Representatives linked to fossil fuel lobbies have reportedly helped more than 7,000 UN climate negotiations and events over the past two decades as part of a campaign to obstruct and influence climate action. This is the conclusion of an investigation published by Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) this Tuesday reported by Efe.
This study reinforces the request to “expel major polluters from the negotiations at the next United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP28) in Dubai”, according to the authors of the aforementioned research, who emphasize that these data are ” “just the tip of the iceberg.”
According to KBPO, since COP9 in 2003, groups such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, and TotalEnergies (among many others) have taken advantage of their attendance at the various COPs to lobby for fossil fuels without declaring their “affiliation.” That is, without communicating the organizations for which they worked or the interests they represent, in order to go unnoticed.
The results of the investigation recorded that Shell sent the most staff to the negotiations over the years, with at least 115 passes granted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). They also boasted of their influence on the outcome of COP21, the birthplace of the 2015 Paris Agreement. Others such as the Italian Eni, the Brazilian Petrobras, the British BP and the American Cevron pushed for the use of more fossil fuels despite knowing their risks.
Representatives of the fossil fuel lobby include the CEO of France’s TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanné, who attended COP27 as part of a German NGO, and Bernard Looney, former CEO of BP, as a member of the Mauritanian delegation.
This research focuses on the world’s major oil and gas producing companies, and because until recently the UNFCCC did not require participants to disclose their affiliations, these KBPO results show only the tip of the iceberg, as many representatives do not will have been detected within the framework of this study.
