TEL AVIV, Israel – Before internet privacy pioneer Michael Fertik decides to invest in a startup, he hangs out with the founders and pays attention to their table manners.

“If you’re ordering Chinese food and they’re eating from each other’s bowls or plates, that means they’re very close,” said Fertik, a serial entrepreneur and venture capital investor whose firm, Heroic Ventures, funds early-stage companies in northern California and Israel.

Given a unique product with a promising market, few things are more important than a young company’s ability to work as a tight-knit team, Fertik told The Circuit. That’s how he decided to invest in NextSilicon and Sunbit, both so-called unicorns valued at more than $1 billion. It’s why he’s now betting on ProntoNLP, Proov.ai and Exists.ai, three Israeli companies that he’s helped launch at a time that venture capital is scarce.

A native New Yorker who made a fortune in Silicon Valley, Fertik said his willingness to provide “first money” capital for young companies when other investors are pulling back has paid off. As founder of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Heroic Ventures, he has bucked recessionary fears in Israel, criticized capital flight stemming from the government’s judicial reform efforts and dismissed the five-day-old Gaza war as a poor excuse for abandoning tech startups.

“I’m here. I’ll take your deal flow. I’m open for business,” Fertik said, sitting on a sofa at Tel Aviv’s stylish Norman Hotel in mid-September when anti-government protests filled the streets with 100,000 protesters every Saturday night. With dark shoulder-length hair, glasses and a rumpled linen shirt, the 45-year-old investor looks like he just spent a weekend at Burning Man.

Now that Israel’s streets are emptier amid Hamas missile attacks and some investors are fleeing amid expectations of prolonged fighting in the Gaza Strip, Fertik is steadfast.

“Yes, I will continue investing in Israeli startups,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post this week. “Yes, all or nearly all the Israeli startups in which I’ve invested have already felt the impacts of Hamas’s psychotic medieval terror…. Yes, Israel’s future is bright and brighter.”

Fertik grew up in a Jewish family on New York’s Upper West Side in a building above Murray’s Sturgeon Shop, a hallowed temple for bagels and lox. His connection to Israel dates back to age 5 when his father, Oscar-winning movie director William Fertik, was hired in 1983 to make a television commercial promoting Israeli tourism. “Come to Israel. Come stay with friends,” the tagline went.

Fertik went to prep school at New York’s Horace Mann and college at Harvard, continuing on to Harvard Law School, where he now lectures on the legal aspects of digital privacy and entrepreneurship. He is the author of several books, including “Wild West 2.0: How to Protect and Restore Your Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier,” and “Hip Set,” a noir novel about an African immigrant in Tel Aviv.

As the internet became central to people’s lives at the turn of the century, Fertik said he was disturbed at how damaging personal information could be when accessible online. In 2006, he founded reputationdefender.com, which enabled people to have bad news scrubbed from social media. He sold the company to Norton in 2018, retaining part of the firm that catered to business, which he named simply, Reputation.

“There came a time when, you know, a very rich person who was getting divorced was like, ‘I’ve done all this stuff in my life. How about the real estate deals that I do and the hedge funds that I’ve built and the companies I built? Why is it the only thing that people care about is the New York Post article from Florida about my divorce?’”  Fertik said. “That was something I was sympathetic to. It was something we could change and work on very actively.”

Now executive chairman of Reputation, which has grown to 600 employees, Fertik has gotten more involved in helping new tech companies get off the ground. Heroic Ventures generally provides about $1 million to startups that meet Fertik’s investment criteria. Those include his insistence that the founders and top executives live and breathe close teamwork.

“One of the things that Israel does very well is team formation,” Fertik said, describing his Chinese food test. “The founders tend to know one another while they served in the army together. They’ve collaborated closely under difficult conditions. They’ve been through adversity together.”

“That is much better than a marriage of convenience at Harvard Business School, where [people say], ‘You’re a good-looking person. I’m a good-looking person. Let’s form a company,’” he said.

The other critical factor he looks for is “total addressable market” or TAM, a measure for determining the entire revenue potential that exists within a market for a product or service. Most of the tech firms Fertik looks at are at a stage where they have little revenue yet so the projections are important. “I look for extraordinary teams and TAM,” he said.

