It’s the fifth day of COP28, and Harjeet Singh is running late — again. He left his hotel at 7:20 a.m. to get to Expo City in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where the annual United Nations climate conference is underway. By 8:25 a.m., he’s been stuck in the security line alongside a New York Times reporter and the Canadian climate minister for the last 20 minutes.
Singh ultimately made it to his first engagement with just a minute to spare. Over the next half hour, he led a group of protesters in chants demanding that the world’s richest countries contribute to a new “loss and damage” fund to help vulnerable countries pay for the irreversible costs of climate change. “What do we want? Fill the fund!” his voice boomed. “When do we want it? NOW!”
Singh is the head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International, or CAN, an environmental group. While CAN is one of some hundreds of environmental advocacy groups that descend on COPs to try to sway climate policy, it’s among the more influential — in part because of its size: The um... Read more
