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Sir Tony Blair's advice proposed advising the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, but was overthrown before the former British Prime Minister rejects the United Nations climate negotiations this week as lacking in “weight to conduct action and impact”.
Blair caused a political storm in Great Britain by calling for resetting the “irrational” debate on zero net policies, as he warned that voters were invited to make too many “financial sacrifices” and criticized the COP process.
The comments came in a preface to a report by his Tony Blair Institute, which previously worked in close collaboration with the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan, the hosts of the COP28 and COP29, respectively, who courted the controversy. Blair himself was present in the two events.
TBI, which Blair created in 2016, met Brazilian officials earlier this year to provide support while the Latin American country is preparing to host the most important climate negotiations in the world in Belém in November, according to three families familiar with discussions. The talks have not progressed, people said.
The presidency of COP30 said that it “did not work or did not work with the Tony Blair Institute”.
A spokesperson for TBI confirmed that he had “met representatives of the Government of Brazil to discuss our climate work and how our efforts can help make COP30 a success”, but challenged the “characterization” of Financial Times of discussions, without developing.
They added that the offer to advise Brazil on the COP was on an unpaid basis, as had been with the water, although they declared that it had been paid for his work with Azerbaijan last year.
Blair's foreword to the TBI report called on governments to change course on the fight against climate change and said that “the COP process would not bring any changes to the required speed”.
The former British leader called the summit “a forum that frankly does not have the weight to conduct action and impact”, adding: “The great gathering of all nations has its place, but probably not every year.”
“The reality is that it is the decisions of major countries and the political leadership they give towards technology and financial flows, which can actually resolve the climate issue,” said Blair.
The comments would be considered “deeply useless” by Brazil, said a veteran of the For which was involved in previous negotiations on the climate and advises the ministers of various countries.
He added that TBI “would have been more prudent (in what they wrote) if they had worked with Brazil”.
The British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, was forced this week to defend the zero zero objective of his government, under which the country seeks to produce any net carbon broadcast by 2050. Blair's comments were largely considered as tacit criticism of the Labor Party he led, and in particular the EDMA Miliband Energy Secretary.
The TBI later declared that he was favorable to the approach of the Starmer government and the larger zero scoring goals.
In a statement to the FT Thursday, the TBI defended the report, arguing that the request for fossil fuels has increased “in the past twenty years” and that “the trips of airlines should double”.
“Consequently, a policy based on the abolition of the two facts does not exist is unlikely to succeed,” said the TBI. “Climate change is a serious challenge, one of the greatest confronted in the world, but it needs politicians to fight it that starts from reality.”
He added that the newspaper was not written “because Mr. Blair worked with oil producing countries that hosted COP or because he worked on the gas pipeline for Azerbaijan gas to come to Europe”.
Brazil is faced with a host of this year's host rise after the election of Donald Trump in the United States, which has aroused fears of overthrowing green policies worldwide.
Brazil has embarked on a diplomatic frenzy before the summit, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva last week, saying that he wanted COP30 to be “a major collective effort to keep climate commitments” and that “the planet is tired of uninformed promises”.
A person close to the TBI said that they are still hoping that the non -profit organization – which employs nearly 1,000 employees worldwide – could still earn an advisory role in Brazil before COP30.
People close to the Brazilian government said it was unlikely.
“Brazil has a very, very important and professional external service, in a way that the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan do not do it,” said the COP veteran.
Blair's involvement in COP's advisory work has long attracted controversy. He was a donor passionate about the president of the cop of the United Arab Emirates, the Sultan al-Jaber, whose double role at the head of the energy companies of the United Arab Emirates disrupted climate activists.
The work of the former Prime Minister with the Azerbaijani government was also examined given his links with the leader of strong men Ilham Aliyev, who has run the country since 2003 and faces allegations of “ethnic cleaning” after his seizure of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Blair's previous for -profit advice, Tony Blair Associates, which closed in 2016, had put pressure on behalf of the Adriatic trans pipeline to bring Azerbaijani gas to Europe.
The spokesman for TBI defended Blair's work, arguing that “if the Azerbaijan gas pipeline had been built, the answer would not have been that Europe would not buy gas, but that it would have become even more dependent on Russian gas”.
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