COP29 - Next Climate Change Conference of the Parties facing stark reality

 
The next Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)  will take place in Baku, Azerbiajan from 11th November to 22nd November 2024. There are 198 Parties (197 countries plus the European Union) to the Convention representing near complete, universal membership. The Conference is held annually and rotated between the five United Nations regions ensuring that both developed and developing nations have a role for the Conference presidency. Despite the extraordinary international coverage and the near agreement on the reality of climate change including the major industrial powers of the US and China, progress to limit increased temperatures through reductions in CO2 emissions is failing at this point in time.

A string of reports from multiple academic and science institutions, from the IPCC, from Meterological agencies and from  think tanks all confirm increasing temperatures, continuing and in some case increased CO2 emissions and worryingly, methane emissions. The planet continues to heat with the results being seen in a myriad of extreme weather events together with melting glaciers, melting permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere, and loss of ice cover in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Corresponding sea level rises are now being tangibly seen in low level land masses affecting multiple island communities in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

Representatives from the various countries who have signed onto the UNFCCC need to actually face the fact that they need to do more and do it earlier.  The end point for results to be seen has been publicly stated as no later than 2030 otherwise a very different planet will come into existence and one that the human species will find it hard to survive on.

COP29 website link: COP29