the contradictions of summit president Sultan al-Jaber – L’Express

And while the event is only in its fifth day, its controversial president, whose every word is scrutinized, continues to make people talk about him. The reason ? Positions that are questionable to say the least on an environmental level, which leave room for serious doubts as to its true intentions in terms of progress against global warming.

At the end of November, the BBC’s revelations already set the tone. According to the British media, the organizers of COP 28 took advantage of the event to conclude deals in fossil fuels. In short, laundering of pollutants. Enough to give fodder to certain environmental defenders who have been describing the event as a “climate scam” for months.

But at the start of the week, one document is particularly controversial: the summary of the opening summit of negotiations which brought together some 140 leaders on December 1 and 2. And the reasons are multiple.

In this text written by the presidency of the COP and revealed by the Guardian, the term “reduction” is preferred to that of “exit” from fossil fuels. And while this was demanded by dozens of leaders at the United Nations climate conference, Al-Jaber and his team are accused of ignoring calls to put an end to the use of fossil fuels.

In addition, many observers criticize the presidency for having largely summarized the financial or energy announcements and commitments made at the end of the first discussions. And to qualify the text as “a dense jungle that will have to be pruned before the ministers arrive” in Dubai to finalize the negotiations supposed to lead to a final agreement at COP 28 with objectives of “reduction”, or even ” exit” from fossil fuels.

And because a controversy rarely happens alone, the oil tycoon has also been under fire since the publication of a video revealed by our colleagues from the British daily The Guardian. The recording reveals a tense discussion between Sultan al-Jaber and former Irish president Mary Robinson, a member of the Global Elders group, which took place on November 21.

“I will in no way subscribe to alarmist discussions, asserts Sultan al-Jaber during the exchange. No scientific study, no scenario, says that the exit from fossil fuels will allow us to reach 1.5°C. […] Show me the road map for an exit from fossil fuels that is compatible with socio-economic development, without sending the world back to the age of caves.”

The sequence dates from last November. And the presidency knows how much this leak could tarnish an image already darkened by the latest revelations, which punctuated the opening of the conference. “The president of COP 28 declares that there is no science behind the demand to stop fossil fuels. As lobbyists have always done, he is trying to sow doubt when it is undeniable that they are the main cause of climate change”, lamented Réseau Action Climat on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday December 3.

It was then that a vast defensive plan was launched on Monday, December 4. And as if to get ahead of the journalists who were planning to question him about the revelations of the Guardian, Sultan al-Jaber assured to respect climate science. Striving to highlight his engineering training: “Science has guided my life,” defended the man whose studies in the United States were financed by a scholarship offered by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company as revealed it The Financial Times in October 2021.

“We are here because we believe and we respect science,” he declared this Monday during a press conference, to which he had summoned Jim Skea, the president of the IPCC, the group of climate experts mandated by the UN. And to take on board the objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2030, compared to 2019, recommended by the scientific community to limit warming to + 1.5°C.

But a problem persists. When he considers the “reduction” and “exit” of fossil fuels as “inevitable”, Sultan al-Jaber refrains from clearly deciding in favor of one or the other. Thus returning to evade the question of the future of fossil fuels which nevertheless constitutes the very heart of the discussions of this 28th edition.

Especially since this vagueness voluntarily maintained by the presidency reinforces the idea according to which the organizers would like to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without really working towards a rapid exit from fossil fuels. And what’s more, by relying on carbon capture technologies that have not yet been proven on a large scale.

To his detractors, the president’s entourage regularly reminds that Sultan al-Jaber is also at the head of the giant specializing in renewable energies, Masdar, which he founded in 2006. “When I call on the parties to agreement on ambitious wording on fossils, it is barely talked about. When I say that oil and gas companies need to do much more, it is never picked up by the media. But a sentence taken out of context, misinterpreted, causes maximum media coverage,” added Sultan al-Jaber, who refutes all the criticism he is subjected to.