COP28’s alarming conflict of interest

Is it too much to ask that the world’s most important climate summit, where the future of the planet will be decided, is protected from the demands of Big Oil? It is, after all, the very people driving the crisis that the summit is meant to address.  

Apparently it is. 

Leaked emails obtained by the Centre for Climate Reporting and the BBC suggest that the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, or ADNOC, was aiming to use COP28, hosted by the United Arab Emirates, to seek out new deals for its oil and gas production. ADNOC’s CEO is Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, who also happens to be president of COP28, as the United Nations climate negotiations are known.

A COP president’s simultaneously leading an oil company planning expansion is a blatant conflict of interest. So the reports of abuses of power aren’t surprising, but — as former Vice President Al Gore says — they are still “utterly appalling.”

The COP28 team has downplayed the leak, telling the BBC that al-Jaber is “singularly focused on the business of COP and delivering ambitious and transformational climate outcomes at COP28.”

Nevertheless, a recent investigation by Global Oil and Gas Exit List, a database of the oil and gas industry, revealed that ADNOC’s plans to ramp up its future fossil fuel extraction put it at the top of the list of companies whose forecast emissions from new oil and gas fields will burn through our global carbon budget the fastest. 

Meanwhile, Darren Woods, the CEO of ExxonMobil, another front-runner in the race to expand fossil fuel production, claimed last month that reducing the supply of fossil fuels would only cause “human hardship and a poorer world.” We know that’s not true. Fossil fuels are driving human suffering as extreme weather and climate events increase in frequency and intensity. Right now, renewables clearly represent the future, and to suggest that developing countries need to dig for fossil fuels opens them up to the risk of stranded assets when the market dries up.

In a policy statement issued in December 2021, Exxon talked up fossil fuel employment opportunities in the U.S. while complaining that “obstacles to accessing U.S. offshore oil and gas resources continue to limit development through broad regulatory overreach.” A ban on new oil and gas exploration on federal land, the statement claimed, would cost “up to one million jobs” in the following year.

Slowing down the global transition to green energy is the real job killer. A new report by the International Energy Agency states that “more people work in the energy sector today than in 2019, almost exclusively due to growth in clean energy, which now employs more workers than fossil fuels.” According to the report, clean energy industries created 4.7 million new jobs from 2019 to 2022. More people now work in renewables than work in fossil fuels, and that growth is continuing at pace. 

Recently published research has also shown that most fossil fuel workers have skills that are easily transferable to renewable energy industries. With careful, location-specific investment, I believe a just transition can be achieved.

At the same time, climate change itself constitutes a huge risk to jobs and livelihoods as infrastructure, agricultural yields and natural resources are all diminished at an alarming rate. Climate-driven extreme weather events already cause massive disruption to food production, and soil erosion and changing temperatures will affect the type, volume and quality of food we can grow and eat.

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To be clear, the presence of fossil fuel companies at COP28 doesn’t make it a write-off. Members of my organization — The Climate Reality Project — and thousands of others have come to the Gulf to demand action before it’s too late. 

But the positive news won’t come if the voices of governments and corporations that contribute most to the problem of climate change are the only ones that are heard. 

People on the front lines of climate change must be prioritized: people whose lives are threatened by the wildfires that now regularly rage across the globe; people who have seen their farmland devastated by flooding; people who, in the case of some Pacific and Caribbean states, may see their nations entirely lost to rising sea levels within our lifetimes.

Climate Reality leaders like Rituraj Phukan of India, the founder of the Indigenous People’s Climate Justice Forum, and Jatziri Pando, an environmental lawyer working with the Mexican Senate, are essential to the process. They bring representation — and solutions — to COP28. Too many others, it’s becoming clear, are instead focused on delay and obfuscation.

COP is important — too important to be undermined by the greenwashing efforts of fossil fuel-vested interests. The controversy over the COP president’s simultaneously leading one of the world’s biggest oil companies has made it obvious that reform is needed. It’s vital that climate negotiations are carried out in good faith and on a level playing field. That means placing global majority voices front and center and no longer prioritizing those who have reaped the profits from destructive industries.

The path forward couldn’t be clearer: We must shake off the influence of the fossil fuel industry, adopt the urgent phase-out of fossil fuels necessary to address the climate crisis and seek reforms to the process — reforms such as a robust conflict-of-interest policy, added transparency and decision-making that doesn’t rely on total consensus. A healthy and sustainable future depends on it.