This quid pro quo, the use of the conference as a venue to facilitate oil and gas deals, is part of the emerging petrostate playbook which sees COP as just another global business conference, an opportunity to drum up investment in your oil and gas sector.
Now, contracts are being drawn up. There’s still been no mention of any climate requirements, pledges or net-zero plans.
The agreement, when it arrives, requires the sponsor to commit to “actively support” Azerbaijan’s National Pledge and occasionally provide “sustainability reports”, but details are scant.
EC Capital wasn’t willing to do any of that and pushed back on both points. Thankfully, COP29 say that “Azerbaijan’s National Pledge is a program for local companies, thus it will be removed from the final contract” and that they would happily consider “corrections” from EC Capital on sustainability reports.
COP29 was poised to declare EC Capital as an official sponsor to the world. A junior official asked if “EC Capital Holdings – Investment Partner” would be the correct nomenclature for a “press release announcement.”
Eventually, following the completion of a tick-box due diligence form which sought no commitment on climate issues, the COP29 team agreed to remove any mention of sustainability reports from the draft contract.
After some back and forth, with any pretence of sustainability losing further ground, the COP29 team agreed to include a new clause, requested by EC Capital, specifying that COP29 would organise “meeting opportunities with key local stakeholders from the energy sector at COP29.“
As the negotiations dragged on, the COP29 team started to express concern that the contract had not yet been signed. A junior official makes the trade-off clear. The introduction to SOCAR will be made only once the contract is signed.
It’s at this point, just a few short weeks after dangling the prospect of sponsorship in return for access, that Soltanov puts EC Capital in touch with Elshad Nassirov, Vice President at SOCAR.
COP29 is indeed wide open for business.
So what?
Some might ask, who cares? If the oil industry doesn’t do deals at COP, they’ll do them somewhere else.
Sure, access at COP might make it easier, but in the grand scheme of things, there will be just as many oil deals, whether they happen at COP or not.
If that’s the case, how can leaders expect anyone to care, to make changes in their own lives in this upside-down world where the process meant to get us off fossil fuels is being abused by powerful people for profit?
Many have seen the debasement of COP in recent years and decided to boycott it. They argue that participating in such a flawed process risks legitimising the bad faith actors involved.
That’s an understandable reaction. The climate movement shouldn’t vacate the space for the oil industry, but it’s a response the UNFCCC will continue to fuel, if it fails to clean up the process.
There are no easy answers for the UN. It cannot banish the oil industry from the talks alone. Governments decide which countries host COP, and who represents them as delegates.
But clearly, as this investigation reveals, whatever guardrails the UNFCCC put up have been bypassed by lobbyists and fossil fuel powers.
Global Witness made multiple approaches for comment to the COP29 team, SOCAR and UNFCCC in relation to today’s findings.
Neither the COP29 team or SOCAR – both directly linked to the Azerbaijan state – made any attempt to communicate with Global Witness.
Azerbaijan media did, however, publish a story based on “reliable sources” several days ahead of this investigation which corroborated the sequence of events but said that facilitating discussions about fossil fuel investments at COP29 is not a conflict of interest.
The UNFCCC declined to send Global Witness any comment on the points raised in this investigation.
However, in an email the UNFCCC did say that this investigation does not refer to activities covered by the Code of Conduct for UNFCCC Events – a distinct set of guidance to the Code of Ethics for COP officials which Global Witness had cited.
Separately, in response to a BBC report on this investigation, the UNFCCC told the BBC that “the [UNFCCC] secretariat has the same rigorous standards every year, reflecting the importance of impartiality on the part of all presiding officers.
“Given the spiralling human and economic costs of the global climate crisis in every country, we are very focused on COP29 delivering ambitious and concrete outcomes.”
The UNFCCC has some basic questions to answer. Who is served by the creeping commercialisation of the talks? In the face of this new evidence that sponsorship deals are a gateway for commercial interests, what benefits do they bring?
Scrapping corporate sponsorship is within the UNFCCC’s power and should be a no brainer, an absolute bare minimum to start to claw back some integrity.
It is said that climate diplomats, the civil servants tasked with negotiating the outcomes at COP, want a stripped-back summit, something less gaudy and more focused on the job at hand.
That seems sensible. The world has tried 29 talks with an ever-growing crowd of polluters and snake oil salesmen present. Next it should try one without.
Notes:
- The meeting with Elnur Soltanov took place on September 13, 2024
- The meeting with the COP29 partnerships team took place on September 3, 2024
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