With the sun-kissed allure of Dubai calling out to climate champions this week, deviating from the conventional advent celebrations appears to be a straightforward choice. Who cares about singing in the Christmas season or lighting up the festive decorations when COP28 provides such an excellent justification to journey southward and immerse oneself in daydreams of a radiant, fossil-free future? Oh, how the enchanting mirages of the desert beckon!
I don’t know about visions, but even observing from the sidelines, the annual climate spectacle promises to be unusually entertaining this year. Excitement is mounting, with several prequels to the COP-opera having proven as emotionally charged as the best of telenovelas.
We were hardly alone in crying foul when, at the beginning of the year, news broke that the chief executive of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), Sultan Al Jaber, would be overseeing the upcoming round of global climate negotiations. Adnoc being the third worst contributor to the expected global overshoot of the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 2050 Net-Zero scenario, that is. Things heated up as sensitive besserwissers worldwide started dissecting the president-elect’s every word, inevitably finding hints of his real agenda, best summarised as ‘keeping up business as usual and mopping up emissions afterwards’. A plot twist in mid-May was the unsettling news that among the list of invited dignitaries was one Bashar Al Assad, President of Syria, something Amnesty International described as a ‘sick joke’. Somehow, though, the COP28 story’s protagonist, Al Jaber, has miraculously survived the numerous calls for him to step down from the presidency.
Have you seen the latest pre-COP episode, though? Just as people were packing their bags to head off to the Gulf, BBC News and the Centre for Climate Reporting had the bad taste to report about leaked briefing documents revealing that the United Arab Emirates planned to use its role as host of the climate talks as a chance to strike oil and gas deals with no less than fifteen nations. Why waist such a golden business opportunity to expand their fossil fuels empire, they reckoned.
OK, COP presidents are not strictly required to be visionaries detached from the messy reality, but they are definitely “expected to act without bias, prejudice, favouritism, caprice, self-interest, preference or deference, strictly based on sound, independent and fair judgement”, according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the body responsible for the climate negotiations. Exactly how Al Jaber’s lobbying on oil and gas deals squares with these principles is a mystery.
“Private meetings are private,” retort the defiant UAE representatives upon being caught with their hands in the oil-dripping cooky jar. Well, denying that they are treating COP28 meetings as just another business conference would be futile at this point, given the fifty pages of supporting evidence. It’s all there, neatly organised as “talking points” for Al Jaber and his colleagues to use at meetings with various delegations, complete with mark-ups on topics of extra importance for Adnoc. Although it remains unclear how strictly the COP28 hosts have been and are keeping to the script, their intentions are hardly questionable.
“At this point, we might as well meet inside an actual oil refinery,” laments Joseph Moeono-Kolio, lead adviser to advocacy network Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, an initiative that is still hoping to achieve something at the gathering in Dubai. He seems to be one of the few ready to speak up. Many of his fellow delegates prefer to remain reticent for fear of jeopardising their ability to negotiate.
The coming days should reveal whether this latest scandal is just a minor albeit unwelcome hiccup or another manifestation of the COP mechanism unravelling. Fingers crossed that my cynicism, scepticism, and pessimism have all been premature and ill-informed. Deep down, we are all rooting for the negotiators to succeed and deliver tangible results this time around.
Here’s to hoping that the desert mirage turns out to be the oasis we all thirst for.
