Big polluters may muddy the waters again at COP

Antalya: More than 100 corporations and industry associations with connections to the fossil fuel industry have sent delegations to COP31, according to a report, raising questions about the conference's ability to reach an agreement on the transition to clean energy.

The report by Kick the Big Polluters Out, a global coalition of more than 450 environmental and civil society organisations, said representatives of major fossil fuel companies, Big Tech, industrial agriculture and food industries have accessed the climate talks through various routes.

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Environmentalists said this could be a key reason why the climate talks may once again fail to agree on a timeline or a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels despite UN chief Antonio Guterres repeatedly stressing the need to shift to clean energy systems through the first week of COP31. "You can't put out a fire while handing the matches to the arsonists. And you certainly can't expect the arsonists to write the evacuation plan," said Lien Vandamme of Centre for International Environmental Law. "It's, therefore, no surprise that the UN climate talks continue to fail in delivering the climate action that is needed."

According to the report, based on an analysis of registered participants, there are 222 delegates hosted on "party overflow" badges, which are generally issued to people outside government delegations but nominated by governments as relevant to the negotiations. Another 203 fossil fuel representatives have accessed the talks through badges reserved for non-governmental organisations. As many as 45 delegates are guests of COP31 host Turkiye, while 31 are on the official negotiating delegations of countries or on "party" badges given to government representatives.

These representatives outnumber the delegations of some of the world's most climate-vulnerable countries, activists said. For example, for every delegate from Nepal, there are six from fossil fuel organisations.

"Big Polluters have caused loss of livelihood, emotional damage, trauma, and survival challenges for our people. We cannot tolerate the disproportionate space given to them compared to civil society and our country delegations," Prakash Dalal of Friends of the Earth Nepal said. The presence of fossil fuel representatives undermines efforts to focus on issues of climate justice that Nepal wants to highlight at the conference, he said. According to the report, among those present include organisations and companies such as Federation of German Industries (BDI), ExxonMobil, BusinessEurope, JBS, TotalEnergies, Cargill and BlackRock.

The coalition wants an accountability framework that would protect the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from undue influence and include a conflict-of-interest policy that would help the convention stop being the exception to good practice.