Western elected officials are calling for the withdrawal of the appointment of Sultan al-Jaber, boss of the Abu Dhabi oil industry, to chair COP 28.
A hundred elected officials from the European Parliament and Congress call, Tuesday, May 23, in a letter to Joe Biden, Ursula Von der Leyen and Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the UN, for the withdrawal of the appointment of a boss of the oil industry to chair the next COP28 which will take place November 30 to December 12, 2023, to Dubai. The climate conference has never been so divisive.
This global meeting to fight against global warming will only take place in six months, and already the controversies are increasing. The target of these European and American elected officials who challenge the major decision-makers, but also of the world of environmental defenders, is Sultan al-Jaber, Emirati Minister of Industry and above all CEO of the national oil company of Abu Dhabi, ADNOC. It is he who must lead the debates in Dubai.
For these critics, his presidency is nonsense, even a provocation. According to them, one cannot entrust the presidency of such an event to a representative of the oil lobby, one of the sectors responsible for the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Washington and Paris support Sultan al-Jaber
Sultan al-Jaber points out that he is also the founder of MASDAR, the UAE’s national giant in renewable energies, and that his country has been working on its energy transition for more than 20 years, in particular because it will be hit hard the increase in temperatures. The Emirates, but also the other Gulf countries, have also become the financial lung of the planet with their colossal sovereign wealth funds. Without them, it will be difficult to hope to finance energy diversification projects, especially in poor or developing countries.
Sultan Al-Jaber has received strong support from the United States and France. “It doesn’t matter who organizes, what matters are the decisions and the results,” explained Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of the Economy, during a visit last January to the Emirates.
The annoying invitation…
The invitation formally addressed to Bashar Al-Assad will obviously not please Westerners, France in particular, which refuses all contact with him, but also human rights NGOs, which are up against the possible arrival of the Syrian president in Dubai.
For Human Rights Watch (HRW), it is scandalous that such a conference is exploited to bring Bashar al-Assad back into the fold of the international community, without accountability for his crimes. Suffice to say that this COP28 in Dubai already promises to be as divisive as it is sulphurous…