The Dubai skyline is designed to inspire wonder, the sparkling glass towers reflecting the desert sky. At the northern end of the emirate, the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa, juts into the atmosphere. If you face the tower with your back to a neighbourhood that largely houses migrant workers, you can gaze at it through a 150-metre-high gold frame – also the world’s largest – intended to present the real-life cityscape as though looking at a photo.
The sense of awe that comes from staring up at the towers of glass and metal or the fake canals and lakes between them, much like the manicured islands created to function as sea-level gated communities for the wealthy and famous, comes from the constant sense that everything the eye lands on has been created by human hands. Nothing is organic, and nothing is accidental.
“The emirate’s brand identity is a strange medley of Wall Street and Disneyland,” wrote the Lebanese typographer Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès. Dubai’s dedication to marketing itself is paramount: it is no coincidence that one arm of its government media office is named Brand Dubai.
That the city-state of Dubai is hosting the UN’s Cop28 climate conference rather than the Emirati capital, Abu Dhabi, the far larger of the seven emirates that form the UAE, is simply on brand, one that rests on Dubai’s image as a global transport hub and haven of free trade.
While the Emirates’ interventionist and regionally influential foreign policy once prompted former US defence secretary James Mattis to label the country “Little Sparta”, the image of a regional military superpower is more closely tied to Abu Dhabi, which sets the agenda for the Emirates’ domestic and international affairs.
“Dubai has a global profile,” said Kristian Ulrichsen of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
“Within the UAE, Dubai has become a centre of soft power while Abu Dhabi is all about hard power, making decisions on security, defence, regional security issues. Whereas Dubai is this aspirational hub intended for people all over the world to live in, to work, to do business – that’s replicated in having this event in Dubai.”
With “brand Dubai” intent on encouraging the world to visit, Abu Dhabi’s approach is one intent on outreach and influence. A leading Emirati security official, Maj General Naser Al-Raisi, assumed the Interpol presidency two years ago after a fierce lobbying campaign by UAE officials, amid accusations Al-Raisi’s election tarnished Interpol’s reputation due to accusations of his involvement in torture, denied by the UAE.
Hosting the UN climate conference “is all about the positive, international branding associated with this event”, said Matthew Hedges, an expert on the UAE who was jailed and tortured there after being accused of spying during his doctoral research, charges he has long denied.
“To describe the Dubai brand, that image is one of a liberal, global modern hub – one intended for holidays, for business, for connection,” he said.
This image often belies the policies underneath, including the environmental costs: Dubai’s Blue Carbon recently acquired forests the size of the UK across five countries in Africa, intended for carbon trading.
“The UAE is trying to use its financial base to exploit weaknesses in global actors, and trying to dictate what is good and what should be done for climate action to suit their own benefit, rather than something from a broader civic consensus,” said Hedges.
“It’s government to government, not government to civil society. It’s the UAE dictating on their terms, which then shuts down broader consensus.”
While it is Abu Dhabi that sits atop almost all of the Emirates’ oil reserves, Dubai benefits from that wealth, providing a shiny gloss to the petrostate that comes with being a regional financial centre and glamorous international holiday destination, replete with opulent bars and spots designed for influencers to pose.
The emirate also champions industries tightly linked with fossil fuel consumption despite having little oil wealth of its own, with the Dubai airport and the Emirates airline foundational to its decades-long efforts to become a key transport hub for anyone flying between Asia and Europe, as well as its role as a centre of shipping and logistics.
“Dubai has oil, but production peaked in 1991, and has been declining ever since,” said Ulrichsen.
“It was the first [in the region] to diversify its economy, partly because it had to, and in a way it had a 20-year head start on its neighbours in the Gulf. But the financial crisis of 2008 showed that economic diversification had shallow foundations, and Dubai had to be bailed out by its oil-rich neighbour Abu Dhabi, so there are limits to the success of its diversification.”
