At least 1,773 delegates at the Climate Summit, COP29, represent interests from the fossil fuel industry (oil, coal and gas), according to the NGO Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO). They are less than last year’s absolute record in Dubai (2,400)but, together, they surpass almost all the country delegations present at the convention.
KBPO has based its analysis on the provisional list of UN accreditations for this COP. “This figure underlines the disproportionate presence of polluters year after year,” explains the organization. Only three states have more delegates at this summit: the host Azerbaijan with 2,229, the next COP organizer, Brazil, with 1,914 and Turkey with 1,862.
“Every year the fossil fuel lobby sneaks into the summit,” says Akibonde Oluwafemi of the African Coalition to Make Polluters Pay. “They wrap their threads around the COP decision-making process and thus suffocate the possibility of taking real action against climate change.”
KBPO analysis shows that most fossil delegates enter the summit as part of international trade organizations. There are representatives from Total Energies, Chevron, Exxon, Shell or Eni. Japan has included coal giant Sumitomo in its official delegation. Canada to oil producers Suncor and Tourmaline, according to the KBPO count.
11,000 since there have been summits
Preventing these lobbyists from participating in climate negotiations is a historic demand from environmental groups. There is even a working group at the summits that debates how to address this issue, although no agreement is reached. As an example, it is noted that the World Health Organization (WHO), which is also a UN agency, does not allow representatives of the tobacco industry to attend anti-smoking summits.
Since the climate summits began at the end of the 20th century, more than 11,000 delegates from oil companies or coal corporations have attended climate negotiations. Despite it being known since the meetings began that greenhouse gas emissions come mainly from fossil fuels, these were only mentioned for the first time in a final decision of the summit in the Glasgow edition in 2021. And the first The only time countries agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels” was last year.
In this sense, a group of climate policy experts, including the former UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, and the former head of the UN Climate Change Convention, Christiana Figueras, have called for COPs cannot be organized in countries that are not really committed to abandoning these fuels. “We need clear criteria to exclude states that do not support the “transition away” from fossil fuels,” they wrote.
Precisely, the president of Azeribaijan, Ilham Aliyev, said in his opening speech at COP29 that oil, coal and gas are “natural resources” like any other and that they constitute “a gift from God.” He also demanded that countries like his not be demonized for extracting and selling them to “put them in a market that needs them.”
In this open letter they call for “summit reform” because “the current format simply cannot achieve the necessary change at the necessary speed and scale.” “We need a change from the negotiation format to the implementation format, by allowing the COPs to make commitments to ensure this transition away from fossil fuels.
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