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Over 100 United States and European Union lawmakers have appealed to the leaders of their countries and the United Nations to oust oil executive Sultan Al Jaber as head of this year’s 28th Conference of Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), reported news agency Bloomberg.
The United Arab Emirates is hosting this year’s UN climate summit. However, the country has the third biggest net zero-busting plans for oil and gas expansion in the world, British newspaper The Guardian had earlier reported.
UAE’s plans are surpassed only by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Al Jaber runs the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).
Al Jaber is overseeing ADNOC’s expansion to produce oil and gas equivalent to 7.5 billion barrels of oil, The Guardian report said. Ninety per cent of this expansion would have to remain in the ground to meet the Net Zero scenario set out by the International Energy Agency.
The recent letter, seen by Bloomberg Green, was addressed to US President Joe Biden, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell. It was signed by 99 EU and 34 US lawmakers.
Further steps are needed to limit the influence of fossil-fuel companies at the talks to be hosted by the United Arab Emirates at the end of the year, the letter further said.
This isn’t the first concerted effort to remove Al Jaber. In January, more than two dozen US lawmakers called on the country’s climate envoy John Kerry to apply diplomatic pressure on the UAE to replace him as COP28 chief.
African climate activists had also equated the appointment to putting the fox to be in charge of the henhouse. In February, green EU lawmakers also made the same case in a letter addressed to UN’s Stiell.
COP28 will take place in a global energy crisis scenario orchestrated by the Russia-Ukraine crisis and when already industrialised and high-energy consuming countries are planning to reopen coal plants and drive new oil and gas developments, especially in Africa.