Corporations, climate and the United Nations: How big business has seized control of global climate negotiations

Polaris Institute
December 2011

In time for COP 17 in Durban, South Africa, the Polaris Institute  prepared a report outlining how multinational corporations and their lobbyists have infiltrated the United Nations and are influencing the outcomes of climate negotiations. The report uncovers and describes where corporations influence the United Nations in the build up to and during climate change negotiations and how this corporate interest is the driving force behind the preferred market based initiatives that are emerging from the UNFCCC process.

Examples of corporate infiltration of the UNFCCC process are presented in order to highlight how multilateral and national level climate change policies carry the fingerprints of corporate interests. The corporate control of agendas inside the UN is not new and the report is framed within the historical roots of the access business and industry enjoy inside the United Nations.

This report exposes and critiques the corporate powers that influence the UNFCCC and use the United Nations to mask damaging operations. In conclusion, the report calls on activists to bring these corporate powers to account along with a UN system that has spent far too long working in partnership with destructive corporations instead of regulating their troublesome behaviour.

For the full report, go to http://www.polarisinstitute.org/files/CorporationsClimateandtheUN.pdf