Resistir la captura corporativa para avanzar hacia la justicia climática

Fossil fuel corporations have known since at least the 1950s that their activities were driving the climate crisis. Rather than act, they launched “campaigns of deception” to deny climate science, capture public narratives, and block regulation. Today, they have rebranded as “climate champions” while promoting false solutions — net zero pledges, carbon markets, and nature-based schemes — that allow them to expand fossil fuel production, delay a real phase-out, and dispossess Indigenous Peoples. At COP28, the influence of fossil fuel interests reached new heights, with lobbyist presence increasing by 400% from the year before, shaping an agenda that protects profits over people and the planet.

ESCR-Net’s new background note Resisting Corporate Capture to Advance Climate Justice.From False Solutions to Real Solutions, exposes how corporate capture undermines climate action and spotlights the real, community-led solutions already in motion — from agroecology farms to Indigenous-managed forests.

At a Glance: What’s Inside the Background Note

1. Introduction – How corporate capture fuels the climate crisis.
2. They Knew – Evidence that fossil fuel corporations understood the harm for decades.
    2.1 Capturing public narratives: Denying climate change
    2.2 Capturing political spaces
3. False Solutions – How the industry rebrands to protect profits.
    3.1 Net Zero: “Burn Now, Pay Later”
    3.2 Carbon Dioxide Removal Mechanisms
    3.3 Nature-Based Solutions
4. Challenging Harm – Advancing collective justice and real climate solutions.
5. Our Demands – What states must do now.

The Problem with False Solutions

From net zero pledges (“burn now, pay later”) to carbon markets and fortress conservation, false solutions let polluters continue business as usual. The scale of the deception is staggering:

These mechanisms, as the note stresses,

Across the world, communities are already leading transformative, rights-based climate action — from micro-hydro projects in the Philippines to women-led climate resilience movements in Pakistan and Burma. As ESCR-Net members affirm, “frontline communities confronting the climate crisis must be able to assert and reclaim their right to advance real climate solutions based on care, sustainability of life, and a harmonious coexistence with nature.”

Our Demands

ESCR-Net members call on states to:

1. Reject market-based and corporate-led false solutions.
   
2. Stop corporate capture and strengthen corporate accountability frameworks, including a binding UN treaty on business and human rights.
   
3. Centre community-led experiences and solutions in climate action.
   
4. End militarism and divest from the arms industry.
   
5. Ensure the rights to self-determination and meaningful participation.
   
6. Integrate human rights in all environmental decision-making.
   
7. Deliver climate finance that is rights-based, gender-transformative, and non-debt creating.

Acknowledgments

Developed collaboratively by ESCR-Net’s Corporate Accountability Working Group and Environment and ESCR Working Group, this note complements the multilingual comic Beyond Green Lies: Real Solutions to the Climate Crisis Exist, and together they form a political education toolkit to help communities, movements, and allies expose corporate greenwashing and advance real, rights-based, and community-led solutions.

We thank the communities on the frontlines of climate and social justice struggles, whose lived experiences and organizing inform our vision and strategy.