Why UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber, an oil company CEO, has caused controversy for heading climate change conference

The fact that an oil company executive has been named to preside over a conference whose main objective is to get the world to move away from oil and other fossil fuels is being seen as a clear case of conflict of interest, and has annoyed a lot of stakeholders who are invested in the climate negotiation process. This is the first time that anyone having a direct connection to the fossil fuel industry has been appointed as president of the climate change conference.

“He cannot preside over a process that is tasked to address the climate crisis with such a conflict of interest, heading an industry that is responsible for the crisis itself… It is imperative for the world to be reassured that he will step down from his role as the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Corporation,” said Tasneem Essop, executive director of Climate Action Network (CAN) International, a group of nearly 2,000 NGOs working in climate change and related areas.

Post of the COP president

The government of the host country holds the presidency of the COP for one year, till the conference is concluded. It usually names one of its ministers as the president. The role of the COP president is to facilitate and guide the negotiations. The president does not have any special powers, but does play a key role in prioritising the agenda of discussions and helping forge a consensus on important issues. They are usually extremely active behind the scenes, brokering deals and compromises, mediating conflicts, and acting as crisis managers.

For the past few years, COP presidents have also engaged in pre-conference diplomacy, travelling all over the world to hold discussions with governments in order to understand their priorities and to get a sense of the kind of agreement that could be realistically achieved at the conference.

While the COP president does have an influential role, the final decisions are always taken by consensus. The COP president, or any other individual or country, is unable to force through or impose any decision on others. There have been several instances when a single country — and not one from among the most powerful — has stood up and disagreed with the rest of the world, and the conference has had to accommodate its concerns.

A case of bad optics

It is an unrealistic apprehension that Sultan Al Jaber, or any other COP president, can single-handedly steer the negotiations in any particular direction. But his appointment as COP president is nonetheless bad optics. The industry he represents is likely to be directly affected by the decisions that are taken at the conference.

As Rachel Kyte, Dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, said, the world cannot afford mixed messaging from these climate conferences.

“It will be challenging (for Sultan Al Jaber) as COP president to unite countries around more aggressive (climate) action while at the same time suggesting that other (oil) producers stop producing because UAE has you covered,” Kyte said in a statement.

Tasneem Essop of CAN International said if the minister did not step down as CEO of the oil company, it would be “tantamount to a full scale capture of the UN climate talks by a petrostate national oil company and its associated fossil fuel lobbyists”.

And yet, the change that everyone seems to be asking for would be only cosmetic. One would need to have an ostrich’s attitude to believe that the climate conference would deliver a better result if Sultan Al Jaber either stepped down from his role at the oil company, or was replaced by a ministerial colleague as COP president.

Storm in a teacup

After all, Sultan Al Jaber’s oil company is state-owned. The UAE remains one of the top producers of oil, and its economy, like those of so many other countries in the region, is based almost entirely on oil. The argument against Al Jaber could, therefore, be easily extended to suggest that UAE should never have been allowed to host the COP. The country is deeply invested in oil, and it would be difficult to imagine how any other UAE minister who would replace Al Jaber, could delink himself entirely from that interest. Also, the UAE is not the first oil producing nation in the Gulf to host the event. Qatar hosted COP18 in 2012.

The absence of strong outcomes from the climate conferences have had little to do with weak or compromised presidents so far, and a lot with the fact that the developed countries have, over the years, systematically weakened the process, while failing to meet their own obligations.

In a bid to transfer their burden on others, the developed countries have jeopardised climate goals, which seem distinctly out of reach now. None of the COPs in the last 15 years has produced an outcome that ensures actions commensurate with what science says is required to curb global warming. And the way the Paris Agreement is designed — with every country being asked to come up with what it thinks is its best effort — can only lead to a suboptimal outcome.

In fact, these climate conferences have never even expressly asked for a phase-out of fossil fuels, the main reason behind the global rise in temperatures. A proposal moved by India to this effect at the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting last year did not get the necessary backing.

Incidentally, Al Jaber also happens to be the chairman of the Masdar, a state-owned renewable energy company. If being a representative of an oil company disqualifies him from presiding over the conference, being representative of a renewable energy company should make him eligible. He is someone who is effecting a transition from fossil fuels to renewables, the same kind of transition that the entire world has to make. There are several fossil-fuel based companies, including in India, that are now venturing into renewable energies. They need to be welcomed, rather than being painted as villains because they continue their fossil fuel operations for the time being.

Also, Sultan Al Jaber is not new to the climate conferences. He has been UAE’s special envoy on climate change for more than 10 years, and has attended these meetings in that capacity. He, therefore, is someone who would understand the process well.

The CEO of an oil company presiding over a climate conference is visibly jarring, no doubt, but to attribute a lacklustre outcome from the COP because of this reason would not be entirely accurate. The reasons for failures in climate action lie elsewhere.