COP 29 outcomes

From a US$300 billion climate finance deal to global carbon trading, here’s what was – and wasn’t – achieved at the COP29 climate talks

Jacqueline Peel, The University of Melbourne

The petroleum-laden dust has settled on this year’s United Nations climate summit, COP29, held over the past fortnight in Baku, Azerbaijan. Climate scientists, leaders, lobbyists and delegates are heading for home.

The meeting achieved incremental progress. Negotiators agreed on a new climate finance target of at least US$300 billion a year by 2035 (A$460 billion), up from US$100 billion now. These funds would help developing nations shift away from fossil fuels, adapt to the warming climate and respond to loss and damage from climate disasters.

Nations also agreed on the essential rules for a global carbon trading market, the last agreement needed to make the 2015 Paris Agreement fully operational.

As UN climate chief Simon Stiell said in the final session, the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) meeting showed the Paris Agreement was delivering on climate action, but national governments “still need to pick up the pace”.

I attended COP29 as an expert in international climate law and litigation. I observed the finance negotiations firsthand and represented a new alliance of Australian and Pacific universities supporting international climate cooperation.

At the outset, expectations for the conference were low. The United States had just voted for the return of climate denier Donald Trump. And Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev declared oil and gas a “gift of God” at an opening event.

But even with these considerable headwinds, progress was made.

Progress on climate finance

The world’s rich countries currently contribute US$100 billion a year to climate finance for developing nations. It pays for measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change by making systems more resilient.

Two years ago, countries agreed to create a new “loss and damage” fund for nations dealing with climate disasters, launched at the summit in Dubai last year.

At these COP29 talks, Australia announced it would contribute A$50 million (US$32 million) to this fund. Climate change is already costing developing countries huge sums, estimated at US$100-$500 billion a year.

These flows of funding from rich countries are essential for developing nations to increase their emissions reduction, as well as respond to climate damage.

The COP29 deal sets a target of at least US$300 billion per year by 2035, with richer countries leading delivery.

While this goal represents a tripling of the previous target, it falls far short of the $400-$900 billion many developing countries had called for in finance from rich governments.

Disappointed developing country representatives labelled it “a paltry sum” and a “joke”. It also falls short of what experts say is needed by 2035 to meet global climate finance needs.

Recognising this gap, the text calls on “all actors to work together” to scale up finance from all public and private sources to at least US$1.3 trillion per year by 2035. Ways this might be achieved will be presented at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, a year from now.

Making the international carbon market a reality

COP29 also reached an agreement that settles longstanding disputes about making the international carbon market a reality. This hard-won deal delivered global standards for carbon trading, opening up new ways for developing countries to boost their renewable energy capacity.

These rules will pave the way for country-to-country trading of carbon credits. Each credit represents a tonne of carbon dioxide either removed from the atmosphere or not emitted. The deal will give countries more flexibility in how they meet their emissions targets.

It’s not perfect. Concerns linger on whether the rules will ensure trades reflect real projects and how transparent and accountable the market will be.

But the agreement will boost the importance of carbon credits and could increase incentives to protect carbon “sinks” – such as rainforests, seagrass meadows and mangroves – with flow-on nature benefits.

New national climate goals

By February 2025, all 195 Paris signatories have to announce more ambitious emission targets. Some countries announced their new plans at COP29.

The most ambitious was the United Kingdom, which upped its 2030 goal of a 68% cut to reducing 81% below 1990 emissions by 2035.

Next year’s host, Brazil, released new targets for a 59%–67% drop below 2005 levels by 2035.

But Brazil didn’t amend its 2030 ambitions and plans to boost oil and gas production 36% by 2035.

The United Arab Emirates announced target cuts of 47% before 2035, ahead of net zero by 2050. But this pledge was criticised by climate campaigners because the UAE is projected to boost oil and gas production 34% by by 2035.

The host, Azerbaijan, did not release its goals. Many other countries, including Australia, also held off from announcing new targets in Baku.

Indecision on fossil fuels

Fossil fuels were the elephant in the room. At last year’s COP in Dubai, nations finally agreed to include wording on:

transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science

But at this year’s COP, there was no decision on how, exactly, to begin this transition – and fossil fuels are not explicitly mentioned in the outcome documents.

Delegates from oil giant Saudi Arabia repeatedly tried to block mention of fossil fuels across all of the negotiating streams.

Azerbaijan is one of the birthplaces of the oil industry, with oil refineries running since 1859. Rasul Guliyev/Shutterstock

Trump’s return wasn’t a deal-breaker

The consequences of Trump’s re-election for climate action were much discussed. But I observed a surprising amount of acceptance and even optimism for climate cooperation.

The US is the world’s second-largest emitter, after China. Trump has promised to ramp up the country’s oil and gas production, and pull the US from the Paris Agreement as he did during his first term.

But climate action continued regardless – especially in renewables giant China, which hit its 2030 renewable target this year. The US is no longer the main player in climate negotiations, and many countries are much further down the road of cutting emissions. Few show signs of backtracking.

As the US bows out, it creates a vacuum. At COP29, middle powers such as Canada, the UK and Australia stepped up.

Negotiators from a progressive High Ambition Coalition – including small island states, the European Union and Latin American countries such as Columbia – played an important role in pushing to urgently increase finance for climate action.

China, for its part, is clearly eyeing off the position of climate leader about to be vacated by the US. And leaders of progressive US states attended COP29 to show parts of the US are still on board with climate action.

Australia’s hosting bid for 2026 talks in limbo

Australia’s bid to host COP31 in 2026 alongside Pacific nations was tipped to win, given it had the support from nearly all of the 29 “Western European and Other States” group of nations which will decide the host this time. Many observers expected an announcement at the end of COP29.

