As Climate Impacts Worsen, the Global South Gains Voice at UN Summits. So Do Fossil Fuel Companies.

Representation by developing countries has increased at the annual United Nations climate conferences, according to 30 years of COP registration data. Oil and gas companies have also staked their claim.

By Annika McGinnis

March 5, 2025

Scientists have been sounding the alarm on human-caused climate change since the 1800s, but it wasn’t until 1995 that the world came together to collectively discuss and make decisions about the planet’s future.

This first ‘Conference of the Parties’ (COP), held in Berlin under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, mandated countries to reconvene annually to agree on a process to address the warming climate. Since then, countries have met 29 times, with the latest conference held in Azerbaijan in November.

Tens of thousands of people have flocked to this annual event as the impacts of climate change have become an ever-increasing reality - causing devastating floods and droughts, record-high temperatures, rising sea levels and changes to weather patterns and ecosystems. In the three decades since the climate COPs were initiated, participation has soared by almost 4,000 percent: from under 2,000 at some of the earliest conferences to over 60,000 people in 2023.

But despite the increased attention, many still critique the annual UN gathering as an unequal space where the interests of developing countries and indigenous peoples are minimized or watered down, while rich nations and fossil fuel companies succeed in delaying action and lobbying for loopholes that can excuse them from enacting major emissions reductions.

In November, three researchers at the University of Delaware scraped 30+ years of attendance sheets to release a public dataset tracking climate summit attendees since the initiation of COP and its precursor. My analysis of this data shows that the share of attendees from developing countries has increased steadily over the decades. From their lowest participation of just 27 percent of total attendees at COP3 in 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol was passed that first committed countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Global South participation has risen to 75 percent in the most recent years.

Climate change is caused primarily by release of carbon into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels for industries and transportation, livestock farming, and deforestation.

Countries in the Global North such as the U.S. and many western European countries are responsible for over 90 percent of carbon emissions, which began during their historical industrial development and continue through excessive consumption today. But it’s countries in the Global South, including many in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and southeast Asia, that have so far been hit the worst by climate change-caused disasters, famine and conflicts - yet weren’t responsible for the bulk of polluting emissions.

The annual climate summit has therefore become the world stage for debates over the equity of climate commitments and ways for the Global North to provide reparations and support to its southern neighbors for its culpability in warming the Earth. At the 2022 conference, developing countries succeeded in negotiating for a ‘loss and damage fund,’ where rich countries agreed to put in money to pay for damages caused by climate change in the Global South. But many said it was too little too late, and pledges continue to be insufficient.

Lobbying plays a big role in who wins and who loses at COP. Over the years, fossil fuel companies, the world’s biggest polluters, have increased their participation at the negotiations.

And in recent years, fossil fuel companies have made up a larger percentage of the overall attendees at COP. The share of total conference attendees associated with fossil fuel companies was 0.4 percent in 2015, which rose to 1.4 percent in 2024. The total number of fossil fuel representatives attending the summit rose by over five times in the decade, to a high of 895 in 2023 from just 84 in 2015.

Young people, a historically neglected group at the negotiations, have also increased their presence, but not faster than fossil fuel companies.

From 1.6 percent of total attendees in 2015, representatives of youth-focused organizations increased to 3 percent in 2024. But while the percentage of attendees from youth-oriented organizations doubled over the decade, fossil fuel representation more than tripled.