Among the budding companies in his portfolio that get Fertik excited is exists.ai, which enables people to use artificial intelligence and create realistic moving landscapes for computer games they develop themselves. On the website, you’re taken on a super-fast ride with cowboys through an animated rainforest. Then the scene is instantly transformed into a deathmatch on a rocky island with zombies.

“I’m a little bit enthralled,” Fertik said. “You can allow every single kid or adult playing computer games to generate his or her own territory automatically from a typed prompt. Imagine the amount of entertainment, the amount of creativity that will be unleashed by allowing people to create their own games.” His 10-year-old son, who went to summer surfing camp in Israel, was immersed in the site, he said.

Less colorful but more profitable for now is ProntoNLP, which uses natural language processing and AI to sort through enormous amounts of financial data and give investors tightly crafted analysis they need to make buy and sell decisions.

“They’re selling this to some of the best hedge funds in the world,” Fertik said. “And it works and it’s extraordinary and they’re paying gobs of money for it, and it’s like, two and a half guys in Israel using cutting-edge AI.”

Founder Ronen Feldman, a data science professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said Fertik knows both how to help and when to step aside.

“I’ve worked with a lot of VCs before and most of them are really nasty,” he said. “They bring zero value and interfere with running the company. Michael gets it. He is sharp. No nonsense.”

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates – Abu Dhabi’s massive investments in healthcare and technology make it a prime market for “patient-centric” healthcare startups looking to reach new markets, according to venture capital investor Isaac Applbaum.

The cofounder and general partner of MizMaa Ventures, an early-stage deep tech fund with headquarters in Tel Aviv and offices in San Francisco and Hong Kong, said he is looking at what portfolio companies can “leverage the high quality of care and the high quality of technology, so I’m going to look at things that are patient-centric” to introduce to Abu Dhabi. 

“I’ve been investing in the region for a very long time. If I may just say, with the Abraham Accords, things have just opened up in an extraordinary way,” he said. 

Applbaum, speaking at the Forbes Middle East Healthcare Summit in Abu Dhabi, said in the current risk environment founders must get products to market as fast as possible.

“Particularly in the digital health space, and the device space, and in healthcare, understanding how you get your product to market as quickly as possible, how you solve problems that aren’t 100 years away, but are actually solvable problems now,” he said.

“It’s really important: you need to be capital efficient… how you’re going to make your money back becomes way more important than it ever was, because it’s much more difficult.”

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates – Sovereign wealth fund Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is increasing its allocation in private equities and eyeing investment opportunities in energy transition and technology. 

ADIA, which re-invests oil revenues outside the UAE on behalf of the Abu Dhabi government in equities, fixed income, infrastructure, private equity and real estate, released its 2022 annual report today. The fund increased the allocation range for private equity to 10%-15% of the total portfolio, from 7%-12% in 2021. 

The sovereign wealth fund, the biggest in the Gulf and fourth-largest in the world, has estimated assets of $993 billion, according to Global SWF, a figure that is more than four times the size of Abu Dhabi’s economy in 2022.

As of December 31, 2022, Adia’s 20-year and 30-year annualized rates of return, on a point-to-point basis, remained flat: 7.1% and 7% respectively, compared with 7.3% and 7.3% in 2021, according to the report.

ADIA is finding public equities are more attractive after the 2022 market correction, spurred by high inflation and increased interest rates. It is also looking at the private credit market amid a more cautious lending environment, according to Managing Director Hamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. 

“Equities – both public and private – should continue to find support, especially if profitability remains resilient despite lingering tensions in supply chains and the availability of labor,” Al Nahyan wrote in the report.

Remarking on the challenging economic environment, Al Nahyan singled out infrastructure and the energy transition as investment opportunities.

“The new landscape may also increase the appeal of physical assets and alternative approaches that are better suited to managing inflation risk. One positive consequence of this trend may be greater alignment between investment goals and societal imperatives. Over time, global investors have played a vital role in supporting and accelerating social progress and this is expected to continue. One example is investment in infrastructure projects, where estimates suggest that more than $3 trillion a year is needed to support global economic growth aspirations and provide citizens with essential services. Importantly, this includes ventures aimed at accelerating the energy transition.”