But no decision was made, as the rival bidder, Türkiye, did not withdraw its bid.

An announcement is now likely in mid-2025 – after Australia’s next federal election.

What now?

Many people are disappointed by COP29. It did not bring transformative change. The huge jump in climate finance called for by developing countries, and many in civil society, didn’t eventuate.

It came as 2024 is on track to be the hottest on record, and the costs of extreme weather have risen to more than US$2 trillion over the last decade.

But this year’s talks were still a step forward, affirming international climate cooperation at a time of significant geopolitical tensions globally. As the UN’s Simon Stiell said:

the UN Paris Agreement is humanity’s life-raft; there is nothing else […] We are taking that journey forward together.

Jacqueline Peel, Director, Melbourne Climate Futures, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

COP 29 finance focus

The COP29 climate talks are about to kick off in Baku, Azerbaijan. Here’s what to expect

Matt McDonald, The University of Queensland

The next major United Nations meeting on climate change, known as COP29, is about to get underway in Baku, Azerbaijan. These annual meetings are the key international summits as the world attempts to address the unfolding climate crisis.

The talks this year are crucial as climate change worsens. In recent years, a series of climate-fuelled disasters and extreme events, from Australia’s bushfires to Spain’s floods, have wrought havoc around the world.

What’s more, the continuing upward trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions suggests the window to limit warming 1.5°C is almost closed. And the re-election of United States President Donald Trump casts a pall over global climate action.

So, let’s take a look at the agenda for this vital COP meeting – and how we can gauge its success or failure.

The big issue: climate finance

COP stands for Conference of the Parties, and refers to the nearly 200 nations that have signed up to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Like last year’s conference in Dubai, the choice to hold this year’s meeting in Baku is controversial. Critics say Azerbaijan’s status as a “petro-state” with a questionable human rights record means it is not a suitable host.

Nevertheless, the meeting is crucial. COP29 has been dubbed the “finance COP”. The central focus is likely to be a much bigger target for climate finance – a mechanism by which wealthy countries provide funding to help poorer countries with their clean energy transition and to strengthen their climate resilience.

At the Copenhagen COP talks in 2009, developed countries committed to collectively providing US$100 billion a year for climate finance. This was seen as the big outcome of otherwise unsuccessful talks – but these targets are not being met.

The meeting also represents an opportunity to engage the private sector to play a bigger role in driving investment in the renewable energy transition.

But controversial questions remain. Who should be giving money and receiving it? And how do we ensure wealthy countries actually make good on their commitments?

The big outcome from last year’s COP was the establishment of a fund for unavoidable loss and damage experienced by vulnerable states as a result of climate effects. We’ve since seen some progress in clarifying how it will work.

But the US$700 million committed to the fund is far short of what is already required – and finance required is certain to increase over time. One estimate suggested US$580 billion will be needed by 2030 to cover climate-induced loss and damage.

Alongside these issues, the Baku talks will hopefully see some movement on adaptation finance, enabling further funds for building climate resilience in developing countries. To date, contributions and commitments have been well short of the goal set in 2021.

A final issue will be how to clarify rules around carbon markets, especially on the controversial topic of whether nations can use carbon trading to meet their Paris Agreement emission cut targets.

Talks on the latter have been stalled for years. Some analysts see movement on carbon markets as crucial for building momentum for the transition from fossil fuels.

Storm clouds over Baku

By far the biggest shadow over the Baku talks is the election of Republican Donald Trump as United States president.

Trump famously withdrew the US from the climate agreement in 2016, and has declared climate change as “one of the greatest scams of all time”.

Trump’s re-election will significantly affect US cooperation on climate change at a time when the stakes for the planet could barely be higher.

More broadly, geopolitical tensions and conflicts – from Gaza to Ukraine – also risk crowding out the international agenda and undermining the chance of cooperation between key players.

This especially applies to Russia and China, both of which are crucial to international climate efforts.

At past COPs, difficult geopolitics elsewhere haven’t been fatal for cooperation on climate policy – but it does make things harder. For this reason, Azerbaijan has called for a “truce” in global conflicts to coincide with the conference.

National commitments loom large at Baku

This COP represents the last big climate talks before national governments have to publicly state their new emission cut goals – known as “nationally determined contributions” – which are due in February 2025.

A few big players – such as Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates – have already indicated they’ll be announcing their new targets at Baku.

There will also be plenty of pressure on other nations to ramp up their targets. That’s because existing commitments put the world far off track to meeting the globally agreed target of limiting planetary warming to 1.5°C – a threshold beyond which devastating climate harms are expected.

The host nation Azerbaijan is also keen to increase transparency around reporting obligations for countries, to make it easier to track progress against emissions targets.

What about Australia?

Australia will almost certainly not be outlining a new emissions target in Baku. It has already signalled it may announce its updated targets after the February 2025 deadline.

For Australia, the main issue at Baku may be whether we – alongside at least one Pacific country – will be announced as the hosts of COP31 in 2026. Australia is tipped to win, but Turkey is a significant competitor.

What does success look like?

Azerbaijan sees agreement on a new collective quantified goal for climate finance as the most important outcome of the conference.

This and other finance outcomes will be important in ensuring a fair distribution of costs from the impact of climate change and the necessary energy transition.

Action on long stalled carbon trading cooperation would also be a win, and could turbocharge the global energy transition.

But real success would come in the form of significant new emissions targets and explicit endorsement of the need to move away from fossil fuels. Sadly, the latter is not prominent on the Baku agenda.

Humanity has run out of time to prevent climate change, and we are already seeing real damage. But an opportunity remains to minimise the future harm. We must pursue urgent and sustained international action, regardless of who is in the White House.

Matt McDonald, Professor of International Relations, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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