Hello from the United Arab Emirates, where I am attending the United Nations climate meeting in Dubai. Expect to read a lot of news in the next two weeks from here. The UN Conference of the Parties climate summit taking place here through Dec. 12 has become the place to be for global business leaders, perhaps even ahead of Davos. Some 70,000 delegates will be in attendance, including thousands from the private sector.
Why do corporate chiefs attend a UN meeting? For decades, climate summits were the exclusive remit of governments, not business. All major climate agreements at COP meetings, including the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and the Paris Agreement in 2015, were the result of diplomatic negotiations. But starting in Paris, and more recently, the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, business started to pop up alongside governments and NGOs, mostly on the sidelines.
