When the Guardian environment editor Damian Carrington received a reply to an email he had sent to the organisers of this year’s UN climate change conference, he noticed something unusual: it was stamped with the name of the state oil company of the hosts.
He tells Michael Safi how an investigation led to him proving that the United Arab Emirates were running the conference by sharing an email server with Adnoc, the state oil company. It would have allowed the oil company access to every email to and from the conference organising committee.
It is just the latest controversy to hit the preparations for Cop28, to be held in Dubai in November. The president of Cop28 is Sultan Al Jaber, who is also the chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. And there have been allegations that an army of fake social media accounts are promoting and defending the UAE’s position as Cop28 hosts.
A Cop28 spokesperson said: “These [fake accounts] are generated by outside actors unconnected to Cop28 and are clearly designed to discredit Cop28 and the climate process.”
In response to the finding that Adnoc servers were involved in Cop28 office communications, a Cop28 spokesperson said: “We have been migrating our data from the previous host to our own setup.”
Photograph: Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/Shutterstock
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