“Looking ahead, [private equity] is positioning for the continued growth of private equity markets including private credit as an increasingly important alternative to traditional bank lending,” according to the report.

The fund, which rarely discloses asset activity, outlined some of its private equity transactions last year, reporting a “roughly equal” allocation between direct investments and funds, alongside an increased allocation to secondaries. 

ADIA’s private equity department completed 24 direct investments of more than $150 million, in line with 2021. In industrials, ADIA supported the merger of e-commerce and logistics automation firms MHS Global and Fortna. It also acquired a stake in Emerson’s Climate Technologies, a leading player in HVAC and refrigeration end-markets. 

In financial services, the department “continued to focus on multiple themes, including insurance brokers and digital transformation, while remaining mindful of valuations in the sector.” 

The department led the funding round of US insurance broker Acrisure. It also invested in Merchants Fleet, a leading provider of fleet management services. 

ADIA revealed a “more difficult” period for consumer private equity. Despite this, the department invested in AmeriVet, which partners with veterinarians across the U.S., and in McWin, a platform of European quick service restaurants. 

In healthcare, ADIA made private equity investments in China including American Sino, a provider of premium private healthcare services; Taibang, a provider of bloodplasma products in China; and early stage biotech company Sironax. 

ADIA also noted an increase in take-private transactions, including that of U.S. Zendesk, a provider of software for customer service management. 

The fund has undergone a restructuring over the last several years, Reuters reports, combining middle and back office activities and centralizing processes. Last year, it separated its infrastructure and real estate investment teams into standalone departments.

The changes have resulted in a reduction in its workforce to 1,380 at the end of 2022, the report showed, down from 1,520 reported in its 2021 review.

ADIA is also building out a quantitative research and development team to integrate artificial intelligence and investment decisions. It currently has more than 50 on this unit’s staff and is still recruiting, the report said.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Four years after opening up to international tourists for the first time, Saudi Arabia marked progress on its massive $800 billion investment drive to lure travelers as it played host to the United Nations’ World Tourism Day. 

Riyadh welcomed over 500 government officials, investors, international press and U.N. delegates from 120 countries last week to underscore the importance of the global tourism industry. The occasion was also an opportunity for Saudi Arabia to set out more bold plans for its young tourism sector as it seeks to diversify its economy beyond oil revenues.

“If you want to introduce your country to the world, then tourism is the best way to do it,” Zurab Pololikashvili, secretary-general of the U.N. World Tourism Organization, said during a  roundtable discussion. 

Neom has signed around 18 hotel deals – including with luxury brands like JW Marriott, The W and German boutique concept 25Hours – and has a target of 200 total, most of them to be built on The Line, a spokesperson for Neom Hotel Development told The Circuit. 

First unveiled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2017, Neom is a $500 billion mega-project in the northwest of the country along the Red Sea coast, with construction underway on a variety of zones such as a mountain ski resort, an island getaway, a major port and a city-of-the-future concept known as The Line, where the majority of the hotels will be built. 

The flurry of deals in Neom marks a shift for the kingdom, which has always catered to  Muslim pilgrimage tourists. The majority of hotels currently open in Saudi Arabia are centralized in Medina adjacent to the holy site of Mecca. 

Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Tourism Ahmed Al-Khateeb announced the creation of the Riyadh School for Tourism and Hospitality to build a pipeline of talent to staff the fast-growing industry. Set to open in 2027, it will cost more than $1 billion to build and be located in the capital’s entertainment and tourism project known as Qiddiyah.

Pololikashvili also announced the creation of a center for the study of sustainability — of which the UNWTO was working closely with officials in the kingdom to accomplish. The program is due to be launched in September and will offer a bachelor’s degree program with students spending time pursuing studies in Madrid, Spain and the Swiss city of Lucerne. 

Al-Khateeb said the kingdom will invest $800 billion to develop tourism over the next decade as the contribution of travel and tourism to the nation’s economy begins to pick up pace. The goal is for the sector to contribute up to 10% of gross domestic product  by 2030, up from a current 4.5%.

The kingdom has also raised  its tourism targets, setting a goal of attracting 70 million international visitors annually by 2030, up from 50 million, Bloomberg reported.  

