The designation of the Minister of Industry Emirati and CEO of the National Petroleum Compagnie Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, officially announced Thursday, January 12, arouses the disbelief of many climate experts.
by Audrey Garric
You might think a joke, an absurd spring to play down a heavy climate news. It is not so. The 28
This is the first time that the president of an oil group has exercised this responsibility as a conductor of climate negotiations, the one that should allow the 196 countries to find compromises to accelerate the fight against warming. A double cap that raises questions, while climate change is mainly caused by the combustion of fossil fuels-coal, petroleum and gas.
Denouncing an important “conflict of interest”, Tasneem Essop, the executive director of the Climate Action Network, bringing together 1,900 NGOs from 130 countries, calls Sultan Al Jaber to resign from her CEO position. Otherwise, “this will be equivalent to a total takeover of the United Nations negotiations on the climate by an oil company and the lobbyists of fossil fuels”. Last year, COP27, in Egypt, welcomed more than 600 of them, a record. “We cannot have another COP where the fossil fuels industry is authorized to sacrifice our future to garner a few additional years of profit,” abounds Vanessa Nakate, Ugandan activist for the climate.
The pill is all the hardest to swallow since the COP28 is crucial. In a world faced with a multiplication of climatic disasters, the wait is great to see a conference attacking fossil fuels. This edition is all the more important since it will be the time of the world’s leading assessment of climate commitments in countries.
How to explain such a choice? The presidency of COPs runs each year, according to a rotation between five large regional groups defined by the UN. After Western Europe in 2021 (the COP26 of Glasgow) and Africa (that of Charm El-Cheikh) in 2022, it was this year in the turn of Asia-Pacific-which includes the Middle Orient – to welcome climate mass. The United Arab Emirates were able to assert their financial means and their infrastructure even if “the way it has been decided within the group is opaque”, slips an expert in climate negotiations.
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