Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum chairs Cabinet meeting in Expo City Dubai.

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, chaired a Cabinet meeting in Expo City Dubai.

Sheikh Mohammed said on X, “In Expo City Dubai, I chaired a Cabinet meeting coinciding with the COP28 conference. At the beginning, we reviewed the outcome of the country’s national efforts in the environmental field, which included more than 120 decisions in sustainability, climate change, and the development of our natural resources, issued by the Council during the past five years... and in the year 2023. Alone, we launched more than 60 new decisions that formed an integrated system of policies, legislation, strategies and initiatives to enhance the country’s efforts and its file in participating with the world in combating the effects of climate change.”

Sheikh Mohammed said, “National strategies and policies in the field of environment and climate change have borne fruit, as the country ranked second in the world in energy transformation, within the Global Green Future Index 2023 (GFI), and sixth in the world in the rate of per capita solar energy consumption, and invested more than $50 billion in clean energy projects in 70 countries, and pledged to invest another $50 billion in the sector over the next decade.

Sheikh Mohammed also said, “In the Council of Ministers, we adopted 10 new initiatives and decisions to achieve our new national environmental goals. We adopted the general framework of the Biodiversity Strategy 2031, which works to monitor and protect natural systems and their sustainability and raise the efficiency of our national cadres in this field. We adopted a global initiative to remove carbon from the waste sector and launch a national registry of carbon credits, enabling government and private institutions to evaluate and document their contributions to reducing carbon emissions with authenticated government certificates. We also approved the country’s fifth national communication report to be submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention, which documents the success of national efforts in reducing carbon emissions in various sectors. We also approved the issuance of the first report on the country’s long-term low-carbon development strategy... We also approved the establishment of the Emirates Company for electric vehicle charging stations... and the launch of a policy for sustainable aviation fuel and smart construction in the country.”

The Dubai Ruler said, “The UAE continues to work seriously and actively in the field of sustainability and climate change, and our efforts in this sector are parallel to the efforts of economic development, and it is an essential and constant component of our comprehensive and continuous development process, God willing.”