Kevin LE MERLE

FWO (Research Foundation Flanders) PhD Fellow, UNU-CRIS (United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies) at Ghent University (Ghent Institute for International and European Studies).

COP29, the 29th climate summit since 1995, comes on the heels of several extreme weather events which grow more common due to climate change. The climate crisis is no longer a far-off abstract fear: it has become a daily reality for many around the globe. The devastating flash flooding in Valencia, which caused 224 casualties, or Hurricane Helene and Milton in the United States, shatters any fragile illusion suggesting the ‘Global North’ could wash its hands of the existential threat facing humanity. What is more, inequality compounds the disastrous human cost of the climate crisis, and its most dire effects are felt in regions with less capacity for adaptation. The unrelenting forest fires in Ecuador are just another testament to this grim reality. Indeed, extreme weather events are a brutal reminder of the climate crises’ immediacy, but they also reveal the interconnectedness of ecosystems beyond jurisdictional state borders. 

Such events provided policymakers in Baku a painful reminder of their duty to present the world with substantive progress and display global solidarity. However, while the increasing visibility of climate harms leads to higher expectations being placed on international summits, and this, in turn, adds pressure on delegations to walk away with a deal, the reality of climate talks often struggles to meet such expectations. COP29 was no exception. A small group of climate journalists underlined that the growing gap between expectations and results risked creating a ‘prophetic defeatism’, whereby the disillusionment in the COP’s ability to deliver enough might simply result in a lack of any action.

The COP29 was off to a bad start. The confirmation that Donald Trump, often remembered for taking the US out of the landmark Paris Agreement, had won a second term significantly dampened the optimism to which some climate advocates still clung. This unfortunate news was quickly swept away by the BBC’s revelation that the COP29 chief, Elnur Soltanov, had been secretly filmed promoting fossil fuel deals. The COP29 president, Mukhtar Babayev, later followed suit by labelling oil and gas ‘a gift from god’. 

More constructively, the fact the COP took place in the third major fossil fuel-producing country in a row amplified calls for reforming the entire COP process. Several key figures of climate action, including Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Global Ambassador for the Club of Rome, and Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, to name but a few, made several proposals in an open letter. These included restricting the selection of COP presidencies to countries supporting phasing out fossil fuels, but also shifting the focus of COPs to implementation and accountability, in order to keep pace with the rapidly unfolding climate crisis. Amid it all, civil society was exceptionally well-prepared to call for climate justice. The NGO Global Witness purchased the cop29.com domain from a climate-conscious kitchenware company in New Dehli, and used the platform to demand fossil fuel companies pay for their pollution. This well-thought-out feat also emphasised the striking contrast between the billions of fossil fuel profits, and the paltry sum channelled into the loss and damage fund.

As negotiations teetered in Baku, G20 leaders issued a letter indicating they would “look forward to a successful New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) outcome”. In simpler terms, despite the difficulties encountered during the talks on mitigation, notably the push from certain countries to backtrack on the COP28 pledges to ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels, the G20 reiterated its support for a new global climate finance goal. 

After extending the negotiations by 33 hours, and instilled with a sense of urgency to ‘Trump-proof’ climate governance, an agreement was reached to provide developing nations with $300 billion in climate finance annually until 2035. The agreement was seen as an insult by developing nations who sought a trillion and also underlined that the mixture of grants and loans was likely to exacerbate an unbearable debt crisis. In addition, when accounting for inflation, the seemingly impressive tripling of climate finance goals represents a much smaller increase. The final agreement also “calls on all actors to work together to enable the scaling up of financing to developing country Parties for climate action from all public and private sources to at least USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035”. As in prior COPs, the developing nation status afforded to countries like China and India remained a major sticking point.

At the closing of negotiations, while civil society lambasted the EU for failing to live up to its climate leadership goals, UN Secretary-General António Guterres deplored the condition of the agreement, stating he “had hoped for a more ambitious outcome”. He added that the negotiations in Baku remained essential in protecting the targets enshrined in the Paris Agreement, and should be further built upon. In the current geopolitical context, it remains true that avoiding backsliding on previous agreements as much as possible and achieving an agreement with almost 200 parties was no slim feat. Yet, it remains difficult to find silver linings when the lives of billions hang in the balance. 

With Baku done, hope turns to the next COP in Belém, Brazil. 

Photo credits: Shutterstock.com/Zulfugar Graphics