The United Arab Emirates said on Thursday that the head of state oil giant Abu Dhabi National Oil Company would lead this year’s COP28 climate summit, fuelling activists’ worries that big industry is hijacking the global response to environmental crisis. Sultan al-Jaber, also UAE’s minister of industry and technology and its climate envoy, will help shape the conference’s agenda and intergovernmental negotiations to build consensus, his office said in a statement. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric noted that the COP president is chosen by the host country with no involvement of the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres or the Secretariat of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
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