Can the president of one of the world's largest oil companies lead crucial climate negotiations to a successful conclusion? COP28, scheduled for November 30 to December 12 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is supposed to be one of the most important summits in the fight against climate change. For the first time, states are to carry out a "global stocktaking" of the measures taken since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015. In other words, look at what has already been done to limit global warming to +1.5°C since the industrial era.
It is "an opportunity for our generation to correct the trajectory on which we are," said the executive secretary of the United Nations Climate Convention, Simon Stiell, in early May, while scientists continue to denounce greenhouse gas emissions that continue to increase and insufficient measures to reduce them.
However, six months before the deadline, many environmental defenders fear that this COP28 will not be up to the climate emergency. In their sights: the president of the summit, the Emirati Sultan al-Jaber, Minister of Industry of the United Arab Emirates - a country whose economy is mainly based on black gold - and, above all, CEO of the national oil company of Abu Dhabi (Adnoc).
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"Fossil fuels are responsible for 90% of global CO2 emissions. Our dependence on oil, gas and coal is one of the main causes of climate change," said Louis-Maxence Delaporte, an energy analyst at the NGO Reclaim Finance, which documents the impacts of the financial sector on the climate. "We no longer have time to get stuck on negotiations about fossil fuels. We must get out of it as quickly as possible to move towards renewables."
"Already at COP27 in Egypt, more than 600 oil and gas lobbyists were present – an unprecedented number. And today, we place one at the head of the summit," denounces Elise Buckle, climate activist, founder of the association She changes climate. "How can we be sure that Sultan al-Jaber will put the planet first and not his private interests and those of his country?" she said.
In 2022, COP27 ended with a mixed assessment. While leaders had signed a historic agreement on aid to poor countries affected by climate change, the issue of reducing the use of fossil fuels was barely mentioned in the final text. The result, according to NGOs, of the presence of these lobbies at the table.
Calls for withdrawal
Faced with these concerns and as a session of climate negotiations opens Monday in Bonn, Germany, to prepare for COP28, several voices are calling for the withdrawal of Sultan al-Jaber from the presidency. Among them, a hundred elected representatives of the US Congress and the European Parliament sent an open letter on 23rd May to US President Joe Biden, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and the Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres. "We urge you to press for the UAE to renounce the appointment of Sultan al-Jaber," they wrote, expressing their "deep concern."
In this missive, the elected officials also ask to limit "the influence of polluting industries" in these climate meetings, deploring this prominence of lobbies. "We cannot let vested interests create more obstacles in the race against climate change," Sheldon Whitehouse, one of the US senators most committed to climate issues, argued on Twitter.
We cannot allow special interests to create more hurdles in the race against climate change.
This morning, I led a letter with 33 of my colleagues in Congress and nearly 100 members of the European Parliament who agree.
— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) May 23, 2023
All the more, abounds Louis-Maxence Delaporte, that "to have a chance of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, the world of finance - especially banks - must get ready and stop financing fossil fuels". Since 2015, the world's 60 largest banks have provided $5.500 trillion (€5.040 trillion) to fossil fuel companies, according to calculations by the NGO coalition Banking on Climate Chaos, of which Reclaim Finance is a member. For the year 2022 alone, their count reaches 668 billion dollars (616 billion euros). Among them, 11 major global banks have also financed to the tune of $ 1.5 billion Adnoc, the oil company of Sultan Al-Jaber, reveals the coalition.
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"Fossil fuels better represented than women"
For their part, about twenty women politicians and activists published an open letter on Monday, calling for the appointment of a co-president at COP 28, to sit alongside Sultan al-Jaber. A way, according to them, to solve two problems at once by counterbalancing the power of the Emirati, while ensuring a better representation of women in the negotiations.
"We ask the United Arab Emirates to opt for a pioneering model of co-presidency, with a man and a woman at the helm of COP28, and to conclude an agreement that puts women's autonomy at the heart of its concerns," said Elise Buckle, who initiated the initiative. Among the names mentioned to run for this post is that of the Emirati Minister of Climate Change and Environment, Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri, long presented as the favorite for the presidency.
"Women are the first victims of climate change," says Elise Buckle, based on a UN study published in 2022 showing that women are 14 times more likely to die in climate disasters. "Yet they are completely absent from the negotiating table. Today, fossil fuels have had more space than them." Since the first COP in 1995, only five women have been presidents.
"If we want to fight climate change together and not turn climate negotiations into a fossil fuel convention, let's start by prioritizing those most affected, not those who benefit from the status quo and lack of courage on fossil fuels," she concludes.
Focusing on CO2 capture
The appointment of the Emirati minister to preside over COP28 had already been strongly criticized when it was announced in January. Interviewed by AFP in April, Sultan al-Jaber defended himself by recalling that he was also the founder of Masdar, an Emirati national giant specializing in renewable energy, and he had assured that his country had been working on its energy transition for "more than 20 years".
But since then, several of his statements have heightened the concerns of environmentalists. While the British newspaper The Guardian revealed in early April that Adnoc plans to significantly increase its oil and hydrocarbon production capacity, Sultan al-Jaber, for his part, keeps repeating, at every diplomatic meeting, that oil is still "indispensable to the world economy".
Rather than considering a gradual phase-out of fossil fuels, the latter prefers to focus on CO2 capture and storage technologies. Expensive technologies, with consequences that are difficult to assess in the long term, and which are, for the moment, not usable on a large scale.
"If we focused on reducing CO2 emissions, while investing in renewables and deploying new energy sources, I think we would be in a much better position," he told the Guardian. "But to achieve this, we need to stop pointing fingers. We must put an end to this polarization. We need to focus on optimism, positivity and harmonious collaboration," he said, arguing that an oil industry insider is best placed to change it.
"Today, it is the very credibility of the COPs that is at stake," retorts Elise Buckle. "If climate is really Sultan al-Jaber's priority, he must walk the talk and step down from Adnoc's governance or the presidency of the summit."
"Al-Jaber has two weeks to save COP28," said Alex Scott of the climate think tank E3G. "It must arrive in Bonn with an action plan that responds to the demands of the IPCC synthesis report." Scheduled until June 15, this dress rehearsal gives Sultan al-Jaber fifteen days to convince and lay the groundwork for the next negotiations.
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