Fieldnotes from the festival: A photo tour of COP28
Most discussions of COP—the UN climate conference that just wrapped up in Dubai—focus on the negotiations. But the event is much more than that: It’s a trade show and networking bonanza. It’s a branding exercise, where a host like the UAE can showcase its green ambitions—see Natalie Koch’s brilliant article on “sustainability spectacle.” And, this year at least, COP was a bustling public space where families, friends, and school groups ate popsicles and zipped around on motor scooters.
This festive atmosphere sat awkwardly with the grim state of the world. It came at the tail end of the hottest year on record, and ran parallel to nightmarish violence in Gaza. Civic groups were constrained by the UAE’s suffocating restrictions on freedom of speech. “It all feels like a fucking circus, when in fact it’s incredibly serious,” grumbled an activist after a day of tightly stage-managed protests. “Meanwhile, all the turtles are dying.” A journalist likened the event to “being inside a giant duty-free zone in a big airport.”
I spent my time at COP in the “Green Zone”: An open-access space hosting diverse events and exhibitions, including pavilions put on by countries and companies. (The negotiations themselves take place in the Blue Zone, accessible to pre-accredited organizations.)
I reached the Green Zone via green shuttle buses branded with phrases like “accelerating actionists.” Inside, a little green train carted people around the vast event space.
The venue was originally built for the 2020 World Expo, and much of the space indeed had the feel of a world’s fair. The first pavilion I encountered was China’s, where visitors were greeted by a giant inflatable panda.
In Saudi Arabia’s pavilion, visitors waited in line beside a screen undulating with psychedelic scenes of sand dunes, jungle foliage, and marine life. Energetic young engineers were on hand to explain the Kingdom’s big, unproven plans in fields like carbon capture and solar-powered desalination.
If the Saudi pavilion was striking, the UAE’s was stunning. A serene exterior led visitors into a dimly lit room, where a path wound through fake sand dunes made from real sand. Guides milled about describing Emiratis’ long history of living in harmony with nature, while migrant workers groomed the sand dunes with brooms.
Sprinkled amid the country pavilions were thematic “hubs,” tackling topics like climate finance and technology. Each was packed with stalls where corporations, government bodies, and research institutes pitched their work.
Some were impressive and substantive; others were weird. The Dubai Electricity & Water Authority showed off what looked like a remote-controlled, robot dog, made by a famous American robotics firm. It stomped around a circle of onlookers; a child shrieked when it got too close.
An Emirati bank displayed a futuristic sculpture of a camel with a lump of plastic waste in its belly. It was made from recycled plastic using artificial intelligence and 3D printing, to raise awareness about the threat that plastic litter poses to camels in the desert.
And, in a jarring departure from the event’s overwhelmingly good vibes, a health tech firm showed images of an apocalyptic future alongside child-mannequins in gas masks. The message? It’s time to move healthcare onto the cloud.
Amid all the spectacle, parts of the space also felt very wholesome. I saw dozens of school groups being shepherded around the venue, learning from installations like an organic farm with informative placards.
Even this, though, left me uneasy. On one side, it’s great to see kids engaging with sustainability. On the other, the Green Zone—like COP28 itself—was expertly designed to send exactly the wrong message: namely that we can tackle climate change through techno-fixes, even as countries like the UAE and the US pump ever more fossil fuels.
It is fitting, then, that COP28’s final outcome would be both breathlessly celebrated and totally unconvincing. Trumpeted as a historic breakthrough because it calls for “transitioning away” from fossil fuels, the deal is also vague, non-binding, riddled with loopholes, and woefully inadequate on such key points as scaling up finance for poor countries.
Measured against the dismal failures of COPs past, this is arguably something to celebrate. By any other metric, it is about as satisfying as a bank’s AI-generated camel.