UAE COP28 president Sultan Al-Jaber accused of 'greenwashing' image on Wikipedia

The president of the upcoming UN-mandated COP28 climate summit in Dubai, Sultan Al Jaber, has been accused of having his team edit his Wikipedia page in an attempt to "greenwash" his role as the CEO of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).

Al Jaber’s team worked to edit his Wikipedia page to insert flattering quotes about him, as well as to remove references to a multi-billion-dollar oil pipeline deal he signed in 2019, The Guardian reported Tuesday.

Wikipedia users on the payroll of the Abu Dhabi oil company were surreptitiously brought in to manipulate his page to emphasise his green credentials over the contradiction of his role as CEO of a major fossil fuels company, the British daily reported.

A Wikipedia user revealed to be COP28 head of marketing Ramzi Haddad had also inserted several complimentary quotes about Al-Jaber under critical ones on the climate summit's Wikipedia page. 

Al-Jaber’s firm ADNOC claims that all Wikipedia edits were "transparent". 

Among the edits is one claiming that Al-Jaber is "precisely the kind of ally the climate movement needs".

The decision to hold the COP28 conference in the UAE, which controls around 6% of the world’s oil reserves, has been heavily criticised by environmental and rights groups. 

The appointment of Al Jaber, who is the head of an oil company that is massively expanding the UAE’s fossil fuel output, as its president is considered by some climate activists to be a major blow to the image of what is supposed to be a vital event in the global fight against climate change.

These attempts to control the narrative on Al-Jaber and COP28 by manipulating Wikipedia entries is considered by some climate activists to underline the COP conferences' increasing lack of relevance.

"Oil companies and their CEOs are taking greenwash to a whole new level – seizing control of global climate conferences, then getting their own employees to airbrush out criticism of their blatant hypocrisy on Wikipedia," Green Party MP Caroline Lucas told The Guardian.

COP28, which will go ahead in November this year, has been steeped in other controversies too, including the decision by the UAE to invite Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to attend.

Just last week, 100 lawmakers across the US Congress and EU signed a letter calling for the leaders of the own countries and the UN to remove Al-Jaber as the head of COP28 due to his major conflict of interests.