Exposing a climate conference's biggest conflict

Hey there!

It’s a takeover week here at The Spark, and I’m delighted to introduce you all to Ben Stockton, an old colleague of mine who now helps to run the investigations team at the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR). At the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Ben covered the EU’s response to Covid-19, tobacco lobbying in the US, and how the UK courted dirty money. Now he covers one of the most urgent issues in the world – the climate crisis – including the role of the consulting business McKinsey in promoting fossil fuels, and this edition’s smash of a scoop: how a COP president used his role to lobby for oil deals. 

Over to Ben!

When the gavel finally came down at COP28, the major UN climate summit held in Dubai in late 2023, it was a historic end to a dramatic two weeks. 

It was just the second time a COP had been held in a petrostate and the first time the CEO of any company – let alone one from the fossil fuel industry – had presided over the summit. The two weeks had been peppered with controversy: a draft text was branded “grossly insufficient”; and campaigners had called for the summit president Dr Sultan Al Jaber to resign his position at the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) to avoid “a brazen conflict of interests”. 

As CEO of Adnoc, Al Jaber was overseeing a plan to significantly expand the company’s fossil fuel production capacity. But as the delegates rose to a standing ovation at the close of COP28, the oil boss was being credited for his part in shepherding a climate summit that many were calling a remarkable success.

Rewind several weeks and I was on the phone with a whistleblower. For months, I’d been a thorn in the side of the UAE team organising COP28 as CCR dug into allegations that the lines between it and Adnoc had been blurred. The whistleblower was taking an incredible risk in even talking to me. They said that Al Jaber had been planning to use his access to the parade of foreign government officials he was meeting in the months leading up to COP28 as an opportunity to lobby on fossil fuel deals for Adnoc. If true, it would be an astonishing breach of the impartiality expected from a COP president. And the source said they had the receipts to prove it.

As soon as I saw the evidence – pages and pages of briefing notes and screenshots of internal emails and WhatsApp chats – and verified its authenticity with a second source, I knew we had an important story. Not only did the briefings include details about potential fossil fuel deals Al Jaber could lobby on, but we also had evidence that Adnoc staff were being asked to help prepare the notes.

The story ran with the BBC a couple days before the start of the summit. Even we were surprised by the reaction. Having worked on investigations for the past several years, I am acutely aware that important stories don’t always get the attention they need or deserve. But we were almost instantly flooded by inquiries from some of the world’s biggest news organisations, including the likes of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and CNN, all wanting to know more about the story and the documents.

At a press conference on the eve of the summit, Al Jaber was asked to address the allegations included in our story, which he forcibly denied. 

But a little over a week later, he was defending his position again after we unearthed a recording in which he argued that phasing out fossil fuels would take the world “back into caves” and that there was “no science” to support the idea.  

At a press conference, his patience wearing visibly thin, he stressed that his background as an engineer and an economist meant he respected the science of climate change. Again, our story was picked up by outlets around the world.

Both stories shone a light on what many people, including Rachel Rose Jackson at Corporate Accountability, had been saying for a long time: the fossil fuel interests at COP risked derailing international efforts to address the climate crisis. Our work had, in the words of former vice president Al Gore, revealed “the reality of the most brazen conflict of interest in the history of climate negotiations”. 

So why were delegates congratulating Al Jaber when the meeting ended after those tumultuous two weeks? For the first time since COPs began almost three decades ago, the text adopted at the summit included language on the need to transition away from fossil fuels. It was undoubtedly a historic outcome even if some still expressed reservations about the final text. 

While it’s unrealistic to think that a single piece of journalism changed the outcome of a high profile summit like COP, the scrutiny heaped pressure on Al Jaber to be as ambitious as possible in finding a draft that everyone could agree on. 

The work also continues to be important in exposing the competing interests of petrostates who market themselves as leaders on climate change. Recently I was speaking to someone involved in international climate forums worried about how the US appears to be pulling back its efforts to address climate change since the start of Trump’s second term. He told me that in the absence of the US on the international stage, countries like the UAE are pitching themselves as a more reliable partner, even if their plans to curtail the world’s dependence on fossil fuels might be less ambitious.

“The COP28 presidency was a very glaring example of just how co-opted the halls of supposed climate action have become, but it is far from the only example. For 30 years, the UN climate talks have failed to agree the strong and urgent action needed to avert the climate crisis. Why? 

Because for 30 years, the UN climate talks have been infiltrated and manipulated by Big Polluters. I worked as part of the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition that has been tracking fossil fuel industry presence and influence at the UN climate talks for years. At COP28, we found that there were a record breaking 2,400+ lobbyists attending the climate talks in Dubai, four times more than the previous year. 

On the ground in Dubai, it was clear to see the impact a fossil fuel presidency combined with unprecedented fossil fuel industry presence was having. We heard rumours of multiple closed-door wine-and-dine events where the industry was promoting their profit-over-people agenda to influential government delegates. And we watched while governments like the United States, the world's largest historical polluter, alongside the European Union and United Kingdom systematically obstructed any meaningful attempt at progress in almost every negotiating room.

Many of us were so outraged by the flagrant attempts to steamroll any progress in Dubai. In response, we worked together to disrupt and expose the obstruction that was happening, through daily frontline-led actions on the ground, to press conferences, to global media engagement and tracking and tracing of obstruction as it happened. Altogether, we worked to ensure that billions of people around the world were aware that governments at COP28 were not set to deliver the life-saving action we so urgently need, and that climate science shows that we need.

It's essential that we understand the full implications of the supposed victory of COP28. The only thing that governments agreed to was to acknowledge the need to phase down (not out) fossil fuels. What looks like a tremendous victory is actually riddled with loopholes and dangerous distractions that effectively pave the way for continued fossil fuel expansion.  

Until we end the ability of Big Polluters ability to write the rules of climate action, and hold accountable the largest historial emitters like the United States, we can only expect continued failure from the very negotiations that are meant to help ensure the survival of the planet.

On the one hand, it is no small feat that COP28 finally formally acknowledged the role that fossil fuels play in fueling the climate crisis. This acknowledgment was a hard-won victory resulting from years of sustained campaigning by the climate justice movement and frontline communities around the world.  

On the other hand, how pathetic is it that it takes the UNFCCC nearly 30 years to even acknowledge the danger of fossil fuels, despite decades of clear evidence and climate science? 

That alone shows just how tight the fossil fuel industry’s stranglehold over this process is.”

And I’m back! My thanks to Ben and Rachel Rose for today’s takeover. It’s super-impressive to see what a small newsroom can put together – there are just four team members at the CCR, including another TBIJ alum, Hajar Medah.

Next week I’ll be back with a look back at one of TBIJ’s biggest stories from the pandemic – one that still save lives today. If you want to hear more from TBIJ and you haven’t signed up already, our Uncovered newsletter keeps you up to date with the latest investigations every Saturday. Or if you support us by becoming one of our members, you can make a world of difference.

See you soon!