World Expo in Dubai Development Minister Müller opens Germany Pavilion at Expo

Press release 3 October 2021 | BERLIN / DUBAI – German Development Minister Gerd Müller opens Germany Pavilion at World Expo in Dubai, on Germany's national “Day of German Unity”

Minister Müller said: “The global challenges we face over the coming years are massive: fighting pandemics, taking action on climate change, striving for food security, protecting the rainforests and making sure globalisation is made equitable. That brings to mind the watershed year of 1990. Now, as then, people are standing at a decisive crossroads. We can choose to be the generation that takes the planet to the brink of destruction. Or we can be the first generation to combine prosperity with sustainability.

Back then, change was in the air. It is that spirit of change that we need again today to help make the global shift towards renewable energies, sustainable economic activity and consumption. We already have the knowledge and the technology to overcome the challenges facing us. What we need more of now is the political courage to apply innovative solutions. Because we have no time to lose – on climate change, on the fight against hunger, on poverty or on species loss. This is the decade in which we must set the world on the right course. The World Expo shows what is already possible: for the cities of the future, for sustainable energy and infrastructure, mobility and health.”

“Sustainability is also the dominant theme at the German pavilion,” Minister Müller continued. “Because we cannot solve the challenges determining humankind's survival by applying the same formulae that have been used in the past. Take infrastructure, for example. The cities of the future cannot be built from cement, steel and glass. Otherwise we will never achieve our climate targets! Our mobility in future must be based on climate-neutral fuels, like green hydrogen and methanol. Many countries in the global South, for example in North Africa, have ideal conditions for producing these fuels. We are currently working towards launching industrial-scale green hydrogen production there within at most five years. That will make a positive contribution to mitigating climate change, strengthen Germany's role as a technological leader and create jobs locally. So it is a win-win.

Because one thing is clear. It is only by working together that we can achieve our climate targets.”

The World Expo in Dubai is the first world expo to take place in an Arab country. Its motto is “Connecting minds, creating future”. The Germany pavilion, like the rest of Expo, is focused on sustainability. It centres on energy, sustainable urban planning and protecting biodiversity.

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Minister Müller during his visit of the German Pavilion at the World Expo in Dubai

During his visit, Development Minister Müller will be having political discussions with the government in Abu Dhabi on international climate action, renewable energies and expanding cooperation on the production of green hydrogen. And so he will also pay a visit to the world's largest solar hydrogen production plant, to Masdar City, where the industrial and construction methods of the future are already being practised, and to the United Nations' largest logistics hub for humanitarian aid.