Claims COP28 hosts using summit to broker oil and gas deals must be investigated
The Scottish Greens have called for an urgent investigation into reports that the United Arab Emirates has been planning to use its role as host of the COP28 climate summit to strike oil and gas deals with other countries.
News reports suggest UAE officials planned to lobby at least 15 other nations, including China, Germany and Australia, on potential fossil fuel collaborations for its state run operations. The UK is also attending the summit.
Mark Ruskell MSP, the Scottish Greens climate spokesperson, said: “This would be an outrageous abuse of the world’s largest climate summit. If true it would make a complete mockery of COP28 being hosted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“That the world’s flagship climate event has been hijacked by big business is nothing new, it is depressingly evident just looking at many of the sponsors.
“But using it to lobby for the very same oil and gas deals being argued against by delegates in the rooms next door, including those nations most at risk from global warming, is simply weaponising it against them.
“Many of us had grave reservations about the suitability of the UAE as hosts, and this will do nothing to reassure people. They should explain themselves and the UN must hold an urgent investigation into the claims.
“Thousands of delegates are heading for the summit, including from Scotland. They go in the hope that science will be seen, nations will be heard and that we emerge with actions not words to help us through the climate crisis.
“We need an end date to fossil fuels, not secretive backroom deals, and we need to make polluters pay with the launch of a new loss and damage fund. We must also correct the course of transformative action that has strayed from limiting temperatures to 1.5C.
“Two years on from COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland has taken big strides on our actions for biodiversity and nature restoration, active travel and better public transport, and are now focused on renewable energy and clean heat.
“We need to see that same kind of commitment on an even bigger scale at COP28 and a complete acceptance that a greener sustainable renewable energy future has to be implemented as part of a just transition as quickly as possible.”
