Which country hosted the COP28 climate summit in 2023 ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, United Arab Emirates. COP28 — the twenty-eighth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — was held at Expo City Dubai in the United Arab Emirates from 30 November to 13 December 2023, under the presidency of Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber. Three things came out of it that are worth carrying with the venue. First, the final decision, known as the UAE Consensus, was the first in the history of the COP summits to mention explicitly the need to shift away from every type of fossil fuel — a sentence fought over line by line, and criticised afterwards for stopping short of a clear phase-out or phase-down commitment. Second, the loss and damage fund that had been agreed in principle at COP27 in Egypt was actually operationalised on the opening day, with pledges made immediately. Third, COP28 concluded the first Global Stocktake, the five-yearly assessment of collective progress towards the Paris goals that had been set up at COP26 in Glasgow. The venue sequence around it is the fastest way to keep the answer straight: Glasgow 2021, Sharm el-Sheikh 2022, Dubai 2023, Baku 2024, and Belém in Brazil from 10 to 21 November 2025. Once that chain is memorised, three of the four options here fall away on sight.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The United Kingdom hosted COP26 at Glasgow in 2021 — the summit of the Glasgow Climate Pact and the phrase 'phase-down of unabated coal', and the meeting that created the Global Stocktake process COP28 later completed. Two COPs earlier, and the most likely wrong answer for a candidate who remembers one climate summit and its host.  (c) Brazil's turn came two years later: COP30 was held at Belém, on the edge of the Amazon, from 10 to 21 November 2025. Brazil's older claim on this subject is the 1992 Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro, where the UNFCCC itself was opened for signature — which is exactly why the country feels like a plausible host.  (d) Italy has never hosted a COP; it was the United Kingdom's partner for the COP26 presidency and held the pre-summit meetings at Milan in 2021, which is the association the option is fishing for. A partnership in the presidency is not the same as hosting the conference.

Concept: The UNFCCC was opened for signature at the UN Conference on Environment and Development at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and its parties have met almost every year since 1995 as the Conference of the Parties — the COP. Each meeting is numbered and hosted by a member country, and the host provides the president of the session, which is why the presidency and the venue are always asked together. The landmark COPs are worth learning as a list: COP3 at Kyoto in 1997 produced the Kyoto Protocol with its binding targets for developed countries and its flexible mechanisms including the Clean Development Mechanism; COP21 at Paris in 2015 produced the Paris Agreement, with nationally determined contributions and the goal of holding warming well below 2 degrees Celsius; COP26 at Glasgow in 2021 produced the Glasgow Climate Pact and set up the Global Stocktake; COP27 at Sharm el-Sheikh in 2022 agreed to create a loss and damage fund; and COP28 at Dubai in 2023 operationalised that fund and delivered the first stocktake. India has hosted the meeting once, COP8 at New Delhi in 2002.

State PCS 2025 Q110 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q110 — Environment & Ecology PYQ with Answer