DUBAI — For 12 days and counting, the lanyard-wearing negotiators taking part in global climate talks have started their mornings with a transporting journey. They leave behind their hotels and Airbnbs in Dubai’s haze-cloaked skyline. They pass the belching smokestacks and aluminum plants along the coast. And they arrive finally at a distant, extraordinary, self-contained world — an event venue that has already pulled off an unlikely achievement.
It’s managed to make the contentious talks a little more pleasant — although now everyone is bracing for a potentially combative finale that could overshadow the carefully-cultivated surroundings.
The venue has herb gardens and chirping birds. It has breezy, shaded outdoor spaces and padded footpaths. It has wildly designed buildings with shiny triangular armor and candy stripes. It has food trucks serving fresh juices and tofu banh mis, and vendors offering dried dates and free coffee poured from gilded pots.
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Oh, and as even the most hardened participants will point out, it also has a stand selling ice pops.
“Passion fruit,” one Indian delegate said, making his afternoon order.
“Mango strawberry,” said another from Tonga.
The summit is a jumble of contradictions, starting with the fact that the negotiations — largely focused on problems caused by the burning of fossil fuels — are being hosted in a nation with vast oil riches. There was a session devoted to making “the yachting experience more responsible and sustainable.” There were protests against delegates arriving in private jets, and more than 2,000 oil and gas lobbyists in attendance.
All of this has fed the deep skepticism that these annual climate talks — three decades old — have gone off the rails, and become too big and too staged. Many attendees feared this year would push the event toward a breaking point, with a record 84,000 participants, including not only lobbyists but activists, journalists, and ministers, not to mention the occasional cardinal or king.
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But it turns out the UAE, armed with the deep desire to show off its competence, is highly skilled at managing such events. All the important things function without fail — there’s internet, water, translation services — and many participants, even if suspicious of the UAE’s oil wealth, allow that they’ve been charmed by the venue that wealth has helped furnish.
It’s much different than last year’s summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where the site ran out of food and water, leaving delegates hungry and cranky. Raw sewage ran through a street in the venue, with some delegates likening it to a metaphor for the entire experience.
That contrast makes COP28 a testing ground for several questions. Does a relatively pleasant setting make for more amicable negotiators? And are more amicable negotiators likelier to strike a deal that will truly help the planet?
“I don’t think there has been any other COP that can match this one,” said Mohamed Adow, the director of Power Shift Africa. “It definitely makes for a better environment for negotiators. Anything toward making it easier goes a long way.”
There’s still a chance that the differences between nations are too vast — no matter the setting. Developed countries have fought furiously with a few oil-dependent nations, especially Saudi Arabia, on whether to call for a phase-down or phaseout of fossil fuels. A draft text arriving Monday night caused uproar over its weakened language on fossil fuels, with the Europeans calling it unacceptable, and one island nation negotiator reduced to tears. As talks, scheduled to finish Tuesday, reached their final hours, negotiators were pulling all-nighters trying to bargain and compromise.
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At least there’s an abundance of plush sofas if they need to collapse.
But COP watchers say that participants are making it into the final stretch in better mental and physical shape than usual. One attendee called it the “Cadillac of COPs.” Many of the vegetarians in the climate crowd commended the options at food stands hawking their “plant-based” menu. In line for coffee, two delegates huffed off when they heard the stall had run out of oat and almond milk.
“I had a beetroot smoothie. My blood pressure is low,” said Mark Brownstein, the senior vice president of the energy transition at the Environmental Defense Fund.
With less than 48 hours left until the official deadline of the talks, people had time for nightlife at one of the few spots in the venue that serves alcohol — a swanky hotel bar with plush booths and a ping-pong table. One of the people who grabbed a paddle: the head of Venezuela’s COP delegation, environment minister Josue Lorca.
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The venue is more like an entire town, an artist’s rendering brought to life, with diverse groups spaced out on benches between buildings that stretch about three-quarters of a mile. At the center, next to the hotel and a restaurant serving Emirati food, is an ethereal dome with the appearance of a just-landed spacecraft. Speakers play a soundtrack of meditative music.
“I think it’s all intentional. It’s almost like they want you to calm down,” said Alice de Moraes Amorim Vogas, a climate policy specialist from Brazil, sitting outside under a tree. “There’s no other COP where I’ve felt that.”
Many COP veterans say there’s a correlation between the organization of the event and the outcome. One of the most notorious policymaking failures, COP15 in Copenhagen, was also criticized for painful management, with long lines that kept people outside in the cold, sometimes for hours. The landmark COP21, which led to the Paris agreement, took place at a venue reachable with free metro access and cheery volunteers trained in English.
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“None of the previous COPs have been as well organized,” former vice president Al Gore said at the time.
COP28 is taking place in a spot that, as recently as 2016, was just desert. The country used $7 billion to turn sand dunes into a site for the 2020 world expo — ultimately delayed a year by the pandemic — and the brochures about the place have the kind of utopian tone normally found in a sci-fi novel. They describe a setting that can “propel human progress” where the bright minds of the future can find inspiration. And of course, they mention sustainability, a dubious claim given that the UAE has one of the world’s largest carbon footprints.
But the new venue has a downside: vastness, which can prevent the serendipitous connections that often cement a final deal. An attendee can easily get lost in the rows of pavilions, with an endless list of climate-related panels in B3-31 or B6-73. Even the buildings designed to grab attention have to fight. For COP28, Ethiopia took over the management of a sleek white crescent building near at a central part in the venue, turning it into a de facto museum — placards extolling the country’s environmental management, potted indigenous plants affixed to the wall, an art gallery selling Ethiopian art for up to $2,500.
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Some mornings, a visitor could have the place almost to himself.
“These trees were flown in [from Ethiopia] two months ago,” said Shalom Gebredingel, leading a Washington Post reporter on a short tour of an outdoor garden.
Many participants, early in the two-week COP, ditched their thin-soled dress shoes for sneakers. Inga Fritzen Buan, the World Wildlife Fund Norway’s senior adviser for climate and energy, said that some days she has taken more than 20,000 steps, about the equivalent of 10 miles. Older attendees, or those with physical issues, can move around on golf carts. Scattered protests have had a hard time drawing attention, in part because the venue is so spread out.
“It’s bigger than any airport,” she said.
Fritzen Buan, who has attended 14 COPs, said the UAE seemed to be using its hosting role as a “launch” to act as an “international player.” At a time when some portray oil producers as irresponsible and obstructionist, the UAE is using diplomatic extravagance to try to earn goodwill.
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“It’s a prestige thing,” she said.
Ultimately, the COP will be judged on the outcome, and U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said one of the prerequisites for success is consensus on a deal to phase out fossil fuels. The president of COP28, the UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber, has pledged to end the event on time: at 11 a.m. local time on Tuesday. But most COPs have gone hours, even days, past the deadline, as negotiators face the limits of their own endurance. The longest COP went 44 hours past the deadline. If this year’s event breaks that record, going all the way until Friday, participants will get to see the venue change once more.
A holiday-themed “Winter City” is coming to the expo, a ticketed event with toys from repurposed materials where Santa lives in an “energy efficient” house.
“The North Pole is melting,” the event’s website says, “and there is no time to lose.”
Maxine Joselow and Tim Puko, in Dubai, contributed to this report.
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