Achim Steiner, the head of the United Nations Development Programme, criticized the U.N.’s ongoing COP28 climate change summit on Monday, noting that the event has “become too big” as overall attendance and some countries’ delegations have become increasingly bloated, raising the logistical difficulty of the event.
The United Nations began its 2023 Conference of the Parties climate change gathering, more commonly referred to as COP28, on Thursday. The yearly conference, which will run through December 12, is being hosted by Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), one of the world’s top oil producers.
The event, despite being mainly centered around the subject of climate change and relevant topics such as the elimination of fossil fuels, reportedly counts the presence of more than 97,000 politicians, diplomats, businessmen, and representatives of nearly 200 countries, most of whom flew in private jets.
Steiner, in remarks given to Germany’s Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) news agency on Monday, asserted that the large number of participants in Dubai should not become a model for future attendance, adding that the conference could become more difficult to find host countries to accommodate around 100,000 people every year.
Achim Steiner (Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg)
“I personally believe that these conferences have become too big,” Steiner said. “And if a country like the United Arab Emirates has the opportunity to organize such a large conference, then I don’t think that’s our biggest problem.”
“However, it should be borne in mind that the growth of conferences means a lot of effort, time and costs,” he continued. “It could become more difficult to find host countries to accommodate around 100,000 people and provide a conference site for them.”
According to official information published by the United Nations, 97,372 delegates have registered to attend the summit in person, with 3,074 attending virtually, bringing the overall total to 100,446 participants.
Some countries sent substantially large delegations to Dubai. The United Arab Emirates, the event’s host nation, leads the chart with a delegation of 4,409 participants, followed by Brazil, which sent the staggering number of 3,081 people.
China and Nigeria are tied for the third spot, each with more than 1,400 delegates. Nigerians reportedly criticized the size of their delegation on social media, especially after Nigerian President Bola Tinubu — who bought an expensive yacht for himself using public funds in November — urged Nigerians in October to “endure the present difficult times as it is needed for a better future.“
The reported number of 97,000 attendees to COP28 in Dubai more than doubles the previous official record number of 45,000 participants during 2022’s COP27, hosted by Egypt, making Dubai’s COP28 the largest iteration of the U.N.’s climate change event by far.
In contrast, the first COP conference, hosted by Germany in 1995, only had a total of 2,044 participants according to data from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
