Today hundreds of thousands of people around the world — from Burundi to Berlin to Brooklyn — will take to the streets in what organizers are calling the biggest climate march in history. This outpouring of action in the lead-up to this year’s global climate summit in Lima, Peru, is a reflection of the growing frustration with lack of progress in the fight against global warming, from stalemate on emission reductions to an impasse on commitments of support for affected communities. Progress has been stalled in part because the biggest polluters in the world — those oil and gas companies responsible for the lion’s share of emissions, for example — have been given a seat at the negotiating table, treated as partners and stakeholders at the annual global meetings called the Conference of Parties, or COP. Over the years, these COPs have featured industry-sponsored pavilions, dinners and breakaway meetings. And companies have been granted official observer status through their industry trade associations, which are considered nongovernmental organizations under current climate meeting rules. Some have even attended as official members of country delegations. (For instance, a representative from Shell joined the Nigerian delegation to COP16 in 2010 and Brazil’s to COP14 in 2008.) As climate activists call for governments to take real action on climate, the decades-long fight against Big Tobacco — specifically, how public health advocates successfully kept companies away from the negotiating table — holds powerful lessons for the role industries should have in these key talks.

Keeping Big Tobacco at bay

It’s almost impossible to fathom it now, but the first state ban on smoking in hospitals passed only in 1989. By then, decades of research had long proved the connection between nicotine and addiction and shown that smoking causes harm to nearly every organ in the body. The science finally managed to break through industry-funded misinformation campaigns, and in 1998 the United States reached a master settlement with the tobacco industry, which included annual payouts to 46 states of $10 billion for education and public health programs and strict regulations on marketing and advertising cigarettes. Several years later, after still more campaigning, the World Health Assembly unanimously adopted the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Since then, more than 179 countries have ratified it, including Iran and China, although notably not the United States. Civil society organizations such as Corporate Accountability International (CAI), for which I am an adviser, understood that in order for the convention to have teeth, Big Tobacco could not be allowed to interfere. To that end, CAI and other civil society groups and governments — especially those of Panama, Thailand and South Africa — fought for and secured the inclusion of 30 words that were the jumping-off point for an extensive set of guidelines (PDF) that spurred serious government action. They state, in Article 5.3, “In setting and implementing their public health policies with respect to tobacco control, parties shall act to protect these polices from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.” These guidelines were adopted unanimously at the 2008 COP (PDF) in Durban, South Africa. Building on these guidelines (PDF), many governments around the world have gone further to keep the tobacco industry away from policymaking. Colombia passed laws barring tobacco industry representatives from policy negotiations. Australia strengthened transparency laws regarding government interactions with the industry. And in 2009, Norway was the first nation to divest government pension funds from tobacco stock in response to the World Health Organization guidelines that specified governments “should divest all holdings in tobacco companies in order to keep public health interests apart from economic influence.” Big Tobacco is not granted official observer status at tobacco treaty meetings. In fact, tobacco companies and their trade groups are not allowed to attend or observe the meetings at all. This is made clear in the WHO’s memo (PDF) on attendance policies, which reads, “Persons affiliated or having any relations with the tobacco industry or entities working to further its interests would not be permitted to attend any session or meeting of the COP and its subsidiary bodies.” When industry representatives have attempted to use public badges to gain entry, they have been removed by the Secretariat. The WHO is working on screening public badges to prevent such breaches in the future.

Bold action on climate policy is possible only if a stark line is drawn between climate negotiators and the industries driving the crisis.

This stark line between negotiators, governments and industry helped create a tobacco treaty with real impact. One of the most widely embraced treaties in U.N. history, it covers almost 90 percent of the world’s population and is projected to save as many as 200 million lives by 2050 — and many millions more thereafter. As people take to the streets to demand substantial action on climate change, it’s time to take this lesson from the fight against Big Tobacco. Bold action on climate policy is possible only if a stark line is drawn between climate negotiators and the industries driving the crisis: no revolving doors between regulatory positions and corporations, no so-called partnerships with industry that constitute a conflict of interest, no seat at the table in writing the rules of regulation and transparency in all industry engagements with public officials.

Untangle industry involvement