COP and Cup...

Sweet November is usually a cool month when the weather is colder, families are together, and holidays are always just round the corner. However, there are two global events that made this November 2022 hotter than usual setting the scene for the rest of this decade.

One event is the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, known as COP27, in Sharm El Shaikh, Egypt, where I had the honour and the pleasure of participating with the Sultanate of Oman’s delegation along with 44.01 the Oman-based climate technology company working on saving our planet through eliminating CO2 emissions solutions.

The other event also held for the first time in our region is the Fifa World Cup 2022 in the neighbouring Doha, Qatar. As you might have well-noticed, while the noble missions of both events bring us to work together to protect life on earth, and to promote sportsmanship, health, and wellness, they have also brewed cultural clashes that distracted us from investing together for a better sustainable impact of world events in our daily lives.

COP27

Almost 40,000 people representing the interests of 200 countries and parties cautiously celebrated including “Loss & Damage” for the first time in climate change negotiations. However, the north vs south and west vs east rhetoric managed to keep the tensions and blame game rising in a way that makes sensing a real impact towards keeping the earth temperature livable for future generations a work in progress. This is because the more industrialised west, is perceived as always poised to take advantage of the disadvantaged east without willingness to address the damage the west’s industrialisation inflicted on the east.

I believe in science, and it has proven over and again that human beings live only in one planet, and unless we pivot the rhetoric from sides against each other to sides investing east other future generations will no habitable planet to enjoy.

WORLD CUP

I have never been alarmed by sensational media coverage like while reading today’s media coverage of World Cup 2022 in Qatar. The constant accusations by some well-established media organisations in the west show a lack of objective reasoning and lean more towards believing in stereotypes and lack of willingness to understand or even listen to other.

While this disappoints me personally, and every person who has been blessed was educated and lived or interacted with the west, it has also been an eye-opener that we cannot take the significance of “intercultural understanding” for granted. Our region benefits so much from constant engagement for the purpose of making progress in human rights, on all fronts. This is better achieved through consistently respectful feedback and not through condescending lecturing and derogatory remarks.

Both COP27 and World Cup 2022 brought us together physically yet distanced us from each other intellectually and spiritually. History has proven that distance invites estrangement and conflict. The question today is: Is this right time to for us to pause all these global meetings to invest in evaluating their impact on our progress and or lives?