On January 12, the United Arab Emirates announced that the president of state-owned oil firm Abu Dhabi National Oil Company will serve as the summit’s host. This news added gasoline to activists’ concerns that big business is monopolising the international response to the environmental catastrophe.
The conference’s programme and intergovernmental negotiations will be shaped by Sultan al-Jaber, who is also the UAE’s minister of industry and technology and its climate envoy, to achieve agreement, according to a statement released by his office.
According to U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Secretariat of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change are not involved in the selection of the COP president, which is made by the host nation.
“The science is really straightforward. The fight to mitigate the worst effects of the climate problem is one we are losing, “Dujarric spoke with journalists in New York. “The Secretary-General reaffirms that until we break our dependence on fossil fuels, there is no way to avoid such a climatic disaster.”
He After Egypt in 2022, the UAE, a significant OPEC oil exporter, will host the climate conference.
Campaigners and a few delegates criticised COP27, claiming that fossil fuel companies had softened its goals for reducing emissions and profited from Egypt’s consideration as a natural gas supplier and regular recipient of Gulf cash.
That was disputed by the Egyptian presidency.
Jaber’s nomination was described by Global Witness as “a hard blow” to efforts to wean the globe off of fossil fuels.
According to Teresa Anderson, global lead for climate justice at ActionAid, “Like last year’s conference, we’re increasingly witnessing fossil fuel interests seizing control of the process and altering it to match their own demands.”
At the climate negotiations in Sharm el-Sheikh, there were more than 600 representatives of the fossil fuel industry.
According to Lisa Schipper, an environmental geographer who was the primary author of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change study on climate adaptation released last year, “putting an oil CEO in control of the negotiations for COP28 is plainly a conflict of interest.”
Jaber does, however, have green credentials as the founding CEO of Abu Dhabi’s Masdar renewable energy company, in which ADNOC owns a 24% part, having oversaw its task to adopt renewables in the UAE.
He is also in charge of accelerating ADNOC’s low-carbon growth strategy, which was approved in late 2017
The UAE and other Gulf producers have urged for a practical transition that would maintain hydrocarbons’ contribution to energy security while committing to decarbonization.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year and Europe’s energy crisis, calls for governments and businesses to leave oil and gas in the ground have gained less traction.
The UAE has pledged to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. The UAE was the first nation in the region to ratify the Paris Agreement. The first global assessment since the historic Paris Agreement in 2015 will take place at the COP28 meeting, which runs from November 30 to December 12.
Jaber said that the UAE will bring “a pragmatic, realistic, and solutions-oriented approach,” making him the first CEO to hold the office of COP president.
He continued, “We will adopt an inclusive strategy that involves all stakeholders.
Frans Timmermans, in charge of directing EU climate policy, promised to meet Jaber this week.
He wrote on Twitter that “we need to ramp up speed” and added that “as the incoming Presidency, the UAE has a critical role in determining the global response to the climate problem.”
