Climate talks host under scrutiny

UAE said to lobby for gas, oil deals

As the host of global climate talks that begin this week, the United Arab Emirates is expected to play a central role in forging an agreement to move the world more rapidly away from coal, oil, and gas.

But behind the scenes, the UAE has sought to use its position as host to pursue a contradictory goal: to lobby for oil and gas deals around the world, according to an internal document made public by a whistle-blower.

In one example, the document offers guidance for Emirati climate officials to use meetings with Brazil’s environment minister to enlist her help with a local petrochemical deal by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., the UAE’s state-run oil and gas company, known as ADNOC.

Emirati officials should also inform their Chinese counterparts that ADNOC was “willing to jointly evaluate international LNG opportunities” in Mozambique, Canada, and Australia, the document indicates. LNG stands for liquefied natural gas, which is a fossil fuel and a driver of global warming.

These and other details in the nearly 50-page document — obtained by the Centre for Climate Reporting and the BBC — have cast a pall over the climate summit, which begins Thursday. They are indications, experts said, that the UAE is blurring the boundary between its powerful standing as host of the UN climate conference, and UAE’s position as one of the world’s largest oil and gas exporters.

“I can’t believe it,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said at a news conference Monday. The UAE had been “caught red-handed,” Christiana Figueres, a former UN diplomat posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. Figueres led the negotiations that yielded the 2015 Paris Agreement, the pact among nations of the world to work to limit warming by 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Members of the UAE’s climate delegation didn’t respond to requests for comment.

An Emirati official earlier was quoted by BBC saying that “private meetings are private.” A spokesperson for the climate summit, known by the acronym COP28, called the document “inaccurate” and “not used by COP28 in meetings.” Follow-up questions were not answered.

In private, delegates preparing to travel to Dubai expressed concerns the cloud surrounding the host nation threatened to discredit the talks themselves. The allegations, they said, risked undermining what many have hoped the negotiations will yield: a deal to replace polluting fossil fuels with clean energy such as wind and solar power. But many said they were reluctant to speak out publicly, for fear of jeopardizing their ability to negotiate.

The UN climate conference has a rotating presidency, and the talks opening this week are being led by Sultan al-Jaber, who also heads ADNOC, which provides about 3 percent of the world’s oil.

Environmental groups and experts have expressed deep skepticism that an oil executive is running an international gathering aimed at tackling climate change. Although the UAE has taken steps to diversify, its economy and government budget both rely heavily on the continued production of oil and gas.

The leaked document suggest that “the firewalls are simply not there and that ‘business is business’ above all,” said Nikki Reisch, who directs the climate and energy program at the Center for International Environmental Law, an environmental nonprofit.