Among the various delegates in attendance at World Tourism Day was Israel’s Tourism Minister Haim Katz, who arrived in the kingdom on Tuesday, becoming the first Israeli minister to lead a delegation to Saudi Arabia. The visit comes at a time when Israel and the kingdom are moving closer towards a U.S.-brokered normalization deal.

Pololikashvili said Saudi Arabia was obliged to admit the Israeli minister for the U.N. event even though the two countries don’t have diplomatic relations. “All our member states are invited to take part in our events – independently of where they are held,” Pololikashvili told The Circuit.

Saudi Arabia’s push to develop an electric vehicle industry took a step forward last week when California-based Lucid Motors opened the kingdom’s first automobile factory. 

With initial plans to assemble 5,000 EVs a year at its new plant outside the western port city of Jeddah, Lucid expects to boost that number to 155,000, underlining Saudi Arabia’s ambition to become a significant manufacturer. It would be a major leap as much for the country as for the luxury carmaker, which produced 7,180 vehicles last year at its sole factory in Casa Grande, Ariz., hampered by supply chain issues and recalls. By comparison, Elon Musk’s Tesla sent almost 1.4 million cars off its assembly lines in the U.S., Germany and China last year. 

Riyadh is looking to supply the domestic market but also to transform the kingdom into a regional car hub as it diversifies its economy beyond oil revenue – and it’s looking beyond Lucid to meet its aims. 

While the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund has put a total of $5.4 billion into the loss-making Lucid to become its largest shareholder, the government has also signed a $5.6 billion deal with China’s Human Horizons to develop and manufacture EVs. Meanwhile, major players from Hyundai to Peugeot have already said they see a road to Middle East manufacturing and sales of EVs running through Saudi Arabia.

Market research firm Mordor Intelligence valued the EV market in the Middle East and Africa at $2.7 billion this year, dominated by Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Nissan and Hyundai but estimates it will grow to $7.65 billion by 2028. 

The kingdom is eyeing the domestic development of EV parts both for home and export as well. PIF, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn founded the Saudi electric car company Ceer Motors in 2022 and the pair is in talks to build a $9 billion plant to manufacture microchips and electric-vehicle components. 

While the new Lucid plant will see workers reassemble premade American-designed and built “kits,”, the kingdom is planning to domestically design and manufacture EVs as part of its Vision 2030 reform program to shake up almost every sector of the society and economy over the next seven years under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

“As Saudi charges toward its Vision 2030, our facility will pave the way for the country’s electric automotive industry and the expansion of the supply chain, and with the support of the Saudi Government, we are proud to drive local talent development in the technology industry,”  Peter Rawlinson, CEO and chief technology officer of Lucid Group, said at the opening of the plant in Jeddah on Wednesday. “We look forward to delivering Saudi-assembled cars to customers in Saudi Arabia and beyond.”

But Saudi Arabia will face strong global competition in EV manufacturing and regional challenges from long-established car industries in Morocco and Turkey; the latter says its membership in the EU Customs Union gives it a strong advantage. 

While the kingdom plans on 30% of car sales to be EVs by 2030, it may face consumer hesitation. Gasoline is subsidized at $2.35 a gallon this month – compared to an average $3.85 in the U.S. – and less than 1% of passenger car sales are currently electric. 

Another major speed bump is a lack of charging infrastructure as well as maintenance and specialized technical knowledge.

However,  the government launched the Saudi Electrical Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Development Initiative in 2021 with the target of 50,000 charging stations across the nation by 2025. 

A poll by General Motors and Morningstar in June 2023 found that 63% of Saudi respondents were “strongly considering” a future EV purchase but only 1 in 5 said that they knew of a charging point in a convenient location for home or work. 

The same poll found that knowledge of EVs in the kingdom was already very high, no doubt boosted by some of the kingdom’s flagship projects like the NEOM McLaren Electric Racing team competing in the Formula E championships as well as the off-road all-electric Extreme E race.

While the kingdom is aiming for net zero by 2060, most respondents to the survey said that it was the cost of fuel, potential savings and the improvement in available EV options that was driving them to look at buying an electric car. 

JERUSALEM – Perched on seven whirring propellers, the sleek black-and-white cockpit lifted vertically toward the sky and circled above the hills and valleys of the pine-filled Jerusalem Forest.

