CNN
—
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 topush against and delayclimate 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 advocateand 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.
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. Saudi government revenues depend on fossil fuels to the tune of around 70% — a reliance experts say helps explain its approach to climate action.
The country has “been obstructionist” since the beginning of the UN’s climate process three decades ago, Meyer told CNN. Not only has it consistently cast doubt on and undermined the scientific consensus on climate change — that it is caused by fossil fuel pollution — it also managed to bake in its own influence, he said.
In the 1990s, Saudi Arabia pushed for global climate decisions to be made on a consensus basis, rather than majority vote, meaning a handful of countries could block decisions, Meyer said. “They gamed the system at the very beg