Dubai’s ruler has announced that the United Arab Emirates will host the annual UN climate conference in 2022.
He said on Sunday that the 2019 UN climate conference will be held in Katowice, Poland, and the 2020 conference will be held in Bangkok, Thailand.
Abdulla bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, also said the UAE will be taking the reins of the COP27 next year.
Al Maktoum’s announcement follows a study released earlier this month that shows that climate change could be costing the UAE three times the cost of cleaning up the environment in order to adapt to rising seas.
“If emissions continue to grow unabated and temperatures continue to rise, then due to the reduced capacity of ecosystems and the effects of climate change, four of the seven world’s largest cities – Melbourne, Dubai, Miami and Mumbai – could see flooding within the next decades. It can impact over 220 million people and result in hundreds of billions of dollars in economic losses annually by 2100,” said Christoph Kühn, an analyst at Swiss Re.
“The GCC countries are emerging global players in renewable energy, so building resilience to climate change is essential to their development,” he added.
The study also said that the government in the UAE is aiming to have 20% of its energy generated by renewable sources by 2030, and is in talks with the government of the European Union to boost the region’s ability to attract solar energy.
In 2017, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) announced that UAE and Qatar have joined the agency to form the GGC-R. The GCC is one of the fastest growing regions in solar power and has had increasing support for renewable energy development and clean energy sector.