EXPLAINER
Modi, Sunak, Macron and multiple Middle Eastern leaders are there. Joe Biden and Xi Jinping are likely skipping it.
More than a hundred world leaders are expected to attend the United Nations’ annual climate summit, COP28, which started in Dubai on Thursday and will continue until at least December 12.
On Thursday, King Charles III addressed the conclave, as did Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
At COP28, government representatives and climate experts will participate in negotiations around climate change mitigation while they also assess each country’s progress in recent years, amid growing worries that world leaders remain too slow to respond to the crisis.
Here is what we know about some of the prominent figures who are attending or skipping.
Europe and USA
Britain’s King Charles III
United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak
French President Emmanuel Macron
First Minister of Scotland Humza Yousaf
Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni
Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen
European Council President Charles Michel
Spain Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez
United States Vice President Kamala Harris
US Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry
King Charles III with Qatar’s Emir at the UN’s 2023 Climate Conference [Peter Dejong/AP Photo]
Middle East
Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi
United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas
Jordan’s King Abdullah II
Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa
Israeli President Isaac Herzog
President of the Libyan Presidential Council Mohamed Younes Menfi
Syrian Prime Minister Hussein Arnous
Asia
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
Pakistani caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar
Indonesian President Joko Widodo
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida
Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh
India Prime Minister Narendra Modi with COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni [Peter Dejong/AP Photo]
Africa
Senegalese President Macky Sall
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu
Kenyan President William Ruto
Latin America
Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
Colombian President Gustavo Francisco Petro Urrego
Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena
Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at the COP28 UN Climate Summit 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates [Peter Dejong/AP Photo]
Others
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi
World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas
WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
Former CEO of Microsoft Bill Gates
Not attending
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen will not be attending the summit due to the war in Gaza. This year’s Israeli delegation has only 28 members, a sharp drop from the 1,000-member group the Ministry of Foreign Affairs planned to send.
US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, presidents of the world’s largest emitting countries, agreed to cooperate on addressing climate change at a rare meeting in November. However, neither of them are expected to attend COP28. Harris is representing the US after pushback over Biden’s absence.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will also not be attending, despite receiving an invitation from Emirati leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Pope Francis cancelled his attendance two days before the summit due to flu and lung inflammation. He would have been the first pontiff to address the summit.
