“A small number of countries basically just hijacked the process, to be quite honest,” Prof Sir Robert Watson told BBC News.
“The US decided not to attend the meeting at all. At the very end they joined by teleconference and basically made a statement that they could not agree with most of the report, which means they didn’t agree with anything we said on climate change, biodiversity, fossil fuels, plastics and subsidies.”
Sir Robert is one of the world’s most respected scientific voices. He’s a former chief scientist for the UK’s department of the environment and has also been chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as working for the World Bank and Nasa.
However he has had rows with the US in the past, criticising their decision to leave an earlier climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, when he was head of the IPCC.
He was ousted from that role in 2002 after lobbying by the administration of President George W. Bush.
Others present at the meeting agreed that the actions of the US and other countries “derailed” the process.
“I thought we had gone beyond the point of recognizing that when you burn oil, this big, thick black stuff comes up, and it probably isn’t good, especially when you try and breathe it in,” said Dr David Broadstock, with the Lantau Group, and one of the report’s lead authors.
“It’s kind of pretty obvious, and yet we’re still seeing parties wanting to pursue the increasing scale of production of such things,” he told BBC News.
Since taking office President Trump has sought to boost fossil fuel production and roll back US commitments to fight climate change, calling for the country to be a global energy superpower with cheap and reliable resources.
He has also sought to get the US courts to overturn the idea that carbon dioxide is a danger to public health. His government has also followed up with efforts to restrict or limit the efforts of international bodies that set out to tackle warming.
This year has seen efforts at international plastics negotiations, at the international maritime organisation and during COP30 to strike out language that states that climate change is a major issue requiring the world to move away rapidly from fossil fuels.
The disagreement over the Global Environment Outlook report will raise concerns about future negotiations for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports as these studies are seen as the bedrock of global efforts to limit global warming.