Some 630 lobbyists for oil, gas and coal industries have registered for the UN climate summit, COP 27, in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, according to Global Witness and Corporate Europe Observator.
This is 25% more than at COP26 in Scotland, the two environmental organisations note in a report, pointing out that the fossil-fuel sector is better represented in Sharm-el-Sheikh than the 10 countries most affected by the climate crisis.
The best represented country at the summit is the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the report says. The UAE, which lives mainly on oil exports and will host the COP next year, has registered 1,070 participants, up from 176 last year. Seventy of them are oil lobbyists.
According to the environmental organisations, 29 of the 200 countries represented at the COP include fossil-fuel lobbyists in their delegations. The United Arab Emirates has the most, followed by Russia, with 33.
“The unusual presence of these lobbyists at these talks is a bad joke, at the expense of humanity and the planet,” Global Witness and Corporate Europe Observator say.
For the NGOs, “it's time to kick out the big polluters” from the COP, just as health conferences exclude tobacco lobbyists, and peace conferences refuse to admit arms dealers.
