19 May 2023, Climate Homes News: The UAE’s Cop28 presidency has gone all Clint Eastwood this week, by asking The Good, The Bad and The Ugly to be involved in the climate talks. Wearing the white hat on the new 31-member Cop28 advisory board are the likes of Hindou Ibrahim, a climate campaigner from Chad, and Saleemul Huq, who has called fossil fuel exploration a “crime against humanity”. On the other side of the saloon are four fossil fuel executives including Bob Dudley. A new study shows his old firm BP owes $377 billion a year in climate reparations but that is definitely not on the agenda of Cop28 president Sultan Al-Jaber seeing as the company he leads (Adnoc) owes $318 billion a year. Then there’s the downright ugly. The UAE’s ambassador to Syria issued a formal invitation to Bashar al-Assad. A Cop28 spokesperson said they wanted to “have everyone in the room”. Read more here
The United Arab Emirates has appointed 31 people, including fossil fuel executives and climate campaigners, to its advisory board for November’s Cop28 climate talks. The group includes the chair of an Indian gas company, the former head of China’s national oil company, the ex-boss of the UK’s BP oil firm and the CEO of an Emirati oil and gas producer. It also features the head of the African climate foundation, a veteran Bangladeshi anti fossil-fuel campaigner and the former president of the climate-threatened Marshall Islands. The UAE government said the board brought together “the climate expertise of thought leaders from countries across six continents”. They said it includes “policy, industry, energy, finance, civil society, youth and humanitarian action” and “will provide guidance and counsel to the Cop presidency in the run up to Cop28 and beyond”. But Oil Change International campaigner Romain Ioualalen told Climate Home: “While there has clearly been an effort to make the advisory committee inclusive and diverse, it is deeply concerning to see oil and gas interests being consulted on how to run negotiations to phase out their products.” Read more here