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COP30 must remove fossil fuel interests from climate negotiations [1]
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Date: 2025-04
When you imagine climate diplomacy in action, you might think of tireless negotiators and scientists huddled around a table, working late into the night on difficult compromises in pursuit of something existential.
Climate diplomacy, we are told, is where people come together to solve the climate crisis. But that vision is increasingly at odds with reality. Troublingly, fossil fuel firms and other powerful interests have a growing influence at global climate talks.
More than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists were granted access to last year’s COP29, the 29th annual conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in Azerbaijan – more than the combined delegations of the ten most climate-vulnerable countries. The year before, the state oil firm of the host country, the United Arab Emirates, reportedly used COP28 to pursue fossil fuel deals.
These are not isolated incidents. They reveal a deeper problem at the heart of the process; negotiations intended to serve the public good are being shaped by private interests.
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We have everything to lose, yet there are still no meaningful checks on who gets the privilege of access or the influence they wield behind closed doors.
This lack of accountability echoes a broader vulnerability in the system, as highlighted by Donald Trump withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement in 2020 and again earlier this year – both of which served as a stark reminder of how fragile the global climate consensus really is.
Today, multilateral institutions are under renewed pressure, not only from geopolitical fragmentation and constrained finance but also through declining public trust in the integrity of the process.
If we want people to believe in international cooperation, to trust that multilateralism can still deliver solutions to the climate crisis, then we must confront this directly. Failing to do so will put the credibility of the entire process at risk.
Integrity must be at the heart of the climate negotiations – not as an afterthought, but as a foundation for a just transition. That’s why, with COP30 just months away, there is an urgent need to address the credibility gap at the centre of climate diplomacy.
In this context, more than 250 civil society organisations and experts from across the world have signed an open letter calling for urgent action to protect the climate negotiations from undue influence.
We’re calling on Brazil, which will host COP30 later this year, to commit to the following three steps. It must bar fossil fuel and high-polluting industry lobbyists from state delegations, require all COP participants to publicly declare their affiliations via a central, accessible registry, and back reforms to ensure only countries making genuine progress on climate goals are eligible to host future summits.
Our letter also urges Brazil to advance its proposed “global ethical stocktake”, which would bring together a geographically diverse group of thinkers, scientists, politicians, religious leaders, artists, philosophers, and Indigenous peoples and communities, to discuss ethical commitments and practices for dealing with the climate crisis. This should start with an independent audit of the undue influence exerted by fossil fuel interests at previous COPs, in partnership with civil society and frontline communities.
The scientific warnings about climate and ecological tipping points have never been clearer. But the diplomacy we need to respond to them is nearing a tipping point of its own. A process designed to hold governments accountable cannot continue to grant privileged access to the very industries driving the crisis.
Brazil has an opportunity to set a new standard, one that shows climate leadership means not just delivering results, but protecting the integrity of the institutions meant to deliver them. The Brazilian presidency can send a powerful message by voluntarily taking the lead on this, and the UNFCCC should give its full backing.
COP30 is the moment for a climate diplomacy reset. What comes next, in Brazil and beyond, depends on it.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/cop30-remove-fossil-fuel-lobby-climate-talks-negotiations-brazil/
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