Our COP28 focus areas graphic is full of meaning.
The cityscape you see is Dubai, where the COP28 will take place. The image shows existing buildings and some under construction, but is rendered to resemble future plans, laid out on old-style drawing paper. This is to remind everyone present for the negotiations that we are still making the world we will experience in coming years and decades. We are, at this moment, effectively living through a future-design era.
The old style look and feel is also intended as a reminder that this is hands-on work, and the participation of people—as individuals, communities, and stakeholder groups—can be the fundamental design difference between success and failure.
This look and feel is also intended to remind everyone that Dubai as it is now was once a vision, a future world that needed to be committed to and made real, and now it is a thriving metropolis and a center of global trade, finance, and future-building. We evoke the interplay of timeframes (future-thinking, design process, building, and everyday experience across past, present, and future) to remind ourselves that we can design a future that works for everyone, with towering examples of humane genius and cooperative, inclusive sustainable development.
The orange panel at the left is a reminder that global heating is advancing, and there is no time to waste. It also serves as an alert to all to consider the latest scientific findings with urgency. The three numbers are years: 1992, when the United Nations Framework Convention was agreed in Rio de Janeiro; 2015, the year of the Paris Agreement; and 2023: our moment for decisive upgrading of ambition and action.
We list, next to the orange alert panel, six broad areas of focus, through which our everyday work connects to the COP28 formal negotiating agenda, because each includes means of turning scientific warnings into action.
The CCI blue tones are positioned at the right-hand side, because we want to move from our current situation of worsening global heating to a more stable climate that is cooler than the 1.5ºC danger threshold.
Finally, cci2040.org is listed as our COP28 landing page, as a reminder that the best available science is telling us we need to move up the timetable for securing a decarbonized, climate-resilient future.
