Fossil Fuel Interests Field 103 Delegations at Cop31, Outnumbering Vulnerable Nations

Over 100 fossil-fuel-linked groups attend the largest-ever UN climate summit, their combined delegations dwarfing those of climate-vulnerable countries while $2.2tn in bank financing flows to coal, oil, and gas.

The Cop31 summit in Antalya, Turkey — the largest in three decades with over 92,000 registered delegates — has drawn at least 103 organizations with documented records of obstructing climate action or advancing fossil fuel interests, according to the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition. The groups span 60 fossil fuel industry bodies, 16 fossil-fuel-financing banks, six industrial agriculture groups, three big tech firms, and 20 cross-sector organizations. This is not a fringe presence; it is a structural feature of how the talks operate.

The numbers tell a pointed story about whose voices carry weight. The International Emissions Trading Association brought 29 delegates. Exxon sent 13. TotalEnergies and BlackRock each sent five. Nepal — a country that suffered a deadly glacier collapse linked to global heating this summer — sent roughly a sixth the number of delegates these groups collectively field. The imbalance is not accidental; it reflects who can afford to be there and who cannot. Financial institutions at the summit represent a particularly revealing channel of influence. Thirty banks with delegations at Cop31 have collectively provided more than $2.2 trillion in fossil fuel financing over the past five years. JPMorganChase, Citigroup, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial, Bank of America, and Barclays are among the largest presences. They arrive as participants in climate negotiations while simultaneously underwriting the industry those negotiations exist to constrain. Transparency remains a systemic weakness. Nearly one in five participants at the Antalya talks chose not to disclose their relationship to the delegation they attended with, according to Transparency International. BlackRock is listed within France's national delegation. Exxon CEO Darren Woods arrived under the banner of the US Chambers of Commerce. US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse called for mandatory disclosure forms as a condition of entry, arguing the talks need to distinguish "infiltrators" from "legitimate participants." The optics of arrival compound the structural critique. Ninety-four private jets landed in Antalya since Saturday — 23 times the average — according to Oxfam. At least 18 registered attendees are Forbes-listed billionaires, their combined wealth approaching $200 billion. Some, like Michael Bloomberg and Andrew Forrest, advocate for climate action. Others, like Turkish mining magnate Ahmet Çalık and Indian fossil fuel executive Pranav Adani, represent the industries under negotiation. The Kick Big Polluters Out coalition shifted its methodology this year, moving from counting individual fossil-fuel-aligned delegates to identifying the specific companies and associations with track records of slowing or blocking climate policy. The distinction matters: it names institutional actors rather than headcounts, making the influence architecture harder to dismiss as mere attendance. The core tension is structural, not procedural. The UN climate process is designed as an inclusive multilateral forum, but inclusivity without conflict-of-interest guardrails produces a negotiating table where the regulated industries sit alongside — and sometimes within — the delegations of the regulators. Until that architecture changes, the talks will continue to absorb the very interests they were created to constrain.