COP28 is around the corner and it is during this time when the big fossil fuel giants starts to act all weird and not in a good way. They want to sponsor the climate talks for our future and that is bad. Sometimes when they are not the actual sponsors of these talks, then still they have direct connections with the actual sponsors of the talks. Gurl, I’m not babbling anything. I have been keeping my eyes on these talks for the past 5 years; to be more precise ever since I joined the FFF movement back in 2019. For those of you who are new to this, COP stands for Conference of Parties, are the climate talks organized annually by the United Nations. Here the word parties mean nations. These fossil fuels companies wants to “save the planet” when at the same time, they keep extracting oil and gas from one of the sensitive regions of the world like the Arctic. Sometimes there are oil spills in the ocean, which kills so many animals and polluting our seas at the same time. These fossil fuel giants prove the swift’s song line “Wherever you stray, I follow”. So they keep following the climate talks wherever they happens to block any big decision made during these talks.
Whether its COP25, COP26, COP27 and now the COP28, there have been direct links of fossil fuel companies to those sponsors and sometimes these companies are one of the sponsors of the talks.
In 2019, when COP25 moved from Chile to Madrid, Spain, the fossil fuel giants such as Endesa and Iberdola stepped in to sponsor the climate talks. According to the AFP, each company paid 2 million euros to be sponsors. This is one of the reasons why those talks failed and “leaders” were not able to reach any agreement. Endesa is one of Spain’s largest greenhouse gas emitters. IETA is a trading group which represented major like BP, ENI and the parent company of Endesa and Iberdola. This group itself was holding a total of 74 side events during the conference.
In 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, COP26 was scheduled to 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland. They were held in the Glasgow. Fossil fuel companies like Shells and BP were asking to be become sponsors for the talks but were denied to be the sponsors after continuous protests and demands from young activists and organizations to keep the “polluters out” of our climate talks. But this did not stop these companies. According to the Global Witness, 100 fossil fuel companies sent more than 500 delegates to the COP26, that’s more than any single country had sent to attend the climate conference. After analyzing the United Nation’s list of corporate attendees, the Global Witness found that at least 503 peoples were linked to oil, gas and coal companies, who were at the conference acting they care about the planet. Global Witness further noted that among the peoples who were on that list were directly linked to companies that include BP, Shell and Gazprom. There were also peoples who were attending the conference as part of the delegates sent by the companies. The delegates also outnumbered the number of delegates from the eight Most Affected Peoples and Area (MAPA) / most affected countries from climate change over the last two decade. Those countries include- Puerto Rico, Myanmar, Haiti, the Philippines, Mozambique, the Bahamas, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Canada, Russia and Brazil were amongst the countries who registered the fossil fuel company’s delegates as their attendees. I will later explain the process behind the registration for such talks in the article.
In COP27, which was held last year at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt saw a sharp rise in the number of delegates from the fossil fuel companies. According to Global Witness, there was a 25% jump in the numbers of delegates related to fossil fuel companies. The firm found that there were more than 600 peoples related to oil, coal and gas that were part of the conference as delegates. The figure has jumped from last year’s 503 delegates to 636 delegates who were all linked to fossil fuel giants. That’s more than the combined delegates from the top 10 worst impacted countries by climate change. The biggest delegation was from UAE, who will host the COP28 this year starting from November 30. UAE had 1070 delegates in the COP27 while at COP26, they had just 170.
UAE is hosting the COP28 at the Expo city, Dubai. The president of the COP28 is Sultan Al Jaber, who itself is the head of UAE’s national oil company, Adnoc. The conference has not even started and long before it there was a “Absolute Scandal”, as The Guardian calls it. In June 2023, The Guardian revealed that the UAE’s state oil firm had accessed the COP28 e-mail system and found that the COP28 office was sharing the e-mail servers with that of the Adnoc. The office however denied the accusations but the technical analysis found that the Adnoc shared the email servers and was able to read all the e-mails. Later the servers changed after The Guardian inquired.
Now returning to the registration process of how these fossil fuel companies were able to get so many spots in the conference. According to the UNFCC, there are three categories of participants: Nations or Parties, members of press and media, representatives of observer organizations. Observer organizations are further categorized into three types: UN and its other agencies, Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). For NGOs and IGOs to register their delegates, they need to get the observer status. Observer Status is provided by the UNFCC after careful reviewing process.
The official site of UNFCC states that, under NGOs there is large spectrum of group which can register their delegates and they are from the business and industry, environmental group, indigenous peoples, farming and agriculture, research and academic institutes, women and youth groups. Most of the fossil fuel delegates are registered through the NGOs which are basically trading groups which represent a group of fossil fuel companies as I told you before about IETA, which had a total of 74 events during COP25. But there’s a one more way these fossil fuel delegates makes their way inside the conference and that is through the nations official delegates, meaning countries sent fossil fuel companies delegates among their group of delegates.
For COP28 registration, The United Nations had asked fossil fuel lobbyists to identify themselves while registering for the event as a delegate. This means, the fossil fuel companies will be hold accountable as so far they were not because most of these delegates were either part of the trade organizations which were representing group of fossil fuel companies or were part of the national delegates of the nations.