Imagine negotiating a high-stakes deal, one that would decide the fate of climate-stressed communities globally, but just in the next room another group is cutting one that would undo that.
That is the predicament that anti-fossil fuel activists have been facing at the UN’s annual climate conference, known as the COP (Conference of the Parties).
Last year, as the COP29 neared its final stretch in Baku in Azerbaijan, tempers flared. At that time a text came through stating that developed nations had failed to commit to an ambitious climate finance package of 1.3 trillion US dollars per year, prompting delegates and climate activists from the developing countries to storm into a pressroom in anger.
And what was even more frustrating, they said, the climate negotiations had been “hijacked”—right from the start—by fossil fuel lobbyists to push “their own agenda.”
“Do they come to look for solutions or for more clients?” asks Guillaume Kalonji Kayembe, an advocate of the just transition and founder of the Rise Movement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in bewilderment
“Things are already bad for us, but they still want to cash in more.”
The COP30 kicked off this week on November 10th with the UN climate chief Simon Stiell urging, in his opening remark, that “we have so much more work to do,” adding that there is a need to “move much, much faster on both reductions of emissions and strengthening resilience”.
But a raft of critical climate issues is also expected to be discussed as the “Amazon COP” plays out, including transitioning away from fossil fuels and scaling up climate finance for developing nations to become resilient to climate shocks.
But amid all that, there is still an unfinished business from the COP29: developing nations want stricter reforms that can keep out the fossil fuel lobbyists from the future COPs.
The past three COPs have all been hosted by petrostates. This year’s COP will be hosted in Brazil, a country that doesn’t heavily rely on oil like typical petrostates due to its diversified economy.
Petrostates have faced growing criticism for their poor human rights and for promoting fossil fuels in recent years. Last year at the COP29, Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev, defended the use of fossil fuel, stating that it is a “gift from God” but vilified by the “western fake news.’ Meanwhile, more than 17,000 fossil fuel lobbyists were also granted permission to attend the COP29.
Their participation left a bad taste in the mouths of anti-fossil fuel activists and delegates. The former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in an open letter at that time that “It is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose.”
Despite these efforts, there is still no outright ban on fossil fuel lobbyists at the COPs. The UN’s new transparency guideline on permitting fossil fuel lobbyists into the COPs is only premised on the idea that one has to voluntarily disclose their funder or affiliation, and “are strongly encouraged” to sign a declaration confirming that their objectives align with those of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
But the key question remains: Will the guidelines work?
“Bad for our business”
Harjeet Singh, Global Engagement Director of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, doesn’t think so. In fact, he states, the presence of fossil lobbyists at the COP alone is “bad for our business.”
“They have already done enough damage,” he says.
Ali Adow, the founder of the Nairobi-based think tank, Power Shift Africa, describes the current COPs as an “embarrassment” where “open talks have become a place for backroom deals” for the fossil fuel lobbyists.
“Would you invite big tobacco [companies] to lead discussions in a conference that is looking at fighting lung cancer?” asks Adow.
The COP “is for the climate-affected and those that believe in science—and take it seriously,” he says. “Fossil fuel lobbyists distract us from reaching our climate goal…yet the elephant in the room is fossil fuel and a massive scale-out of renewables.”
Some fossil fuel lobbyists have clapped back. Mohammed Amid Naderian, who has been working for the Gas Exporting Coalition Forum (GECF), a coalition of 21 gas exporting and consuming countries as the Department Head of Economics and Forecasting, has attended several climate summits for years. One of his roles at the COP29, he says, was “strengthening collaboration” with developing nations.
According to him, “the West has no right to dictate what Africa should do with fossil fuel” because “they have been able to develop because of [fossil fuel].”
His colleague Abubakar Jibrin Abbas, the GECF Senior Energy Forecast Analyst, notes that Africa still needs fossil fuel because “it is still the least emitter of carbon globally and this can still be absorbed by its dense forests.”
But such explanations are merely “rhetoric meant to create impressions that all is well,” says Dickens Kemigisha, the Executive Director of the Kampala-based African Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO).
“COPs have been reduced to mere gatherings. We need an international tribunal put in place to handle this matter.
“All they (fossil fuel lobbyists) do is peddle eye-watering false climate solutions,” he says.
Is carbon trading a permit for polluting?
Carbon trading is expected to be contentious at the COP30. Belem, a sweltering city of 2.4 million people located just some 130 kilometres away from the Amazon rainforest— the largest global carbon sink that soaks up huge amounts of planet-heating greenhouse gases but has been under threat due to logging and mining— was strategically chosen by the Brazilian government for the COP30.
In carbon trading, one can buy “carbon credits” from carbon capture storage projects such as tree-planting, and this would, in principle, encourage polluters to reduce on emitting greenhouse gases because there is a price to pay.
But some climate policy analysts are adamant. At the COP29, significant amendments were made to Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, encouraging countries to buy and sell emission reductions from carbon capture storage projects to meet their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
Add to that the first-ever global carbon tax, which was agreed by the UN to generate revenue between 30 billion USD and 40 billion USD by 2030 from polluters, the climate analysts say, only focuses on shipping emissions and ignores financing climate-hit countries.
These amendments, the analysts argue, have loopholes that can still be exploited by fossil fuel industries and lobbyists to continue polluting more under the guise of investing in carbon sinks to compensate for their emissions.
David Tong, the Global Industry Campaign Manager at Oil Change International, notes that the carbon market “is not climate finance” but simply “prolongs the presence of fossil fuel industries” that the lobbyists back.
As the debate continues to ramble on about whether fossil fuel lobbyists should be allowed at the COP30, many climate activists and analysts are overly pessimistic.
Karabo Mokgonya, the senior renewable campaigns associate at Power Shift Africa, says that allowing fossil fuel lobbyists at the COP30 is like “inviting the arsonists to help put out a fire they started in the first place.”
“Fossil Fuel lobbyists have no place at the climate negotiations. We have seen how their influence has weakened outcomes year after year, from watered-down commitments to vague pledges that protect polluters,” he says.
“COPs are meant to advance climate solutions, not to provide a stage for profiting from the climate crisis.”
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