‘Deeply Problematic to Say the Least’: CEO of UAE-Owned Oil Company to Be COP28 President

Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber is UAE’s Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, and CEO of ADNOC, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Activists have criticised the appointment and said it’s in direct conflict of interest to the COP.

Kochi: The United Arab Emirates, which will host the 28th Conference of Parties (COP28) at Dubai later this year, has announced the COP’s President-Designate to be Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the UAE’s Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology.

Jaber is also the serving CEO of the United Arab Emirates-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).

Activists worldwide have expressed concern at the move, calling the appointment “outrageously regressive” and “deeply problematic”, among others. The main aim of the COP is to push the world towards limiting global warming to 1.5° Celsius, and cutting down on oil and gas exploration and use are one of the crucial means of achieving this. Activists say that designating an oil boss as the president of a conference is a direct conflict of interest to this objective.

Another COP, another President

The Conference of Parties or COP is the world’s biggest climate conference where world leaders and country representatives discuss, negotiate and decide on the actions that can be taken to tackle climate change and limit global warming to to 1.5°C, as per the Paris Agreement of 2015.

At every conference, the serving COP presidency announces the hosting nation, dates and venue for the next conference. At COP27 held in Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt in November 2022, Egypt’s COP presidency officially announced that the United Arab Emirates would host COP28 at Dubai Expo City between November 30 and December 12 this year. Host countries later designate a COP President, whose role is easily the most important in COP meetings.

The COP President is responsible for achieving conference objectives and mandates, while also ensuring that negotiations, discussions and debates are fair and the perspectives of member nations are heard. As per the Convention on Biological Diversity, the host government’s Minister of Environment usually holds the post.

The UAE, which will host COP28 between November 30 and December 12 this year at Dubai Expo City, announced Sultan Al Jaber as the President Designate last week. Jaber is the UAE Special Envoy for Climate, and Chairman of Masdar, the government’s renewable energy company based in Abu Dhabi. However, he is also the UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, and Group MD and CEO of ADNOC, the UAE-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. ADNOC aimed to touch a target of 245 Mt/year of oil production capacity

Incidentally, on January 1, ADNOC formed a new gas company by merging its gas and LNG joint ventures with international oil companies to expand its international presence. On the other hand, on January 5, ADNOC announced that it would allocate USD15 billion for decarbonisation projects, such as projects on clean power and carbon storage, by 2030.

This is the first time a serving oil executive is being appointed COP President.

On January 12, India’s Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav congratulated Sultan Al Jaber on becoming COP28 president designate.

“Both India and the UAE have been world leaders in working on climate change. We assure India’s full support for a successful COP28,” he tweeted.

‘Problematic’ appointment

But environment and climate activists are not pleased — at all. Appointing an oil boss as the president of a COP is a direct conflict of interest to the objectives of the COP, they said. Phasing out fossil fuels — which is crucial to limit greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels — was high on the agenda of discussion for the last climate conference, but COP27 did not deliver any concrete outcomes on it. Reports show that if limiting global warming to 1.5° C is to be achieved, “the world must immediately halt new oil and gas development and transition rapidly to renewable energy,” a Nature editorial noted on January 11.

“Al Jaber’s appointment as #COP28 President is outrageously regressive and deeply problematic to say the least!”, tweeted Harjeet Singh, of the global NGO Climate Action Network (CAN) International. “Fossil fuels are the root cause of the #ClimateCrisis. His position as CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company raises grave conflict of interest issues.”

“If he does not step down [as CEO] it will be tantamount to a full scale capture of the UN climate talks by a petrostate national oil company and fossil fuel lobbyists,” Tasneem Essop, executive director of CAN-International, told The Guardian.

Scientists are asking questions about the appointment too. “The President of the next crucial international climate negotiations, Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, is the CEO of major oil company ADNOC. He is working to increase its output of crude oil from 3 million barrels of oil a day in 2016 to 5 million by 2030. Does that make any sense to you?” tweeted James Dyke, associate professor at the Global Systems Institute in the University of Exeter.

R.R. Rashmi, Distinguished Fellow at The Energy Resources Institute, called the appointment an “interesting development”. The UAE is a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) with an ambition to achieve net zero carbon goal by 2050 while simultaneously sustaining oil production, he said.

Also read: COP27: Basic Countries Call Out Rich Nations for ‘Backtracking on Finance, Mitigation Commitments’

“In the backdrop of deepening climate crisis, the choice of CoP President is apparently guided by UAE’s keenness to skilfully balance the conflicting goals of its oil based economy with those of global goals of reducing emissions and addressing climate change,” he said. “However, the solutions such as CCS [carbon capture and storage] espoused by the oil industry of which ADNOC CEO is a representative are rather controversial and less convincing.”

The appointment shows that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is becoming “less pretentious”, said environmentalist S. Faizi, who has participated in COPs in the past. “This has happened upturning the convention of having ministers holding the environment portfolio as president of the COP, whether it is UNFCCC or the CBD,” he said.

The UAE has a minister for environment and climate change, Mariam Almheiri, but she will only have a support role for the president as envisaged by the UAE govt, he noted.

“This reconfirms my belief that it is the corporate forces that drive the agenda of the global environmental policy, whether it is about climate change or biodiversity loss,” he told The Wire.

United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric told Reuters that the COP president “is chosen by the host country with no involvement of the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres or the Secretariat of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change”.