The oil company CEO running the next UN climate
change summit
Today in
Focus Series
Presented
by Michael Safi with Damian Carrington; produced by Eli Block, Natalie Ktena
and Rudi Zygadlo; executive producer Phil Maynard
Wed 28 Jun
2023 03.00 BST
The UN’s annual climate conference is being
dogged by scandal months before it even begins. Environment editor Damian
Carrington reports
When the Guardian environment editor Damian
Carrington received a reply to an email he had sent to the organisers of this
year’s UN climate change conference, he noticed something unusual: it was
stamped with the name of the state oil company of the hosts.
He tells Michael Safi how an investigation led to
him proving that the United Arab Emirates were running the conference by sharing
an email server with Adnoc, the state oil company. It would have allowed the
oil company access to every email to and from the conference organising
committee.
It is just the latest controversy to hit the
preparations for Cop28, to be held in Dubai in November. The president of Cop28
is Sultan Al Jaber, who is also the chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National
Oil Company. And there have been allegations that an army of fake social media
accounts are promoting and defending the UAE’s position as Cop28 hosts.
A Cop28 spokesperson said: “These [fake accounts]
are generated by outside actors unconnected to Cop28 and are clearly designed
to discredit Cop28 and the climate process.”
In response to the finding that Adnoc servers
were involved in Cop28 office communications, a Cop28 spokesperson said: “We
have been migrating our data from the previous host to our own setup.”
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