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The number of core participants at the UN COP28 flagship climate summit in Dubai topped 65,000, as an unprecedented number of observers and guests including business executives joined country delegations for the first time.
This compares with the 36,000-plus tally of the core participants at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the year before, or an increase of 80 per cent.
By contrast, when the groundbreaking Paris agreement was agreed in 2015 about 26,000 people attended. The first climate COP was held in Berlin in 1995 with just under 4,000 delegates.
The FT analysis of the COP 28 figures, collated by the UN on the closing day of the summit held at Expo City, includes only those who had activated their badges for the so-called blue zone where the formal business is conducted.
The 65,000-plus number of core participants does not include technical and support staff of almost 13,500, which would bring the physical presence to near 80,000 on site.
Early registrations closed at the end of October and initial figures of more than 100,000 were recorded, but about one-third of those indicating their interest did not ultimately attend.
The largest group of delegates plus observers are those who have an active part in the negotiations and represent nation states, and the EU bloc. This group numbered more than 40,000, or almost double the previous figures, including more than 22,000 “overflow” badges issued.
The UAE presidency hosting the summit invited more than 9,000 to the formal business area in the blue zone, including about 5,000 guests outside of its own extended delegation, based on Financial Times analysis of a provisional UN list of attendees.
The UAE guest list included chief executives and private sector lobbyists, led by energy industry executives, such as ExxonMobil boss Darren Woods, Oxy CEO Vicki Hollub, ENI head Claudio Descalzi and German energy group RWE’s chief, Markus Krebber.
The UAE also brought a sizeable contingent of 17 Abu Dhabi National Oil Company staff, where COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber is chief executive. Its national renewable energy group Masdar also had more than 70 staff on hand.
Aside from energy executives, bankers and finance executives were one of the most represented professions among badge holders invited by the UAE.
Despite the numbers attending the event was judged by most as a logistical success, with the vast venue allowing for the crowd, and issues encountered in Sharm el-Sheikh at COP27 over a lack of food and water were avoided with wide choices and outlets available at Expo City in Dubai.
The UAE and country delegations and their guests were provided special access to areas that offered a plentiful free buffet. A hierarchy of badges involved a colour system, with a strip of pink, orange and blue indicating a higher level of access, while media were designated yellow.
Even on the busiest days, when world leaders and their security detail might have jostled with other delegates as they did in Sharm el-Sheikh, the crowds were dwarfed by the 14m height air-conditioned indoor venues.
Palm trees, landscaped gardens and overhead canopies helped cool walkways at the site built in the desert outside Dubai to host a trade fair in 2020. Traffic wardens separated the flow of pedestrians from the most important guests, who were ferried around in buggies.
French president Emmanuel Macron was observed being instructed how to drive one, and 80-year-old US top climate official John Kerry was taken to and from late night meetings with the UAE presidency in a buggy.
COP29 is due to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, after the eastern European group of countries took its turn to elect the choice of host country. The selection overcame blocking action by Russia, which vetoed other EU countries as a result of tensions related to the war in Ukraine.
At a meeting to launch the COP29 effort on Friday, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said the petrostate would “assert itself in this field as an oil and gas country, and everyone in the world will see again that our agenda is related to green energy.”
Additional reporting by Aime Williams
Climate Capital
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