At least a quarter of the billionaires registered as delegates at Cop28 made their fortunes from highly polluting industries such as petrochemicals, mining and beef production, a new analysis has shown.
The findings, revealed to the Guardian in an exclusive analysis of the 34 billionaires who are signed up to the UN summit, raise concerns about the influence wielded by ultra-rich, mega-emitters on the world’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis. Together the 34 are worth about $495.5bn.
The high number of billionaires at the conference, along with the many private jets they flew in on, suggests Cop may now be second only to Davos as a gathering point for the world’s ultra-rich, who can meet and potentially influence government leaders and senior politicians and bureaucrats, while making deals with other business owners.
The foundation of the Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko, for example, is listed as a “climate supporter” on the official Cop28 website, although his companies have reportedly invested $23bn into coal and fertiliser production over the past 15 years. As a close ally of Vladimir Putin and chair of Russia’s committee on climate policy and carbon regulation, Melnichenko is in a powerful position to change Russia’s carbon-intensive economy. He may well be doing that, but his showcase project at Cop is a Pleistocene Park exhibition around a project to restore the woolly mammoth and reverse a 10,000-year-old ecosystem shift.
Melnichenko has faced sanctions by the US and the EU, as has another listed Russian delegate to Cop28, Vagit Alekperov, who owns a 30% stake in the country’s second-biggest oil and gas producer, Lukoil. A Kazakh billionaire delegate, Timur Turlov, who is accused of helping Russian oligarchs evade sanctions through his financial firm, was speaking on a panel about environmental and social governance.
Four of the billionaires have party badges, meaning they can go into the negotiations in the blue zone, while another 11 have host country badges because they were invited by the United Arab Emirates. They include Aliko Dangote, a cement and oil mogul from Nigeria; Mukesh Ambani, the head of an Indian oil and gas conglomerate who is a member of Cop28 presidency’s international advisory panel and the US Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose nuclear company did a deal with the UAE this week.
While it is widely accepted that business and money need to be part of any climate solution, there are growing concerns that billionaires and companies are taking a disproportionately influential role at the Cop gatherings. As the Guardian revealed in last month’s The Great Carbon Divide, climate inequality is worsening impacts and delaying action.
Alex Maitland of Oxfam, who compiled the analysis of Cop28 billionaires, said: “The number of billionaires at Cop is shocking and further evidence of their influence behind the scenes. The super rich, who have done most to cause climate change, are mobilising to drown out the voices of communities who are suffering its consequences.”
Schmoozing and networking take many forms. Some billionaires have networked very publicly, such as the Emirati property magnate Hussain Sajwani, who has posted photographs on social media of his encounters with King Charles and the president of Sri Lanka. Others have spoken at events, such as Ray Dalio, the founder of the Bridgewater hedge fund, who is estimated to be worth $15bn, and said climate solutions have to be profitable and the world does not have enough money. At least one billionaire delegate is already in a business relationship with the host nation: the Egyptian fertiliser, cement and sports investor Nassef Sawiris, whose company OCI is helping to develop “blue ammonia” with Adnoc, the oil company run by Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber.
Britain has also been represented at Cop28 by two of its super-rich, though not billionaires: Rishi Sunak, who is said to be the UK’s richest-ever prime minister with a fortune worth $810m, and King Charles III, who is estimated to be worth about $500m.
Many other billionaires are not present in person, but their companies have an army of executives and lobbyists to promote their interests at Cop. In the past week, watchdog groups have revealed that oil and gas companies have sent 2,456 participants to Cop28, the carbon capture and storage industry at least 475, and the meat, dairy and agribusiness sector 340, more than double compared with last year’s UN summit.
Fewer than one in 10 of the businesses represented at Cop28 have lobbying that supports Paris-aligned climate policy, according to Influence Maps. Using the same methodology, Maitland estimates that an even smaller proportion of billionaire-owned firms – five out of 94 – are working towards Paris targets. The compliant five are Heineken, H&M, Diageo, Microsoft and Alphabet. Altogether, billionaire-owned companies have sent 399 delegates.
None of the billionaires approached by the Guardian wished to provide a comment.
Maitland said: “Billionaires and their corporations have turned up to Cop28 in force, many to lobby for policies that suit their short term business interests, not the planet. Climate negotiations are too important to be sunk by greed.”
Other billionaires have a more responsible stance. The Swiss biotech heiress Dona Bertarelli gave her Cop28 ticket to experts because she felt she would just be grandstanding. The British hedge fund billionaire Christopher Hohn used the occasion to demand that banks take immediate climate action rather than make 2050 greenwashing claims, while the Australian metals magnate Andrew Forrest offered to put his head on a spike as he recognised a sizeable amount of the blame belonged to people like him. “I’m not pointing the finger at everyone else, I’m saying I’m part of the problem too. But at least I’m changing,” he said.