Two years from now, the remote-controlled aircraft could be ferrying passengers to Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion International Airport and suburbs teeming with tech startups as drone-taxi service is introduced to Israel. Among the objectives is to whisk travelers above the traffic jams that snarl Israel’s highways, and ultimately cut down the number of vehicles on the road.

In a combined effort by industry, government and regulatory authorities, Israel is conducting test flights to determine how it can safely unleash fleets of drones with fare-paying passengers into its Mediterranean skies. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Singapore are among a number of ambitious nations vying to be first with a pilotless air-taxi system operating at a competitive cost.

“We have built a concept of operation to reduce traffic around the world,” Yoely Or, CEO of Cando Drones, said during a recent demonstration for reporters of the aircraft’s capabilities on the grounds of Jerusalem’s Hadassah-Ein Kerem Hospital. Or said he expects the drone taxis to operate commercially by 2025 with more than 100 aircraft making short hops between Israeli metropolitan areas.

At the hospital, the helicopter-like EVTOL drone – electric vertical takeoff and landing – sat on a helipad waiting for its test flight. Inside are two comfortable-looking seats for passengers, although not much room for cargo. A drone pilot operates the aircraft sitting in a screen-filled command-and-control room in an office building miles away. As it took off, the drone’s lights turned green and it lifted silently to an altitude barely visible to a naked eye. After a 15-minute flight, it descended directly onto the helipad.

The taxi demonstration was part of Israel’s National Drone Initiative, which is holding flight tests and demonstrations in locations around Israel. The initiative is a partnership between government entities led by the Transportation Ministry, the Israel Innovation Authority, Ayalon Highways Ltd., and the Civil Aviation Authority of Israel (CAAI). The goal of the initiative is to support and promote drone flight through technology, regulation and infrastructure.

“What we’re looking at here is how… to move beyond transporting packages to transporting human beings,” said Daniella Partem, a senior director of the Innovation Authority. “We are looking to improve the economic viability of this model and advance connectivity in urban areas and further afield around the world.”

Partem said the drone taxis would also be made available for use in emergencies like earthquakes to bring relief workers and medicine to an affected area. But CEO Or sees the commercial possibilities, saying the drones will be just like ground taxis but much faster.

While saying fares for the air taxi service would be moderate, neither Or nor Partem would put a price on the rides. “There are no prices yet because the flights are still experimental,” the Innovation Authority said in response to questions. “The operating expenses are not yet based on regular activity.” 

Each drone, manufactured by Guangzhou, China-based EHANG Intelligent Technology, can carry up to 220 kilograms (485 pounds) and fly 30 kilometers (19 miles), according to Or, who said they expect to increase the range within the next two years to make the 70-kilometer (43-mile) trip to Tel Aviv. The aircraft costs about $500,000 apiece, including import charges to Israel, and the company currently has two drones in testing. The company has raised $25 million from investors, including Israeli supermarket chain owner Rami Levy, who plans to use drones for grocery deliveries.

“Our vision for joint operations with Cando Drones is to create a system for operating an autonomous drone fleet for the purposes of security and delivery, from the stage of customer order up to delivery and mission completion,” Levy said.

Cando Drones, whose Dronery subsidiary runs the air taxi project, is not the only company in Israel developing air taxis. In June, Air One tested a similar all-electric two-seater drone taxi that can fly up to 160 kilometers (99 miles). Like Cando, Air One plans to operate a fleet of air taxis.

In the command-and-control center on the 17th floor of an office tower at Jerusalem’s Malha Technology Park, representatives from all of the parties in the initiative sat around a large table, surrounded by screens that show drone flights in real time.

“The challenge is not delivering food or medicine from point A to point B. The challenge is to make the skies over the city safe,” Libby Bahat, the head of aerial infrastructure at the Israeli Civil Aviation Authority, said. “Free-market competition will make the prices reasonable, but the challenge is to make the skies as safe as possible.”

Israel faces some significant security issues in drone aviation. Large swaths of the country along the borders with Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria are off-limits, as well as the sky over the Old City of Jerusalem.

