Saudi Arabia's influence on international climate negotiations has come under scrutiny as the country's actions have been seen as hindering progress on crucial global issues.
In a year in which global efforts to tackle some of the planet’s most pressing crises — from climate change to plastic pollution — have ended in failure or bitter disappointment, there is one country whose name comes up again and again: Saudi Arabia. For years, the oil-rich kingdom has been accused of using its vast resources and savvy negotiating tactics to push against and delay climate progress, but multiple experts say this year it has been bolder than ever.
Saudi Arabia’s interference has been “blatant and in your face,” said Harjeet Singh, a climate advocate and founding director of Satat Sampada Climate Foundation. “They’re just blocking everything.” Over the past few months, United Nations-backed talks on climate change, the biodiversity crisis, plastic pollution and desertification — the last of which was held in the Saudi capital Riyadh — all collapsed or resulted in agreements criticized as vastly insufficient. This pattern of failure is not due to Saudi Arabia alone, experts say, but the country has been among those pushing hardest against ambitious action. “They’re the most brazen, the most outspoken,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at E3G, a climate think tank. Saudi Arabia’s increased boldness may be due to a number of factors experts say, including the imminent arrival of climate-denier Donald Trump in the US White House. But, it could also be a response to a growing global consensus around the need to stop burning fossil fuels. “They’re emboldened because they are now seeing writing on the wall,” Singh said. A kingdom built on oil Modern Saudi Arabia was built on fossil fuels. The discovery of oil reserves in the late 1930s took it from a nomadic, desert country to a prosperous kingdom within a handful of decades. Oil is so fundamental to Saudi Arabia’s identity, it applied for some of its infrastructure including a pipeline and refinery to receive UNESCO World Heritage status. Today, it boasts the world’s second largest oil reserves
CLIMATE CHANGE SAUDI ARABIA OIL INDUSTRY GLOBAL POLITICS INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
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