Kick Big Polluters out of COP30!

Big Polluters are strangling climate action.

PHOTO Credit: David Tong, Oil Change International.

1,773 fossil fuel lobbyists took part in the 2024 UN climate meeting (COP29) in Baku. The number was down from the 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists at COP28 in Dubai, but it’s still way too many. It is 1,773 too many, to be precise.

Fossil fuel lobbyists take part in UN climate talks to delay meaningful action on the climate crisis, and to promote false solutions such as carbon markets, so that the fossil fuel industry can continue raking in its massive profits.

Last week, at the UNFCCC climate talks in Bonn, the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition held a protest “to condemn the UN climate talks’ failure to end the corporate stranglehold over climate action”.

The activists are demanding the following:

• An Accountability Framework that ends the ability of Big Polluters to write the rules of climate action. Next steps must include requiring a publicly available conflict-of-interest disclosure for all participants in climate talks, discussion between governments and civil society on how to protect these talks, and agreeing a Roadmap to Accountability that can reinstill faith and integrity of this process by ensuring Big Polluters cannot continue to undermine and obstruct.

• No more allowing Big Polluters to bankroll the climate talks.

• End Big Polluter-fueled genocide and systemic violence, including a Global Energy Embargo for Palestine.

• Center the lived experiences and expertise of communities on the frontlines and reset the capitalist, colonial system so it protects people and the planet.

Conflict of interest policy needed!

At a press conference about the protest, Oscar Welchman of the UK Youth Climate Coalition points out that fossil fuel lobbyists hide behind organisations such as the International Emissions Trading Association to take part in UN climate meetings.

Welchman adds that the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) includes a conflict of interest policy, Article 5.3.

The guidelines for the implementation of Article 5.3 were adopted in 2008 at the third Conference of Parties of the FCTC. After 29 COPs, the UNFCCC still has no rules to keep the fossil fuel industry at bay.

Before the climate talks in Bonn, more than 60 organisations wrote to EU Climate Commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, calling on him to protect the UN climate talks from fossil fuel industry influence.

The letter is posted here in full:

To: European Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra
CC: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen
CC: European Commissioner Teresa Ribera

Dear European Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra,

Subject: Supporting an Accountability Framework to protect against undue influence of polluters at UNFCCC SB62 in Bonn, Germany

We are writing to follow up with you after our letter from 4 November 2024 concerning the undue influence of the fossil fuel industry at the UN climate talks, and how we can address the privileged, unregulated access they are currently granted through introducing an Accountability Framework, drawing on similar UN precedents such as Art. 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control protocol.

It was very positive to hear your support for the Accountability Framework when questioned by MEPs at your confirmation hearing last year. The Framework proposal is the result of an unprecedented cross-constituency collaboration between climate NGOs, trade unions, women and gender and youth groups who participate in the climate talks.

For too long those who profit from maintaining the current fossil fueled system have stopped, delayed or watered down actions to halt global heating. Their voices have dominated the conversation, including at the UN climate talks.

The first steps to identify such voices have already been taken by the UNFCCC secretariat, introducing stronger participant disclosure requirements, but the upcoming climate talks in Bonn this June are a good opportunity to progress further on an Accountability Framework ahead of COP30 in November in Belém, Brazil.

In Belém, governments will gather once more to try and further the goals agreed under the Paris Agreement and limit global temperature rises to 1.5°C. It is again a chance for the EU to show global leadership and re-establish the credibility of its commitment to transition away from fossil fuels.

While the European Commission could claim to not bring any fossil fuel executives to COP29, EU Member States still brought more than 113 fossil fuel lobbyists to Baku on their national delegations, according to analysis by Fossil Free Politics as part of the international Kick Big Polluters Out campaign. What’s more, industry executives were in Azerbaijan to sign new gas deals rather than announce any fossil fuel phase outs.

If the EU is serious about leading on tackling climate change and the phase out of fossil fuel energy, it should play an active role in curbing the fossil fuel industry’s undue influence on this year’s climate negotiations in Bonn and Belém.

As European Climate Commissioner, we also ask that you support measures that protect public policy making against the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists in the EU. This should be part of a broader EU-level conflict of interest framework.

We, the undersigned ask that you:

1. Proactively publicly call for the UNFCCC to create an Accountability Framework to protect climate talks from the undue influence of fossil fuel interests, to agree a definition of “conflicts of interest” at Bonn, and to strengthen disclosure requirements so that all those participating in the talks have to declare their conflicts of interest prior to attendance.

2. Build on the positive precedent last year, where the official EU delegation did not bring any fossil fuel lobbyist to COP29 in line with our call to commit to not providing registration at UN climate talks for executives or lobbyists of fossil fuel corporations, backed by 112 organisations. The EU should not be bringing oil and gas lobbyists to COP30 or any future COP.

3. Support an EU-level conflict of interest framework to protect European decision-making from the undue influence of the fossil fuel industry.

The Fossil Free Politics coalition, made up of more than 200 organisations in Europe and around the world, would be happy to discuss the matter further before COP30, and will follow up with your office once you are back from Belém.

Yours sincerely,

Nathan Stewart, Fossil Free Politics coordinator, on behalf of:

• 350.org

• A Sud – Ecologia e Cooperazione APS

• Andy Gheorghiu Consulting

• Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD)

• Bond Beter Leefmilieu

• Campagna Nazionale Per il Clima Fuori dal Fossile

• Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment

• Carbon Market Watch

• CEE Bankwatch Network

• Center for International Environmental Law

• Centre for Citizens Conserving Environment & Management (CECIC)

• Clean Energy Action

• Climate Clock

• Co-ordination Office of the Austrian Bishops’ Conference for International Development and Mission (KOO)

• Coastal Livelihood and Environmental Action Network (CLEAN)

• Common Weal

• Corporate Accountability

• Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO)

• Dream Tank

• EKOenergy ecolabel

• Electra Energy

• Emergenzaclimatica.it

• Empower Our Future

• Engineering Without Borders

• Food & Water Action Europe (FWAE)

• Forum Ambientalista

• Fossil Free Parliament

• Fossil Free Politics

• Friends of the Earth Europe

• Friends of the Earth Ghana

• Friends of the Earth International

• Friends of the Earth Malta

• Global Witness

• Greenpeace

• Hawkmoth

• Indigenous Environmental Network

• Innovation pour le Développement et la Protection de l’Environnement

• Les Amis de la Terre France

• LIFE eV

• Limity jsme my

• Mothers Rise Up

• Mouvement écologique

• Movimento No TAP/SNAM Brindisi

• National Society of Conservationists – Friends of the Earth Hungary

• Naturefriends Greece

• NTS Group

• Observatori DESCA

• Oil Change International

• PowerShift e.V.

• Reacción Climática

• ReCommon

• SOMO

• South Durban Community Environmental Alliance

• Super Cap LLC

• The Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy (PICS)

• Transnational Institute

• Transparency International

• Trócaire

• Urgewald

• WISE Nederland

• WhatNext?

• World Future Council