“There are a few challenges to widespread operations of civilian drones,” Eyal Pinko, an expert in intelligence, cyberwarfare and national security at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, told The Circuit. “First is the cybersecurity issue and how to protect the drones from being hacked. Iran is trying to hack anything it can – water, electricity and transportation. Second is how to recognize the drone and see that it is not meant for terror activities. Thirdly is a question of real estate. Israeli streets have a lot of houses and electricity cables and in the populated cities, not much empty space.”

Pinko said that the three most advanced countries in civilian drone technology are Singapore, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In Dubai, there is already a plan for air taxi stations and UAE Prime Minister Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, said the company will work with Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Joby Aviation.

In Singapore, where Pinko said regulatory structure is most advanced, a fleet of air taxis is set to start operating by the end of this year. Abu Dhabi-based Edge Group, a government-owned arms maker and defense conglomerate invested $14 million earlier this year in Israel’s High Lander Aviation, a platform that enables drone operations by managing traffic, aerial security, public safety and drone delivery networks.

“We see it as a strong strategic investment,” High Lander CEO Alon Abelson told The Circuit. “We had an option to work with VCs in Israel, but we see the Gulf and what is happening there as a clear target to lead the ecosystem in aviation.”

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — New York University is opening an outpost in the Middle East for its Stern School of Business with a new one-year MBA program at its campus in Abu Dhabi.

The new program joins France’s INSEAD and Boston-based Hult as top-tier business schools with a presence in the United Arab Emirates. The program targets early-career professionals to develop a pipeline of talent in the UAE and wider region amid public and private sector growth in energy, finance, technology, aviation and hospitality.

“The introduction of this full-time MBA to the MENA region is groundbreaking for students who want to earn an MBA from one of the world’s leading business schools in just one year and build a career in a region that is seeing exponential growth,” said Raghu Sundaram, dean of the NYU business school.

“Stern at NYUAD,” as the program is named, will open its doors in January 2025. Spring and fall modules will be hosted in Abu Dhabi and a summer session will be held in New York City.

Robert Salomon, a professor of management at Stern since 2005 who focuses on globalization, will be the program’s inaugural dean.

Sultan Al Jaber, the Emirati oil executive and president-designate of this year’s COP28 environmental conference, called for a major overhaul of climate finance to bridge an anticipated $2.4 trillion investment gap by 2030 as he came to New York for the United Nations General Assembly.

“Without major reform of the current financial system… we will not have the ability to invest in the resources and infrastructure that help developing countries – especially small island developing states and economies across the Global South – to cope with flooding, droughts, heatwaves, storms, and other climate shocks,” Al Jaber wrote in an op-ed for Fortune.

“If you want to understand the state of the world’s climate efforts, follow the money,” wrote Al Jaber, who will lead the two-week UN conference when it opens in Dubai Nov. 30. He is also CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and chairman of Masdar, a consolidated renewable energy subsidiary under ADNOC, Mubadala and TAQA.

Al Jaber’s full-throated support for climate finance reform comes as the United Arab Emirates is reportedly mulling a multibillion-dollar fund largely pulled from its sovereign wealth fund coffers for clean energy investments which it would roll out at COP28, Politico reported last month.

The Fortune piece was published hours before Al Jaber rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday, becoming the first head of the UN climate conference to do so.

Following the market opening, he and the city’s former mayor, Michael Bloomberg, announced a separate initiative within the Dubai conference, the COP28 Local Climate Action Summit. Bloomberg was appointed in 2021 as the UN’s special envoy on climate ambition and solutions.

The event, scheduled for Dec. 1-2, will bring together hundreds of “subnational” climate leaders like mayors, governors and business executives who are “increasingly critical in helping national governments reach emissions reduction targets and net-zero ambitions while building resilient and future-proof economies and societies”, according to a statement.

On Friday at the UN, Al Jaber also urged nations to agree on administering a fund to compensate developing nations afflicted by damage caused by climate change ahead of COP28.

The loss and damages fund was agreed on in Egypt during COP27 and a committee was set up to finalize the details of the fund. That group has so far met three times and will meet again next month in Aswan, Egypt. But so far leaders have yet to agree on how the money should be raised or disbursed.

“We need to stay very focused on ensuring that we operationalize this fund as soon as possible,” Al Jaber said.