What do global businesses want at COP28?
Businesses representing trillions of dollars of global revenue are calling on world leaders to deliver bold outcomes at COP28. Fossil fuel, air pollution and food are key topics up for debate, but controversy around the talks threatens meaningful progress.
The world’s most important annual climate event will take place in Dubai between 30 November and 12 December. Following a succession of previous meetings that failed to deliver the changes needed to achieve climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement – and after a year of extreme weather events where many climate records have been broken – all eyes are on COP28 to deliver tangible progress on global climate goals.
In the run-up to the event, businesses around the world are making their demands clear to world leaders, and calling for meaningful outcomes that will support them in operating more sustainably.
At the top of the agenda is the phase out of fossil fuels. The Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders – which comprises more than 100 CEOs and senior executives from the likes of Bloomberg, Deloitte, Microsoft and PepsiCo, and which represents $4 trillion in revenue and 12 million employees – has shared an open letter to world leaders ahead of the talks.
In the letter, the Alliance, which was established in 2014, calls for government support to overcome a mix of industry challenges and asks policymakers to:
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Massively scale up investment in renewable energy
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Lead by example on public procurement practices
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Turbocharge nature and technology-based carbon removals
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Simplify and harmonise climate disclosure and measuring standards
The We Mean Business (WMB) Coalition is also shining the spotlight on fossil fuels. Here, more than 130 companies representing nearly $1 trillion in revenue are asking national governments to take action in this area. Signatories to the WMB letter include AstraZeneca, Danone, Hewlett Packard, IKEA, Nestle and Unilever, who call for:
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Collaboration with financial institutions to ensure capital is being allocated to accelerate the clean energy transition
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Fossil fuel producers to set science-based, net-zero targets and to develop and publish transition plans on short- and long-term steps to decarbonise business operations, products and services
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Governments to set the enabling conditions, policies, regulations and investments for a just clean energy transition
A focus on health impacts
Health organisations are also demanding fossil fuel phase-out, with one open letter from the Clean Air Fund signed by over 90 NGOs, civil society organisations and health professionals urging nations to take steps to reduce air pollution and deliver win-wins for climate, public health and economies. The letter notes that 99% of the world’s population breathes air that fails to meet World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines and calls for:
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Replacing coal with renewable sources of energy for total power production
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Replacing diesel and gasoline-powered vehicles with electric vehicles in both the public and private sector
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Eliminating uncontrolled diesel emissions
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Preventing crop burning
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Preventing forest fires
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Comprehensive air quality monitoring to demonstrate progress towards WHO Air Quality Guideline levels
A separate letter from the Global Climate & Health Alliance – signed by some of the largest health networks in the world, including World Medical Association, World Federation of Public Health Association and International Council of Nurses – makes similar health-related demands, calling for countries to “commit to an accelerated, just and equitable phase-out of fossil fuels as the decisive path to health for all”.
A seat at the table for food
The food industry has also been vocal in the lead-up to the talks. Food as a climate consideration has been notably absent from the COP agenda until last year, with the introduction of the Food Systems Pavilion at COP27 in Sharm-el Sheikh in Egypt.
More than 70 organisations have signed an open letter calling on all Parties attending COP28 to "acknowledge the critical role of food systems – including food production, consumption and waste, land use change and nutrition in achieving the Paris Goals".
Cultivated meat firm Aleph Farms, fertiliser company Yara International, agrochemical company UPL, consumer goods giant Unilever, and lab-grown seafood innovator BlueNalu are among the firms to have signed the letter, alongside WWF, the Nature Conservancy, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the IKEA Foundation, and EIT Food, the food arm of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.
A number of individuals have also put their name to the letter, including Kristen Schuijt, director-general of WWF International, Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever, and Jennifer Morris, CEO of the Nature Conservancy.
A COP marred by controversy
Whether these businesses will see their demands addressed is a subject of contention, however, as COP28 has been awash with controversy ever since its host city of Dubai in UAE was announced back in 2021.
UAE is one of the world’s top-producing oil nations and has appointed Sultan Al Jaber – chief executive of UAE’s state-owned oil company, which plans to expand production capacity – as president of the climate talks.
For over a year, concerned parties have campaigned against this decision. In May, a group of US senators and Members of European Parliament (MEPs) wrote an open letter to US President Biden, President of the European Commission Ursula von Der Leyen, UN Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, and Secretary General António Guterres, calling for the removal of the oil executive as president of the summit.
The letter says: "The decision to name as president of COP28 the chief executive of one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies – a company that has recently announced plans to add 7.6 billion barrels of oil to its production in the coming years, representing the fifth largest increase in the world – risks undermining the negotiations.”
The group also stated that private sector polluters exert “undue influence” on COP processes. “It did not escape our attention that at least 636 lobbyists from the oil and gas industries registered to attend last year’s COP—an increase of more than 25% over the previous year,” says the letter. “When the number of attendees representing polluting corporate actors, which have a vested financial interest in maintaining the status quo, is larger than the delegations of nearly every country in attendance, it is easy to see how their presence could obstruct climate action.”
The location of the talks has also sparked concerns among human rights campaigners. More than 220 organisations, including Friends of the Earth, Amnesty International and the International Federation for Human Rights, have signed a letter calling for the international community to “shine a spotlight on the UAE’s human rights record, and to stand in solidarity with communities on the frontlines working to stop climate change impacts and human rights violations in the UAE and across the world”.
The letter adds that the group supports “the concerns expressed by climate justice movements that allowing COP28 to be held by the rulers of a repressive petrostate, and overseen by an oil executive, is reckless, represents a blatant conflict of interest, and threatens the legitimacy of the whole process”.
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