COP28 host faces scrutiny over oil ties, human rights as global climate talks kick off

As the 28th United Nations climate change conference (COP28) begins in Dubai, the venue itself is facing scrutiny over the influence of the United Arab Emirates’s (UAE) oil industry and reported human rights abuses in the country.

Critics have pointed out the irony of holding a climate summit in a nation heavily reliant on the production and burning of fossil fuels — which drive the climate crisis. 

The UAE is the seventh largest producer of oil worldwide and is a member of a group of oil-producing countries called OPEC. 

And the leadership of the conference by Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber — head of the UAE’s national oil and gas company — has invited skepticism about the sincerity of the discussions.

When al-Jaber’s appointment as the head of the conference was announced, environmental activists criticized the decision as hypocritical.

He faces fresh scrutiny after documents published by the Centre for Climate Reporting and the BBC this week appeared to show the UAE COP team’s plans to further the interests of the national oil company during the conference. 

The news outlets described these documents as including briefings prepared by the COP28 team for meetings held by al-Jaber.

Some of the documents were posted online and list “potential discussion areas” relating to the oil company.

On Wednesday, al-Jaber pushed back against the reports, which he said were “false, not true, incorrect and not accurate.”

“I promise you never ever did I see these talking points that they refer to or that I ever even used such talking points in my discussions,” he said, arguing that the UAE didn’t need to use its position as COP leader to make oil deals.

Al-Jaber received significant condemnation over the reporting, including from a group of U.S. senators who said it “raises alarms about the integrity of the entire summit.”

“COPs are the world’s best shot to address the global climate crisis. We can’t let COP28 fall victim to fossil fuel industry malfeasance and greed before the summit even starts,” Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said in a statement. 

The reports are also emboldening some critics of the COP summits. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in response, saying that “everyone knows that global ‘climate goals’ are a joke except the Biden administration.”

Rubio also said that the UAE intends to expand its oil and gas industry and “is using the climate conference to do it.” The government last year announced plans to spend $150 billion to produce new oil and gas developments that would turn out 10 times as much of the fuels as what the International Energy Agency has calculated would keep the climate at a safe level.

Some experts have made the counterargument that the UAE’s position as an unabashed stronghold of fossil fuels — and al-Jaber’s recent embarrassment — makes the country the ideal venue to secure an endgame for fossil fuels.

After the allegations, “the UAE now has even more reason to push for a fossil fuel phase-down agreement to show the world that it is serious about becoming the first post-petroleum OPEC country,” former U.S. State Department climate lawyer Nigel Purvis, CEO of Climate Advisers, told The Associated Press.

Debate at COP28 is likely to focus on the question of whether fossil fuel extraction and use — which last year hit record levels — should ultimately be ended or simply reduced.

In conference terms, the debate will be between whether the world should pursue a “phaseout” — the ultimate end of global dependence on the fuels — or a “phasedown,” in which their use continues at lower levels.

In a July interview with The Guardian, al-Jaber, signaled support for the second option, at least in the short term. “Phasing down fossil fuels is inevitable and it is essential — it’s going to happen,” he said.

“What I’m trying to say is you can’t unplug the world from the current energy system before you build the new energy system. It’s a transition: Transitions don’t happen overnight, transition takes time.”

The leaked news of oil deals potentially being pursued COP are “a real big cause for concern,” said Gillian Cooper of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty — a movement to create a binding treaty to end fossil fuel expansion whose signatories include the European Union.

But Cooper noted that al-Jaber “has made some really important statements on the necessity and the inevitability of phase out, and he seems to be considering this as a really historic moment for COP28.”

She also noted, however, that the risk remained of “loophole” terms being inserted into a final deal: “terms like ‘unabated fossil fuels,’ or ‘inefficient fossil fuel subsidies,’ which are politically expedient but meaningless terms. Because there are no effective approaches for abating emissions. And, you know, there’s no such thing as an efficient subsidy.”

“So we are hoping that there’s clear language that is unequivocal about the need for the phase out of fossil fuels,” she added.

On the other hand, Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, called concerns about the UAE’s oil production “a bit of a distraction from getting to solutions.”

“It’s one of those things where the public can get distracted if it focuses on these micro questions of [the] UAE’s worthiness,” said Shidore, whose think tank is anti-war. “The problem is so much bigger than that.”

The climate concerns have been amplified by the issue of human rights — also a big factor in last year’s COP27, which took place in Egypt under the repressive regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

The concerns on both counts — and what critics point to as the contradictions of COP28 — come together in the conference’s location, Dubai’s Expo City. 

The city is powered entirely by a new fleet of renewable energy projects. But recent reporting by rights group Equidem has suggested that these very projects — which were funded by fossil fuel money — were built on the backs of migrant workers subjected to poor working conditions and inadequate rights protections.

Expo City has not responded to requests for comment from The Hill.

Public works projects across the Gulf States are largely built under the “kafala” labor system — Arabic for “sponsorship” — in which migrants are brought in directly by corporations, which maintain a great deal of control over their movements. Unions are illegal in the country.

The labor that went into building Expo City is characterized by “deep-rooted labor abuses and inadequate heat protections [that] contribute to climate injustice in multiple ways,” said Michael Page of Human Rights Watch, which noted earlier this month that workers building the city are often entrapped by debt.

In 2016, the UAE passed reforms to the kafala labor that in theory allow the 9 million migrant workers in the country — 90 percent of the population — to leave it without their bosses’ permission and to more easily change jobs. 

But reports of abuses remain widespread. Several Equidem interviewees, for instance, told investigators that workers were unable to change jobs or retrieve their passports from employers until they worked off the debt they had incurred to come to the UAE.

“The company insists on deducting [about $2,400] in expenses from my monthly salary, and I can only reclaim my passport after these costs have been completely covered,” one worker said.

One worker told reporters of wage theft — which he said led to something like debt peonage.

“I did not get paid according to my written agreement. I submitted a complaint to the HR manager and supervisor. I complained but nothing happened,” he said. 

“Since I paid a lot of money to come here, I have no choice but to keep working,” he added.

Equidem reporting also found that 57 percent of the migrant workers in Dubai — particularly those involved in the construction of the city’s infrastructure and renewable energy projects — were migrants from nations ravaged by the planetary heating caused by fossil fuels.

“Every year in my area, there is flooding during the rainy season due to which there is a lot of damage to agriculture and crops,” one Indian now working as a solar panel installer told Equidem reporters.

Back home, he said, that flooding meant that “there is no use in farming. That’s why I have come here to work.”

Many of these workers reported being made to work unpaid overtime in unsafe heat, while the vast majority said they couldn’t afford healthy food and had to sleep in dormitories stuffed to more than three times their intended capacity. About 40 percent said they were skipping meals.

Asked for comment by Equidem, Expo City asked for “details of the companies and, where possible, the workers, in order for us to fully investigate and rectify any issues.”

All this casts a grim pall over the negotiations, critics say: A principality that made its wealth heating up the planet is now using that money to build a glittering mirage of future progress — on the backs of the very people that heating has displaced.

That is a risky charge, however, to make from the conference itself. Because UAE law makes it illegal to criticize either the government or the countries attending it, “we are avoiding speaking publicly on anything that could be interpreted as criticism of the COP presidency or UAE as the host,” one leader of a U.S.-based Indigenous rights group told The Hill.

“We are waiting to publish our opinion on that until we have returned stateside safely,” they added.