States with large meat and dairy industries also attempted to amend IPCC’s report, documents say
Countries that produce coal, oil, beef and animal feed have been lobbying to water down a landmark UN climate report, according to a leak of documents seen by Greenpeace’s investigation team.
Days before Cop26, the international climate change negotiations taking place in Glasgow, the leaks show fossil fuel producers including Australia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Japan are lobbying the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to remove recommendations that the world needs to phase out fossil fuels.
According to the documents, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), whose members include Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, also backed weakening the report’s recommendations on fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, large meat and dairy producers such as Brazil and Argentina reportedly attempted to change messages about the climate benefits of promoting plant-based diets, according to the leak of more than 32,000 comments by governments, corporations, academics and others on the draft report of the IPCC’s working group III, which looks at measures to protect the globe from rising temperatures.
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