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- Justin Rowlatt
- BBC News Climate Editor
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Dr. Sultan Jaber is Climate Summit Chairman and Head of the National Oil Company of the United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates plans to use its role as host of UN climate talks to seal oil and gas deals, the BBC has learned.
Leaked briefing documents reveal plans to discuss fossil fuel deals with 15 countries.
The UN agency responsible for the COP28 summit told the BBC organizers should act without bias or disregard of self-interest.
The UAE team did not deny using the COP28 meeting for business negotiations, saying “private meetings are private.”
It declined to comment on what was discussed at the meeting and said its focus was on “meaningful climate action”.
More information about the COP28 Climate Summit
The documents, obtained by independent journalists from the Climate Reporting Center in partnership with the BBC, were prepared by the UAE COP28 team for meetings with at least 27 foreign governments ahead of the COP28 summit, which begins on November 30.
These include proposed “talking points,” such as one aimed at China that said the UAE’s state oil company, Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., was “willing to jointly assess international LNG.” [liquefied natural gas] Opportunities in Mozambique, Canada and Australia”.
The documents recommend telling Colombian ministers that ANC “stands ready” to support Colombia in developing its fossil fuel resources.
There are also talking points for 13 other countries, including Germany and Egypt, suggesting telling them that ADNOC wants to work with their governments on fossil fuel projects.
The briefing shows that the UAE has also prepared a dialogue on business opportunities for its state-owned renewable energy company Masdar before holding a meeting with 20 countries including the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, China, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Highlights and Kenya.
COP28 is the latest round of global climate negotiations by the United Nations. This year, the event is hosted by the United Arab Emirates in Dubai and is expected to be attended by 167 world leaders, including the Pope and King Charles III.
These summits are the most important meetings in the world discussing how to combat climate change.
It is hoped that COP28 will help limit the long-term rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which the United Nations climate science agency says is crucial to avoiding the worst impacts of climate change. But this will require deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions – 43% below 2019 levels by 2030.
As part of preparations for the conference, the UAE COP28 team has arranged a series of ministerial meetings with governments around the world.
The meeting will be chaired by COP28 President Dr. Sultan al-Jaber. Each year the host country appoints a representative to serve as President of the Conference of the Parties.
Meeting with representatives of foreign governments is one of the core responsibilities of the President of the Conference of the Parties. The president’s job is to encourage countries to make their efforts to reduce emissions as ambitious as possible.
The leaked briefing documents seen by the BBC were prepared for Dr Jaber, who is also the chief executive of the UAE’s major state oil company Adnoc and state-owned renewable energy company Masdar official.
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The UAE is one of the world’s largest oil producers
The documents contain a summary of the meeting’s objectives, including information about where the minister or official Dr Jaber will meet and what issues he should raise as the UAE works to advance climate talks.
For more than two dozen countries, the documents also contain talking points developed by ADNOC and Masdar:
- Brazil’s environment minister will be asked to help Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) acquire Braskem, Latin America’s largest oil and gas processing company, to “ensure coordination and buy-in”.Earlier this month, Adnoc made a $2.1bn (£1.7bn) bid for a key stake
- Algeria’s state oil company will tell Germany: “We stand ready to continue supplying LNG”
- Abu Dhabi National Oil Company advises oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to be informed that “there is no conflict between the sustainable development of any country’s natural resources and its commitment to climate change”
The BBC has seen an email in which COP28 staff were told that Adnoc and Masdar talking points “always need to be included” in briefings. The COP28 team said it was “completely untrue” to tell staff this.
It is unclear how many times Dr. Jaber and his colleagues raised these topics in meetings with foreign governments at COP28.
We are aware of at least one instance where a country followed up on business discussions raised at a meeting arranged by the UAE COP28 team.
However, 12 countries told the BBC that either business activities were not discussed during the meeting or no meetings were held.
This includes the UK. Leaked documents show the COP28 chief has been told to “seek government support” to more than double the size of a wind farm off the coast of Sheringham, Norfolk, in which Masdar has a stake.
Attempting to engage in commercial transactions during the course of the COP appears to be a serious breach of the COP Chairman’s standards of conduct.
These standards are set by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the United Nations body responsible for climate negotiations.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change stated that the “fundamental principle” of the President of the Conference of the Parties and his team is the “duty of impartiality”.
It told the BBC that the COP president “should be based strictly on sound, independent and impartial judgment and without bias, prejudice, favoritism, capriciousness, self-interest, preference or deference”.
“They should also ensure that personal views and beliefs do not undermine or appear to undermine their role and functions as UNFCCC officials,” it continued.
Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, chairman of the 2014 COP20 summit in Peru, worries that a breakdown in trust could mean that Dubai will make no progress in combating climate change.
“The President of the Conference of the Parties is a world leader who is trying to build consensus on behalf of the planet,” he told the BBC.
“If any President of the Conference of the Parties attempts to bring special benefits, [including] commercial interests, which could mean the failure of the COP. “
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The annual COP summit brings together leaders from nearly every country on earth
Michael Jacobs, a professor at the University of Sheffield and an expert on UN climate politics, told the BBC that the actions of the COP28 team looked “shockingly hypocritical”.
“I actually think the situation is worse than that,” he said, “because the UAE is currently the custodian of a United Nations process aimed at reducing global emissions. However, at the same meeting, it was clear that the UAE was working towards that goal and it It’s really trying to do side deals that will increase global emissions.”
Several proposed projects mentioned in the briefing document appear to represent new oil and gas developments. Global regulator the International Energy Agency said new oil and gas fields should not be developed in order to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
At a press conference last month, COP28 director-general Majid al-Suwaidi said the UAE climate summit team was “completely independent” of Adnoc and Masdar.
He added that COP28 had “made our independence very clear” in discussions with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The COP28 team told the BBC in a statement: “The fact that Dr Sultan Jaber holds a number of positions in addition to his role as COP28 president-elect is well known and we have been transparent about this from the outset.
“Dr Sultan Al-Jabir is deeply focused on the business of COP and delivering ambitious and transformative climate outcomes at COP28,” the statement read, adding that if there was a suggestion that the work he was doing was not “focused,” then would be a “distraction”. Meaningful climate action”.
Experts say these are serious accusations, but ultimately the UAE’s leadership in climate negotiations and the success of the COP28 president himself will depend on the outcome of the summit.
The COP28 Summit will conclude on Tuesday, December 12.
Additional reporting by Adam Eley and Sophie Woodcock
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