Almost 1,800 oil, gas and coal lobbyists at UN climate summit

Global warming

Almost 1,800 oil, gas and coal lobbyists at UN climate summit

Fossil industry lobbyists at the World Climate Conference – that doesn’t seem to fit together, but it’s reality. Not everyone finds that completely normal.

The World Climate Conference is discussing how to curb global warming – but according to a data analysis, at least 1,773 lobbyists from the oil, gas and coal industries are officially accredited to the UN meeting in Azerbaijan. This was announced by the “Kick Big Polluters Out” coalition in Baku, which is supported by the organizations Transparency International, Global Witness, Greenpeace and the Climate Action Network, among others. Publicly available data from the UN Climate Secretariat UNFCCC were evaluated.

According to the analysis, the lobbyists received more access passes than all delegations from the ten countries most vulnerable to global warming. 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.

According to the analysis at the time, more than 2,450 Fossil lobbyists were accredited in Dubai – a record. Before that, in Egypt, there were 636. One explanation could also be the fluctuating total 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.

Thanks to continued 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.

The annual, two-week UN climate conference is scheduled to end on November 22nd.