Brussels – Begins today (Nov. 11) the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP), the UN forum where how to combat climate change is discussed. World leaders are meeting this year in Baku, Azerbaijan, but the 2024 edition is not expected to be decisive. On the one hand, little progress is expected in negotiations among the participants, especially when it comes to who should pay for the energy transition. On the other, there are a number of weighty absences in the Caucasian capital, from the EU to Brazil. Finally, hovering over the debates will be the ghost of the upcoming Trump presidency, which will withdraw (again) the United States from the Paris Accords, further complicating the already difficult global path to carbon neutrality.
Themes on the agenda
The Cop29, which officially started today in Baku, will last until November 22, but observers do not expect particularly ambitious results to come out of the negotiating session. The main topic on the table is expected to be funding, that is, who will put up the money (and how much) to translate into practice the decisions made at last year’s Cop28 in Dubai, which many had defined “historic.”
Among the agreements reached in December 2023 in the Emirates capital was the introduction of an international compensation fund for losses and damage caused by climate change, as well as to support adaptation and mitigation efforts. In theory, the wealthiest and most developed countries should bear at least part of the costs of ecological transition in developing and underdeveloped countries, as well as repair the damage that historical pollution from more advanced economies has caused in the global south.
In his speech at the opening ceremony, Simon Stiell, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), was keen to point out that “climate aid funding by rich countries is not a charity and is in everyone’s interest” as “no economy, not even those in the G20, will be able to survive an out-of-control global warming.” Also along the lines of Stiell’s remarks was António Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN: “Those who desperately try to delay and deny the inevitable end of the fossil fuel era are trying to turn clean energy into a dirty word. They will lose. The economics are against them. The solutions have never been cheaper and more accessible.”
Supporting these considerations is a study from last September entitled Why Investing in Climate Action Makes Good Economic Sense, conducted by the Boston Consulting Group together with the Cambridge Judge Business School and the Cambridge Climate Traces Lab. The finding highlighted by the survey is that if states do not take coordinated action against climate change, economic losses could amount to 10-15 per cent of global GDP by 2100. These impacts could be averted with an investment of less than 2 per cent of global GDP, which should keep global temperature rise below 2ºC.
Trump’s shadow
Hanging over the climate negotiations like a sword of Damocles is the U.S. media’s indiscretion that on the very day of his inauguration, Donald Trump will withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Paris Agreement, one of the lynchpins of the U.N.-brokered climate change fight, as he had already done in 2019 (before his successor Joe Biden brought Washington back in in 2021). The U.S. is the largest global producer of oil and gas and one of the major global emitters of CO2 (with nearly 15 tons per capita in 2022, compared to China’s 8).
At the COP21 hosted in the transalpine capital, world leaders had succeeded in agreeing on reduction targets for climate-altering emissions to contain global warming within limits that would prevent catastrophic consequences for the planet: a no more than 2ºC rise from the pre-industrial era (1850-1900), and possibly less than 1.5ºC. But those targets may now be unattainable. This morning, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) declared that those targets “are in grave danger” after having announced that 2024 is “on its way” to becoming the hottest year on record, with average temperatures of 1.54ºC above pre-industrial levels in the period between January and September.
Now that U.S. participation is called into question, there will be “uncertainty” in international cooperation in the area of combating climate change, according to a senior EU official. John Podesta, the envoy of incumbent President Joe Biden’s administration, tried to
pour oil on troubled waters: “Even if the U.S. federal government under Donald Trump suspends action on climate, work to curb climate change will continue in the United States with commitment, passion, and faith.” But as early as the beginning of 2025 (the 47th president’s inauguration is scheduled for January 20), this commitment will come to an end.
Absences and contradictions
Weighing on COP29 are several weighty absences among world leaders to whom a specific session is dedicated between Tuesday 12 and Wednesday 13. Missing from the roll call will be, among others, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (grappling with a government crisis that threatens to plunge Berlin into chaos just as the budget for 2025 must be approved), the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen (busy with the institutional transition to her second term, just when MEPs will be questioning her executive vice presidents on the last day of the parliamentary hearings of the commissioners-designate), Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Representing the EU will be outgoing Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra on Tuesday, November 12, while today is European Council President Charles Michel.
Finally, the Baku conference will be held under the banner of a glaring contradiction: like last year’s edition in the United Arab Emirates, COP29 is being hosted by a big oil and natural gas producer (from which Brussels is buying massive amounts of methane to replace its energy dependence on Moscow), which certainly does not shine in its commitments to environmental protection.
Not even, for that matter, in respect for fundamental rights or democracy, starting with the free expression of dissent: in the days and weeks leading up to the UN meeting, several environmental activists were arrested in the Caucasian country. The Greens’ co-head of the Europarliament, Terry Reintke, wrote on X that the work of the conference is being hosted “by a corrupt regime, living off petrodollars” and “putting critics behind bars.” All this after Baku has gained control, in the fall of 2023, of the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh with a military operation that caused a severe humanitarian crisis condemned by Brussels.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
