Edelman’s role in controlling COP30’s narrative has drawn fierce criticism from activists, experts, and civil society groups.
Backlash over Edelman’s COP30 PR contract continues, adding to a growing list of credibility concerns for the UN Climate Summit.
Earlier this year, Edelman – a PR firm long criticised for its work with fossil-fuel companies, petrochemical giants and deforestation in the Amazon – was awarded an $834,850 contract by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to manage communications for COP30, a landmark version of their annual climate conference.
Naturally, the decision triggered outrage from environmental groups and communications experts, and prominent climate activists argue the appointment represents a profound conflict of interest and undermines the credibility of the UN climate process itself.
Edelman’s global carbon footprint is vast. For decades, they have represented major oil and gas clients with campaigns that promote fossil-fuel expansion and have been accused of greenwashing by climate campaigners. More than that, their campaigns are frequently criticised for fuelling energy insecurity fears, hindering climate leadership and diminishing the viability of nature-based innovations and renewable technologies.
In Brazil, the firm recently developed a “message architecture playbook” for Abiove, a powerful soy-industry trade group whose members are linked to Amazon deforestation — a slap in the face for Belem and the Indigenous communities in the heart of the Amazon basin.
And that dirty track record is now colliding with their new role, shaping the narrative for a conference expected to focus heavily on forest protection and a global fossil-fuel phase-out.
“This is a conflict of interest on a scale we’ve never seen before,”
said Duncan Meisel, executive director of the campaign group Clean Creatives, which monitors PR and advertising ties to fossil-fuel companies.
“A company that has spent decades helping polluters manage their reputations should not be in charge of shaping the world’s most important climate conversation.”
It also raises a broader question about how agencies must evolve. There is a clear pathway for the PR, marketing and advertising industry to clean up their businesses by aligning their influence with climate action. Yet, they still insist on playing both sides of the debate.
Procurement documents found by The Guardian show Edelman is engaged to “craft and manage the strategic narrative” for COP30.
So, what does that mean and why does it matter?
When it comes to communication, controlling the narrative means having the upper hand.
Crafting and managing narratives gives significant influence over how success is defined, which themes dominate headlines, and how governments, companies and civil society are represented.
Communications scholars warn that such narrative control by an organisation so heavily entwined in damaging industries risks steering climate conversations and outcomes away from real action.
No matter what senior fossil fuel executives say on the world stage or how much they believe they’re part of the solution, conversations about fossil fuel phase-out and emissions reduction are very different for the companies they represent than what is actually needed to achieve Paris Agreement targets.
According to Dr. Melissa Aronczyk, author, Professor of Media Studies at Rutgers University and expert in the intersection of public relations and environmental politics, public relations shapes which environmental issues are visible, how they are framed, and who counts as legitimate in environmental governance.
She describes PR as a “technology of legitimacy”, meaning it doesn’t just spin messages, it builds the very conditions under which certain kinds of environmental conversations become credible. It’s the very reason we have “industry-friendly solutions” instead of systemic reform.
With COP increasingly criticised as performative, featuring more pledges and polished messages than binding outcomes, the reality is that a PR firm with ties to fossil fuels only reinforces the tendency to present greenlighting as legitimate climate action. More than that, it erodes the legitimacy of the Paris Agreement and the COP’s credibility in the eyes of the very people it serves — all of us.
Public trust in the COP process has been eroding for years.
Last year, COP29 was hosted by major oil exporter Azerbaijan which, according to the Climate Action Tracker (CAT), was rated Critically Insufficient in their climate policies and actions.
The year before that, the UAE (rated Highly insufficient by CAT) hosted COP28 and saw a record 2,500 fossil-fuel lobbyists in attendance, a number overshadowed only by (you guessed it), this year’s COP30. According to research by Kick Big Polluters Out, this year, there are more fossil fuel lobbyists than any other country’s entire delegation, except for Brazil, making it the highest concentration of fossil fuel representatives in attendance than at any other COP.
Pair that with the private jets, and it’s no surprise more and more people are joining climate campaigners in viewing the summit as a gathering of elites to showcase negotiations rather than deliver actual results. Earlier this year, over 200 organisations joined a United Call for an Urgent Reform of the UN Climate Talks, citing ineffective decision-making, visa injustices, host country selection and conflicts of interest as major concerns.
“Climate negotiations have systematically failed to deliver climate justice and undermined international law, from marginalizing vulnerable States, Indigenous Peoples, and civil society, to allowing the richest countries and the largest historical polluters to avoid legal obligations and accountability.”, the statement says.
“Global climate governance is increasingly perceived as out of touch, driven by vested interests, and running out of relevance and trust.”
Hosted on the fringe of the Amazon itself, COP30 was intended to be a historic summit, signalling renewed urgency on ecosystem destruction, Indigenous rights, social development, and major sector transition. Instead, its communications are being led by a firm accused of helping manage the reputations of the very firms still linked to these issues.
“For decades, corporate interests – particularly from the fossil fuel industry – have systematically sabotaged climate progress through aggressive lobbying, disinformation, and glossy PR campaigns,” Tasneem Essop, Executive Director of the Climate Action Network, told the Global Forest Coalition.
“The halls of COP have become marketing playgrounds for the very industries driving the crisis, while Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities face barriers to meaningful participation.”
This week, climate campaign group Clean Creatives released an open letter signed by more than 65 climate influencers, campaigners, and creators calling on the UN to revoke Edelman’s contract. Collectively, the signatories reach more than 24 million followers across social media platforms.
The letter alleges that Edelman “has the biggest conflicts of interest of any PR agency on earth,” citing recent research from the Clean Creatives F-List 2025, which documents the firm’s active fossil-fuel clients: Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Masdar, and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
Clean Creatives’ Fossil Fuel Income Risk Exposure (FFIRE) Index ranks Edelman as the most financially dependent on fossil-fuel revenue of all major PR holding companies. More than that, Edelman Brazil’s general manager, Ana Julião, is reportedly overseeing communications for both COP30 and Shell simultaneously.
“It is absurd and dangerous to have the same person, literally, writing talking points for Shell and the UN Climate Talks at the same time,” the letter states.
Climate activist Lauren Bash described it as “greenwashing at its worst.”
“You can’t claim to unite the world to fight climate change while representing the corporations fuelling it,” she said.’
“It breeds confusion at a time when we need clarity and courage.”
Yet, underneath the Edelman controversy and COP’s credibility lies the bigger question: why does it need a PR firm at all?
The UN says professional communications help coordinate complex logistics and global media. Critics argue that outsourcing narrative control to corporate PR firms embeds marketing logic into climate diplomacy, blurring the line between information and image management.
Dr. Aronczyk’s work highlights that PR helped convert environmental problems into issues of information and management, rather than deep structural or system problems. Instead of COP asking the tough questions like, “how do we stop fossil extraction”, public relations frames it as “how do we manage energy transition”.
While the UNDP has said Edelman was selected through a “rigorous” competitive process, it has not yet disclosed which agencies submitted proposals, what criteria were used, or how conflicts of interest were evaluated. Nor do we know how these conflicts are managed.
For campaigners, that lack of transparency only reinforces the case for reform.
