Brazil’s COP30 presidency must do more to protect the UN climate negotiations from the “unchecked” influence of the fossil fuel industry and other high-emitting businesses driving the climate crisis, more than 200 civil society groups said in a letter published on Wednesday.
Campaigners have called on the organisers of this year’s summit to lead by example and commit to a “polluter-free“ conference by banning sponsorship from corporations whose activities drive climate change and by ending their partnership with PR firm Edelman, among other measures.
As Climate Home News previously revealed, Edelman won a $835,000 contract to help Brazil’s COP30 team with its international media strategy for the UN talks while also working with Shell, which is investing in new oil and gas production in the South American country and beyond.
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“For years, major corporations – especially in the fossil fuel and other heavily polluting sectors – have undermined climate action through intense lobbying, including at the UN,” said Lien Vandamme, a senior campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), one of the letter’s signatories. “Reforming the UN climate talks is more urgent than ever – COPs cannot continue as corporate trade shows.”
Tackling corporate influence
Almost 1,800 fossil fuel lobbyists were given access to last year’s COP29 talks in Azerbaijan, according to analysis by the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition – more than the government delegates of the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries combined.
Amid growing pressure from civil society to tackle corporate influence on the talks, the UN climate change body in September introduced new transparency guidelines giving COP observers the option to disclose who is paying for their participation at the annual summits.
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But campaigners want further actions to shield the talks from corporate representatives who, they say, have “sabotaged climate progress through aggressive lobbying, disinformation, and glossy PR campaigns”.
In the letter endorsed by 229 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) across the globe, they urge the COP30 presidency to advance the establishment of an “accountability framework” that should define what constitutes a conflict of interest at UN climate talks – and how such cases should be addressed by setting clear “rules of engagement”.
Business invited to Belém
The letter was organised by members of the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition in response to an earlier missive from COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago, inviting business leaders to show up in the Amazonian city of Belém this November.
Despite the logistical challenges in the host city, including the sky-high cost of accommodation, he urged companies “to attend and engage through solutions, partnerships, investments, and ideas” so that COP30 could become “the world’s largest marketplace of transformational climate solutions”.
But campaigners criticised Corrêa do Lago’s words, saying his overture to the business world felt removed from the reality that polluting companies, and their enablers, are directly responsible for the climate crisis.
“It’s unacceptable that the COP30 president has invited corporations to the table without explicitly addressing the inevitable risks of greenwashing and conflicts of interest,” said CIEL’s Vandamme.
The post NGOs urge Brazil to prevent fossil fuel capture of COP30 climate summit appeared first on Climate Home News.
NGOs urge Brazil to prevent fossil fuel capture of COP30 climate summit
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