Observers at the COP climate summits can now choose to make public who is paying for their participation, under new transparency guidelines introduced by the UN climate change body in response to pressure over the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists on the talks.
For the first time this year, anyone who is not part of a country’s official delegation has the option of disclosing the direct source of funding for them to take part at COP30 in Belèm. The measure applies to a large number of participants, including civil society organisations, business representatives, academia and Indigenous groups.
Campaigners from the “Kick Big Polluters Out” coalition have welcomed the move as a “much needed step towards ending big polluters’ stranglehold over climate action”.
“From deals behind closed doors to weakening multilateral agreements, the fossil fuel industry has been using their influence to rig the game at COP for too long,” said Katie Williams, of the UK Youth Climate Coalition. “These changes to COP registration are a positive move that will make it clear who is gambling with our collective future.”
Pressure to keep polluters out
Almost 1,800 fossil fuel lobbyists were given access to last year’s COP29 talks in Azerbaijan, according to analysis by Kick Big Polluters Out – more than the delegates of the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries combined.
That was fewer than at COP28 in Dubai – around 2,450 – but that conference saw a larger number of participants overall, at more than 80,000 compared with around 56,000 in Baku.
Since COP28, delegates have been required to disclose their affiliation, meaning that those working for fossil fuel companies have had to be clear about their ties.
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Calls for stronger rules to keep fossil fuel influence out of UN climate talks have been growing louder.
Climate Home revealed last month that PR giant Edelman was awarded a media strategy contract with the COP30 presidency despite its work with Shell in what campaigners described as an obvious conflict of interest. The United Nations Development Programme, which handled the contract, said it was compliant with the UN agency’s policies.
Failure to disclose is a ‘major red flag’
While the new disclosure of funding for COP attendance is not compulsory, the UN climate body (UNFCCC) will make public an attendee’s decision not to volunteer the information in the official list of participants released during the climate summit.
A spokesperson for Kick Big Polluters Out told Climate Home that the failure to disclose the information will be seen as “a major red flag”.
“Those with ties to big polluters that fail to be honest about who and what they represent will open themselves to even greater public scrutiny, and further legitimise why they should not be allowed to shape the global response to climate change,” they added.
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Under the new rules, COP observers will also be given the option of explicitly declaring that their participation aligns with the objective of the UN climate change convention and the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Myriam Douo, global industry campaigner at Oil Change International, said that “no Big Oil executive can credibly claim their objectives are aligned” with the UN climate convention “while continuing to drill and cause destruction to our planet and communities”.
Many “lobbyists” still exempted from rule
Many industry representatives register for COPs as “observers” through trade associations. But the new guidelines would not have applied to the majority of those identified by campaigners as fossil fuel lobbyists last year.
Just over two-thirds – 68% – of them gained access to the COP29 talks through official national delegations, either with a “party” or “party overflow” badge, according to research published by Transparency International.
These participants are required to publicly disclose their affiliation, but are currently exempted from the new measures on funding.
Campaigners want the UNFCCC to go further and introduce a conflict of interest policy and an “accountability framework” that fully protects climate diplomacy from the influence of lobbyists from polluting industries.
Rachitaa Gupta of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) said, until that happens, “the legitimacy of these talks will remain deeply in question”.
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COP observers invited to reveal who is bank-rolling their participation at climate talks
Three countries have been named by the Paris Agreement’s compliance committee for failing to submit a nationally determined contribution (NDC) and repeatedly snubbing offers of help with their climate plans.
After months of internal debate over whether to identify serial non-responders, the Paris Agreement’s Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) named the three countries which have failed to engage with it over their NDCs on Friday.
It named Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and North Korea in a footnote of its annual report, adding that it decided to name them “with a view to facilitating engagement”, adding that representatives of the three nations had been invited to its meeting in early 2027 “with the purpose of identifying any challenges and constraints”.
“The Committee noted the importance of Parties engaging with the Committee in a timely manner, while noting that some delays may be due to the national capabilities and circumstances of the Parties”, the report said.
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Paris Agreement committee snubbed over missing NDC climate plans
Many governments have still not submitted a nationally determined contribution to the UN, breaching a key requirement of the Paris Agreement
In July, PAICC said 12 countries had ignored its repeated attempts to discuss why they had not published an NDC as required every five years under the 2015 Paris accord.
Members of the committee had been divided over whether to name them, but at a September meeting decided to do so in their annual report to the annual climate COP summit.
By the time the report was published on Friday, only Congo, Senegal and North Korea “had not communicated an NDC or submitted a [Biennial Transparency Report] and had not yet responded to any of the Committee’s notifications, despite several reminders issued by the Committee in this regard”.
Rainforest and renewable energy ambitions
The silence from Congo and Senegal is notable because the former is home to much of the Congo Basin rainforest while the latter has sought billions of dollars in climate finance to support its renewable energy ambitions.
After Brazil, Congo has more rainforest than any country in the world. This forest, and the country’s peatlands, absorb huge amounts of greenhouse gas but are fast being lost to expanding farmland, charcoal production, logging and mining.
Senegal signed a Just Energy Transition Partnership with Canada and wealthy European nations in 2023, to help it meet its renewable energy targets under the-then government of Macky Sall. It was chair of the Least Developed Countries group between January 2022 and December 2023.
Tejas Rao, who is researching the PAICC as part of a doctoral thesis at Cambridge University, said the governments of the three countries should engage with the committee.
“Engagement costs these governments very little and the committee has shown it will listen,” he said.
“Silence leaves the committee with no basis to help, and it leaves the [governments] exposed to the narrative that they are simply disengaged,” he told Climate Home News.
Paris Agreement requirement
The 2015 Paris Agreement requires all parties to publish an NDC every five years outlining their emissions reduction targets, with each plan meant to be more ambitious than the country’s last NDC.
The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in February 2025. While most countries missed this deadline, all but around 30 – mostly small emitters but including Egypt, Vietnam and Argentina – have now submitted them.
Over the year, the PAICC – which is made up of government climate officials from developed and developing countries – has been communicating with governments that have not submitted NDCs and trying to overcome barriers to them doing so.
Some nations have cited exceptional circumstances as the reason for not submitting an NDC, a process that requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC, seen by Climate Home News, said that the country’s civil war had led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.
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The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement and so do not have active NDCs, nor does Taiwan, which is not a UN member state.
Rao said that because the PAICC is “facilitative and non-punitive”, naming the countries “is meant to open a door, not close one – the invited consultation is the point”.
“In recent months, governments that explained their constraints, whether capacity, finance or domestic process, have been met with follow-up and support rather than sanction, and the number of silent governments has fallen sharply,” Rao said.
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Paris Agreement committee names three countries snubbing it over NDCs