UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been urged to do more than “just turn up” when he attends the Cop28 summit taking place in the UAE later this year.
Downing Street confirmed that Mr Sunak would attend the meeting in Dubai on November 30, amid accusations that he was not taking climate change pledges seriously enough.
Last year, Mr Sunak initially said he would not attend the Cop27 summit, held in Egypt, but was subsequently forced into an embarrassing last-minute about-turn.
The latest decision was welcomed by a cross-party group of environmentally minded MPs, but they have warned Mr Sunak he must match his attendance with “concrete action”.
“The Prime Minister is right to avoid a repeat of last year’s excruciating U-turn on attending Cop,” Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said.
“But he will need to do more than just turn up in Dubai if he is to restore the UK’s abandoned climate leadership and help secure a positive outcome at the UN summit.”
She said his attendance at the summit would “amount to nothing more than gesture politics” unless he took steps to address the UK's addiction to fossil fuels.
Mr Sunak's decision to attend this year’s event follows a period in which commitment to the UK’s net-zero target has become a source of contention within the Conservative Party, with Lord Goldsmith resigning as environment minister and accusing the Prime Minister of being “uninterested” in climate action.
Chris Skidmore, a Conservative former energy minister who has become increasingly outspoken on net zero, welcomed the Prime Minister’s commitment to attending Cop28.
“Now the UK must show it’s a serious, trusted partner in these discussions by joining our international allies in calling for an end to the fossil fuel era and moving more quickly towards a clean energy world,” he said.
Members of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change had pushed for Mr Sunak to attend Cop28 to demonstrate climate leadership.
Robbie MacPherson, who leads the group’s secretariat, welcomed the decision, and said: “We must not allow ourselves to be left behind by failing to support the deployment of clean energy.”
The UK government remains committed to eliminating net carbon emissions by 2050, but has recently been accused of sending “mixed signals” by saying it will approve around 100 new licences for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea.
Concerns that this would lead to the UK being excluded from key discussions on climate issues reportedly contributed to Mr Sunak’s decision to skip this month’s UN General Assembly meeting – the first Prime Minister to do so in a decade.
Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden and Foreign Secretary James Cleverly are expected to attend in his place, with a No 10 spokesman saying Mr Sunak would meet world leaders at the G20 and Cop28 summits, and the Prime Minister saying himself that “pressures on my diary” were responsible for his decision to skip the UN meeting.
During his trip to the G20 in New Delhi, Mr Sunak told reporters that net zero “done in the right way” could be beneficial, but that it should not be “a kind of hair shirt story of giving everything up”.
A UK government representative said: “The Prime Minister will continue the UK’s strong global and domestic climate leadership at the Cop28 summit this year, championing action on the transition to green energy and protections for forests and oceans.
“Just last week, the Prime Minister announced the UK will provide $2 billion [£1.6 billion] to the Green Climate Fund – the biggest single funding commitment the UK has made to help the world tackle climate change.
“We have a strong record on delivering on our net-zero commitments – we’ve decarbonised faster than any other G7 country, investing billions into in renewables which now accounts for 40 per cent of our electricity and we have the four largest wind farms in the world in the UK.”
