More than 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists, a number which significantly outnumbers every single country’s delegation apart from the host Brazil, have been granted access to the COP30 climate negotiations in Belém, a new analysis has shown.

The findings from the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition that one in every 25 participants at this year's UN climate summit is a fossil fuel lobbyist raise serious questions about the corporate capture and credibility of the annual COP negotiations.

This year's tally, which represents a 12% rise from last year's climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, marks the largest concentration of fossil fuel lobbyists at Cop since KBPO first began exposing industry participation in 2021. 

The proportion of lobbyists is higher this year, despite the overall number being smaller than at COP29 in Baku (1,773) and COP28 in Dubai (2,456), because the Belém summit is less well-attended.

This access brings the total number of fossil fuel lobbyists given access to the UN climate summits over the past five years to 7,000, a period which has been marked by a rise in catastrophic extreme weather, disinformation, and oil and gas profits.

Fossil fuels get more passes than climate-vulnerable nations

An analysis by KBPO, an international coalition of 450 organizations, found that the fossil fuel industry received almost 60% more passes to COP30 than the 10 most climate-vulnerable nations combined (1,061).

KBPO analyzed the provisional list of participants at COP30 published by the UNFCCC to identify delegates representing oil, gas, and coal companies, trade groups, financial institutions, and others that fund or financially benefit from obstructing climate action to phase out planet-heating fuels.

The breakdown of the 1,602 fossil fuel lobbyists identified features 148 with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), 60 with the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), including delegates from oil and gas giants ExxonMobil, BP, and TotalEnergies, and 41 with the Brazilian National Confederation of Industry (BNCI).

Several big polluters from the Global North invited fossil fuel representatives to join their official delegations, including France, which brought 22 industry delegates, including the CEO of TotalEnergies, and Norway, whose group included six senior executives from its national oil and gas giant Equinor. Only the host country, Brazil, with its 3,805 delegates, has a larger delegation than the fossil fuel industry.

Based on a separate analysis by Transparency International, which found that more than half of all country delegation members at COP30 withheld or obscured details of their affiliations, including countries such as Russia, Tanzania, South Africa, and Mexico, which did not disclose the affiliation of any official delegates, the true extent of fossil fuel influence is likely to be higher.