World Climate Conference: Party for the oil industry? 1,700 lobbyists at climate summit

Crowds of lobbyists for oil, gas and coal cause outrage at the World Climate Conference. According to a data analysis, at least 1,773 such stakeholders are officially accredited for the summit in Azerbaijan, as the “Kick Big Polluters Out” coalition in Baku counted based on freely accessible UN data. The alliance is supported by, among others, Transparency International, Greenpeace and Global Witness. Luisa Neubauer from Fridays for Future expressed outrage: “This is a disaster!”

According to the data analysis, the lobbyists have more access passes than all delegations from the ten countries most vulnerable to global warming combined. These are: Chad, Solomon Islands, Niger, Micronesia, Guinea-Bissau, Somalia as well as Tonga, Eritrea, Sudan and Mali.

Lobbyists’ influence “like a poisonous snake”

Nnimmo Bassey of Kick Big Polluters Out said: “The influence of the fossil fuel lobby on the climate negotiations is like a poisonous snake coiled around the future of our planet.” It is important to “expose their deceptions” and take decisive countermeasures in order to eliminate their influence.

The burning of oil, gas and coal releases the climate-damaging greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which dangerously heats up the planet. At last year’s climate conference in Dubai, all 200 countries agreed to move away from these fossil fuels.

Brice Böhmer from Transparency International said the influence networks of some powerful “and mostly corrupt” groups extend far beyond the figures now disclosed. A good 20 percent of national delegations are still allowed to refuse to provide information about their activities.

Fossil lobby “organized as a world power” thanks to Trump

Christoph Bals, political director of the organization Germanwatch, said that in the first year when global warming was above 1.5 degrees, the fossil lobby was “stronger than ever before” – and now after the election of Donald Trump as US President also “organized as a world power”. Neubauer from Fridays for Future pointed out that there are more heads of fossil fuel companies in Baku than 90 heads of state and government. Baku should not become a party for the fossil industry, but rather a party where the end of the fossil industry is celebrated. “And that’s a big difference.”

According to the analysis at the time, more than 2,450 fossil lobbyists were accredited at the climate conference in Dubai – a record. Before that, in Egypt, there were 636. One explanation could also be the fluctuating number of participants: According to information, this year in Baku, at a good 52,000, it is significantly lower than in Dubai with around 97,000 participants.

Lobbyists apparently sometimes go incognito at conferences

Thanks to pressure from civil society, in Dubai, for the first time, all participants were required by the UN to disclose who they represented. According to the activists, this “exposed” many lobbyists who were likely to have attended previous conferences incognito as part of delegations or business associations.

There was also renewed criticism of Azerbaijan as host of the UN climate conference. The background is, among other things, the opening speech by President Ilham Aliyev, in which he praised the climate-damaging energy sources oil and gas as a “gift from God”. Prominent scientists and environmental politicians now want the United Nations to reform the selection process for host countries. Azerbaijan, an authoritarian ex-Soviet republic, relies 90 percent of its export economy on oil and gas.

Signatories of the open letter include Sandrine Dixson-Declève, global ambassador for the Club of Rome, Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. They also demanded that the UN should restrict access for lobbyists.

Tasneem Essop of Climate Action Network International said oil and gas lobbyists have been poisoning climate negotiations for too long. “We demand a COP that is free from interference from big polluters.”