector can limit greenhouse gas emissions and give businesses and governments a clear set of tasks and targets.

“We need a major course correction and a massive effort to reignite progress. This cannot be done by governments alone,” Al Jaber told the Guardian in a rare interview, his first with a global newspaper since taking on the Cop28 role.

“The scale of the problem requires everyone working in solidarity. We need partnerships, not polarisation, and we need to approach this with a clear-eyed rationale and executable plan of action,” he said.

“Cop28 is committed to building on the progress made at Cop26 and Cop27to inject a business mindset, concrete KPIs [key performance indicators, a cornerstone of most commercial strategies] and an ambitious action-oriented agenda.

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The Guardian, 7 Apr 2023: Cop28 president: world needs business mindset to tackle climate crisis