The Conferences of the Parties (COP) have long ceased to be a dream. Taxed as “useless” by many observers, they have led for more than twenty years to compromises which do not prevent our emissions from climbing. Will Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, who will chair the next round in November, be more successful? The businessman in his fifties, at the head of the oil group Adnoc, the energy company of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, claims to embody a COP of efficiency. speaking With a lot of “business plans” and “concrete KPIs”, his very “business” speech contrasts with the traditional diplomatic declarations of his predecessors. This is enough to raise fears for pro-climate organizations of ambiguous results.
“The double hat of Al Jaber, boss of the COP and of an oil company, will inevitably have an effect on the way in which the identity of this meeting is built, with the risk of turning to false solutions”, s already worries Gaïa Febvre, head of international policies at the Réseau Action Climat (RAC).
Long present at climate summits, companies have considerably increased their weight in recent years. “The place of the oil and gas lobby is increasingly important”, continues Gaïa Febvre. Last year, at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, three NGOs noted a 25% jump among representatives of coal, oil or gas interests.
Become essential
Utilities are not the only ones to come and smell the air of the COPs. In 2021, in Glasgow, COP26 left a large place to the private sector with 7,000 participants, out of nearly 30,000, belonging to a myriad of companies, including many multinationals such as L’Oréal, IBM, Dassault Systèmes or Ikea … This increasingly visible physical presence testifies to a strategy aimed at “establishing ourselves as key players, including in terms of regulation”, explains Lynda Hubert Ta, professor of law at the University of Ottawa, who participated as an observer at COP15 Biodiversity. But it also underlines the importance for certain firms of being part of the solutions. During this COP15, held last December in Montreal, a coalition of 330 companies, with a total turnover of 1,300 billion dollars, declared themselves in favor of mandatory reporting on their impact in terms of biodiversity. .
In these “broad COP” – understand “enlarged COP”, in opposition to the “COP of the States” -, the round tables, forums and informal meetings are legion. With the observation, for the States, that firms must play a central role in the decarbonization of the economy. “We are involving more and more companies in these forums because we are making a simple observation: governments are setting up trajectories for which a large part of the effort is based on the private sector”, explains Marie Georges, Executive Director of Sustainability Consulting at Accenture. Sultan al-Jaber does not say otherwise. “The scale of the problem requires everyone to work in solidarity, he insists in the columns of the Guardian. We need partnerships, not polarization, and we must approach this with a clear logic and a plan of action. ‘executable action’.
Money, sinews of war
In the fight against climate change, and adaptation to it, the sinews of war remains, as usual, money. “Currently, there is a global funding gap for biodiversity and climate action, which states are struggling to fill on their own,” notes Lynda Hubert Ta. The presence of the private sector should therefore make it possible to put several billion dollars in the pot, within the framework of non-traditional and described as “innovative” financing mechanisms. “Public authorities do seem to see a major part of the solution here,” adds the academic. In the line of fire in particular, the fund for “losses and damage”, which was recorded at the last COP in Egypt, but also the long-awaited 100 billion dollars in annual aid granted by the countries of the North to the countries of the South to support them in their fight against global warming. So many topics on which companies are expected, as much to reduce their impact as to find remedies.