On Monday, the Centre for Climate Reporting and the BBC reported on leaked documents obtained from a whistleblower that purportedly show Sultan Al Jaber - the controversial president of the 28th Conference of Parties, or COP28, and the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company - planned to leverage his role as head of the summit to broker oil and gas deals with other countries and boost fossil fuel exports from the United Arab Emirates.
While the revelation has rattled the global climate community, it did not happen in a vacuum. Instead, the reported backdoor dealings are the fitting icing on the cake of international climate negotiations that many climate and environmental activists argue have been hijacked by the very industry most responsible for the crisis.
Rachel Rose Jackson, director of international climate research and policy at watchdog group Corporate Accountability, told HuffPost that "climate action has long been strangled by Big Polluters as well as those that represent their profit-driven interests. This interference is not specific to any one COP or one presidency...The impact is clear; we need look no further than the decades-long failure of COPs to curb greenhouse gas emission and keep fossil fuels in the ground."
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