Fifteen global health leaders, including three from India, have demanded that fossil fuel industry interests be kept out of climate negotiations, their call coming ahead of a UN climate change conference in the United Arab Emirates next month.

“Fossil fuel interests have no place at climate negotiations,” the health experts have said in an open letter to Sultan Al-Jaber, the president-designate of the UN climate change conference.

Al-Jaber is also a UAE minister and the chief executive officer of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

The letter was sent on Tuesday.

The letter comes amid what some view as the conspicuous absence of any reference to fossil fuels and their health harms in a draft ministerial declaration on climate and health under preparation for release at the November 30- December 12 conference.

The signatories have also called on the conference presidency and leaders of all countries to commit to an accelerated, just and equitable phase-out of fossil fuels to limit global warming and protect health from the devastating impacts of climate change, including extreme weather events. Besides the climate-related health impacts, they said, air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels causes seven million premature deaths worldwide annually.

The fossil fuel industry “cannot be allowed to continue its decades-long campaign of obstructing climate action” at the UN climate negotiations “just as the tobacco industry is not allowed to participate” in the World Health Organisation initiative on tobacco control, the experts have said. “It is imperative to safeguard the global collaboration on climate progress from the lobbying, disinformation, and delays in favour of industry interests.”

The signatories from India include K. Srinath Reddy, former president of the Public Health Foundation of India who has played a key role in anti-tobacco initiatives, Naveek Thacker, president of the International Paediatric Association, and Arvind Kumar, a chest surgeon in New Delhi.

A background note linked to the letter says scientists and leaders within the fossil fuel industry have known about global warming for decades but the fossil fuel companies have “pursued strategies to mislead the public about climate change science”.

The note says industry lobbying and political contributions have contributed to slowing policy efforts to mitigate climate change at the global and national levels and vested interests present a challenge to the transformational change to achieve climate goals.

The draft health and climate ministerial declaration set for release at the UAE conference mentions the need for climate mitigation and health harms of air pollution but “omits any reference to fossil fuels and their health harms”, Health Policy Watch, a global health policy platform, had reported on October 18. The language and commitments focus mostly on the adaptation of health systems to climate change, it had said, citing people familiar with the draft document.

“The pre-release of the draft declaration seems to confirm mounting fears that the UAE, a major fossil fuel producing nation, will sidestep the main issue at stake in the climate debate: unsustainable oil, gas and coal production,” the Health Policy Watch report had said.