ANTALYA (The Thursday Times) — More than 100 companies and industry groups that a campaign coalition says have records of obstructing climate action have been admitted to the COP31 climate talks in Antalya, with combined delegations that dwarf those of some of the countries most exposed to climate change.
The Kick Big Polluters Out coalition, which says it has more than 450 member organisations, counted 103 such groups after analysing the UN’s preliminary list of participants. It put 60 of them in the fossil fuel industry, 16 among fossil fuel financiers, six in industrial agriculture and food, three in big tech, and 20 among cross-sector business associations. Some groups fall into more than one category.
The largest delegations, by the coalition’s count, belong to the International Emissions Trading Association with 29 people, the Federation of German Industries with 23, BNP Paribas with 22, HSBC with 19, ExxonMobil with 13, and Amazon with 12. None of the named groups had responded publicly to the analysis.
Taken together, the coalition says, the flagged groups’ delegations are about 100 times the size of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’, 25 times Niger’s, eight times the Philippines’, and six times Nepal’s.
How they got in
Most came in on badges allocated to national delegations, according to the analysis: 222 on party overflow badges and 31 as members of official negotiating teams. Another 203 attended as part of NGO delegations, and 45 as guests of the host country, Türkiye.
The coalition also counted representatives of 30 of the world’s 100 biggest fossil fuel-financing banks. Citing the Banking on Climate Chaos database, it says those banks provided more than $2.2 trillion to fossil fuel companies between 2021 and 2025, about 40% of all bank financing for the sector over that period.
“You cannot put out a fire by handing matches to those who started it,” said Lien Vandamme of the Center for International Environmental Law, a member of the coalition. Rachitaa Gupta of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice said allowing polluters to influence COP31 “gives them legitimacy to continue with business as usual”.
The count comes as negotiators argue over how strongly the summit’s final text should refer to moving away from fossil fuels. A summary of countries’ proposals released on Friday put the transition back on the table, while some large emerging economies questioned whether a final political decision should exist at all. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged the hosts to move from discussing the transition to organising it, and Greta Thunberg told the summit the planet is “being killed”.
For countries such as Pakistan, which is pressing for grant-based finance to meet a clean-power bill it puts at about $138bn by 2035, the question of who fills the conference halls is not an abstract one. New climate finance pledges are still being counted in Antalya. “It is time to show Big Polluters the door,” Vandamme said. COP31 runs until November 20.
