Some states did not wait for the presidency of this conference to go to the boss of an oil company to try to prevent the negotiations from leading to commitments contrary to the interests of the fossil fuel industry.
Dubai, its skyscrapers, its shopping centers, its air-conditioned ski slopes and… its climate conference. The choice of the flashiest territory in the United Arab Emirates to host COP28, from November 30, surprised – even outraged – the general public. How to hold negotiations aimed at accelerating the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming, largely caused by the consumption of fossil fuels, in a country that makes its fortune from the sale of oil and gas ? The question is legitimate.
However, oil-producing countries did not wait to chair UN climate conferences to obstruct any diplomatic effort aimed at limiting the lucrative expansion of the sector. The proof with these few time-tested techniques.
The art of obstructing
It goes without saying that countries that owe their development to the exploitation of oil and gas have no interest in the world doing without the resources that flow from their subsoil. So, from the At the beginning of the 1990s, they joined forces to try to weaken the birth certificate of the COP, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate. THE report of the final negotiation session organized in spring 1992, at the New York headquarters of the UN – with a view to its presentation at the Earth summit in Rio – mentions their dissatisfaction : “PSeveral delegations expressed reservations on certain elements of the text and four of them (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait and Oman) submitted the wording they would have liked to see adopted.” In vain.
When adopting the final version of the text, Kuwait again tried to object, Alden Meyer, COP veteran and director of the climate change think tank E3G, tells franceinfo. “The representative of Kuwait raised his hand to speak. But the chairman of the session, the French diplomat Jean Ripert, simply ignored him. he relates. To counter the obstruction of certain States, “you can pretend not to see a hand raised, but it all depends on which hand it is!”
Saudi Arabia thus benefits from much greater diplomatic weight. “They traditionally have experts who intervene in negotiations and who engage in systematic obstruction, who delay any significant progress”, explains historian Amy Dahan, a specialist in climate negotiations. In 2015, in Paris, Riyadh thus tried to remove the mention of the 1.5°C objective in the agreement. Without success.
For 26 years, producing countries have still managed to avoid fossil fuels appearing by name in the texts adopted at the end of the COPs, even though they are the main cause of global warming. It was only in Glasgow, in 2021, that the Conference of Signatory States set in stone the objective of reducing the use of coal. At the end of COP27, the following year, the planet once again had to settle for a text that did not mention hydrocarbons. Disappointed, uA delegate from Papua New Guinea cited by AFP accused the “usual suspects” : Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia and even Egypt, the organizing country that year.
The art of diversion
In countries that owe their prosperity to their oil revenue, “leaders have long been aware that it is necessary to ensure the transition of their economy. But they want to ensure that they can continue to benefit from their resources for as long as possible,” explains Alden Meyer. “The idea is to prolong the world’s dependence on hydrocarbons.” However, the early climate skeptic line “has become increasingly difficult to maintain, while the effects of climate change have become impossible to ignore”notes this expert on climate negotiations.
“They want to appear on the right side of history, at the same time as they are obviously on the wrong side,” agrees Cédric Philibert, former French negotiator, then observer on behalf of the International Energy Agency (IEA). In the case of the United Arab Emirates, host country of COP28, the expert points out “a reckless love for CCS, carbon capture and storage technologies”. By examining the commitments displayed by the country, the specialist finds mention of the “CO2 capture in the air”. “That, today, is fiction”he decides.
INevertheless, since the IPCC estimated, in its last report, thatin addition to a reduction in our emissions, “the deployment of carbon dioxide capture devices, to counterbalance residual emissions, is inevitable”countries producing and exporting fossil fuels – from the United States to Saudi Arabia – see it as an opportunity to further extend a lucrative activity.
The president of COP28, Sultan al-Jaber, is one of these advocates of techno-solutionism. Director of the national oil company (Adnoc), he praises the continuation of an oil and gas activity “own”, thanks in particular to the improvement of the extraction and transport processes of oil and gas, exported abroad. But here again, these commitments distract attention from the problem: the majority of greenhouse gas emissions come from the end-of-chain use of hydrocarbons.
The mix of genres
Diplomat Laurence Tubiana has her own idea to explain the failure of COP27, organized in 2022 in Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt. “The influence of the fossil fuel sector was omnipresent,” then deplored the one who was one of the architects of the Paris agreement, in 2015. She representatives were 636 at COP27, compared to already 503 the previous year, according to the count from Global Witness, an NGO which reviews the list of participants. Already in Glasgow, she noted that the fossil fuel lobby was thus better represented in the corridors of the conference than the countries hardest hit by the consequences of global warming.
These sector professionals are obvious negotiators for countries that have powerful national oil companies. This is the case of the director of Adnoc, Sultan al-Jaber, who led the United Arab Emirates delegation several times before being appointed president of COP28. In 2021, Global Witness noted that 27 countries (including Canada, Brazil and Russia) had representatives of the oil sectors in their national delegation.
Asked by franceinfo, a spokesperson for COP26 recalled that“It is the responsibility of each country to choose its delegates and that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) issues all accreditations to the COP.” Even if it means exasperating members of civil society, think tanks and NGOs, who are content with observation missions.
Although the trend is increasing, the practice is old. Cédric Philibert remembers the very first COP and, already, the influential Global Climate Coalition, a pressure group which throws all its weight against diplomatic progress on climate. “Lobbying has always been very present”, he assures. COP28 in Dubai will be no exception to the rule.