Dubai’s dwindling oil reserves forced it to reorient its economy towards an empire built on tax-free trading, attracting merchants and commodities traders from across the world, including plenty of those trading in the Middle East’s fossil fuels.
But this can still prove fragile: images of abruptly halted construction, and rusty sports cars abandoned by the side of the road as their owners fled the emirate after the 2008 financial crisis, are still fresh in the minds of many residents. Abu Dhabi then gave Dubai a £6bn bailout to ease the financial pain left by the collapse.
The country’s financial system also remains under scrutiny, after it was recently added to the international Financial Action Task Force’s infamous “grey list”, which demanded that the Emirates “address strategic deficiencies” to prevent money-laundering and potential financing for terrorist groups.
Last year, shortly after Cop27 ended, the board of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) voted to bring forward their planned 5m barrel a day oil production capacity expansion to 2027, three years ahead of schedule.
In July, it reached 4.5m barrels a day. An expanse of solar panels south of Dubai reportedly provides 15% of the emirate’s energy needs, but oil and gas remain the bedrock of its energy supply and business.
“The foundations of the UAE’s economy are entirely fossil-fuel reliant – there’s a direct connection through oil and gas, but the aviation industry as well as the shipping and logistics industries are heavily reliant on oil too. Everything is about the consumption of fossil fuels for additional purposes – to the extent that life and society in the UAE are not just dependent on oil economically, but because of the climate there, all food and provisions have to be imported,” said Hedges.
Dubai’s image, he added, is directly linked to ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, sometimes referred to as MBR, who is no stranger to personal branding, particularly to his 8.4m Instagram followers where he posts news of developments like his decision to launch “flying taxis” in Dubai by 2026.
“The fact that Cop28 is being held in Dubai, not Abu Dhabi, is a result of his success in building that modern, branded image,” said Hedges.
The figurehead who spurred the current hypermodern, image-obsessed version of Dubai and its growth from a sedate Gulf town into an international destination, Mohammed bin Rashid is also known for his love of horse racing as well as for fathering 30 children with six different wives.
His rule has also been marked by scandals involving kidnap and abuse, including of his daughter Sheikha Latifa who attempted to flee Dubai by boat in 2018, and his now ex-wife princess Haya, who fled to the UK in 2019 where she last year won a legal battle to prevent his contact with his children over what a judge termed his “abusive behaviour”. A UK family court ruled in 2020 that the Dubai ruler orchestrated the abductions of two of his children, including one from the streets of Cambridge.
His reign has also been accompanied by the growth of a sophisticated surveillance state across the Emirates, one interwoven with daily life through vast networks of cameras and a requirement that each resident carry a biometric identification card.
Vast data collection centres in Dubai hoard details of the minutiae of human existence, from the type of health insurance a person can afford to whether they have infringed on a vast web of laws.
Getting into debt can be cause for jail time in the Emirates, while extensive laws against “cybercrime”, intended to prevent abuse or hate speech, can also be used to litigate online criticism.
Political parties are banned across all seven Emirates, and dissent is stifled, with many prominent human rights defenders or those in favour of political reforms, such as activist Ahmed Mansoor, jailed and dozens of others living in exile.
The UAE led a decade-long campaign against Islamist groups across the Middle East, including backing the autocratic regime of Egyptian president Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi, an ally who hosted Cop27.
“When it comes to an event like Cop, which relies on the infrastructure of expression, the right to protest and express views freely, these things don’t exist in Dubai or the UAE. The authorities will grant it to people coming to the conference at a certain time, in a certain place and only particular groups of people,” said Hamad al-Shamsi, an exiled Emirati dissident who heads the Emirates Detainees Advocacy Center, and who was added to the Emirates’ terrorism list two years ago for his role in a now banned reform movement.
“What I always ask is: what will it add for Emirati people and those living there? Not much,” he added. “When it comes to Emirati human rights defenders, they’re all in jail.”
