The announcement by the United Arab Emirates on Thursday that the head of the state-owned oil giant Abu Dhabi National Oil Company would preside over this year’s COP28 climate summit added fuel to activists’ concerns that big business is monopolising the international response to the environmental crisis.
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 extremely clear. We are losing the battle to prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis,’ Dujarric told reporters in New York. ‘The Secretary-General reaffirms that there is no way to avoid such a climate catastrophe without ending our addiction to fossil fuels.’
The UAE, a major OPEC oil exporter, will be the second Arab state to host the climate conference after Egypt in 2022.
Campaigners and some delegates criticised COP27, saying fossil fuel producers had watered down emission reduction ambitions and benefited from sympathetic treatment from Egypt, a natural gas exporter and frequent recipient of Gulf funds.
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