The United Nations’ Cop29 climate change summit began Monday amid stark warnings about global environmental degradation and an undercurrent of anxiety about President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Thousands of diplomats, scientists and leaders have arrived in Baku, Azerbaijan, to negotiate the most thorny topic of climate change negotiations: the funding needed to tackle the climate crisis.
Anxiety over the US election was rife at the summit, amid an already daunting task of raising more than $1 trillion to help developing countries prepare for and mitigate the climate crisis.
Within hours of the opening ceremony, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released a report saying, as many have warned, this year will surpass last year as the hottest year on record.
That’s no surprise, given that 2024 will see some of the biggest disasters in history, from wildfires of unprecedented scale to devastating floods across Asia and Europe.
However, the considerably deteriorating situation on the planet was overshadowed by concerns about the inauguration of US President Donald Trump for a second term, which was at the center of all discussions.
President Trump worries about a major crisis looming at COP29
Trump’s campaign has signaled that the president-elect intends to pull the United States, the world’s second-largest polluter, out of the landmark Paris climate accord, as he did during his previous term.
At the summit, there were concerns about what the US commitments announced here in Baku would mean, at a time when the next administration is very likely to backtrack on them.
Bekumuzi Bebe, president of Power Shift Africa, said the summit was a “test for rich countries” to see how serious they were about fighting the climate crisis.
“At Cop29, Africa needs leaders who recognize climate finance not as charity, but as a responsibility rooted in historical responsibility,” he said, adding that if the U.S. retreats under Trump, Africa will It added that this could have “catastrophic” ramifications.
“Our fight for a cleaner and safer planet is not over,” US Special Envoy John Podesta told the summit.
“Facts are still facts. Science is still science. This fight is bigger than one election or one political cycle in a country.”
The climate envoy, who has served as a senior adviser to President Joe Biden, said he recognized the United States had “let down” the world.
“I am acutely aware that the United States has at times disappointed those in the climate regime through a pattern of strong, proactive, and effective U.S. leadership followed by abrupt disengagement following the U.S. presidential election. I am doing it.
“And we also know that as the risks we face become more and more catastrophic, this disappointment is even harder to tolerate. But it is what it is.”
Some stressed that the show must go on. Some officials said the U.N. process was not dependent on national elections and urged other leaders “not to hide behind U.S. inaction.”
“Climate diplomacy on a boiling planet is unstoppable for climate deniers,” says Ben Golov, senior campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute.
“Biden officials must spend the next two months building protective bulwarks and securing our climate legacy before President Trump takes office.”
Activists continued to appeal to politicians that more funding is essential to combating climate change. According to one report, the world’s developing countries need about $1 billion a day just to cope with the effects of today’s extreme weather events, when global warming is only 1.3 degrees Celsius. United Nations Environment Program (Unep) Report Published on Thursday.
“We cannot avoid a global meltdown by spending less on climate action than we do on ice cream,” said Teresa Anderson, Global Climate Justice Director at ActionAid. “If we are serious about fighting climate change, we have to pay for climate action.”
But experts acknowledge there is a vacuum in climate leadership and other countries need to step in to fill it. Much is already expected from the UK, with Keir Starmer expected to attend the summit and announce revised climate change targets.
Activists are also looking to China to bridge the gap.
“It is in China’s own interest to act,” said Yuan Ying, head of Greenpeace China. “We can see China and others filling the gap in climate leadership.”
A scaled-down summit in Azerbaijan
The summit venue at Baku Stadium is significantly smaller than last year’s expansive Expo City Center in Dubai, both in terms of number of participants and size.
For many participants, the smaller, easier-to-navigate venue was welcomed.
“It’s not about the size of the meeting or the number of participants; the agenda is driven by negotiations,” said Carolina Pasquali of Greenpeace Brazil. Independent.
“Last year was a year of a lot of greenwashing and corporate presence,” she said. “They turned it into a trade fair for fake solutions.”
What may be less welcome is that fewer heads of state will be attending this time.
When the high-level summit begins on Tuesday, only 92 leaders will be present at the summit, where more than 200 countries negotiate a climate deal.
Most of the missing faces are from wealthy countries. Biden and Kamala Harris will not be attending, and the leaders of Germany and France are busy with domestic politics. Canada, Brazil, South Africa and India are all missing.
This has led to very lackluster summits, where major outcomes are determined by how much money major powers agree to spend to tackle the climate crisis. But small island states and African countries on the front lines of the climate crisis are sending delegations.
Part of the chatter on the ground is Azerbaijan’s role as an oil state. Just before the summit began, the BBC reported that Cop29 chief executive and Azerbaijan’s deputy energy minister Ernur Soltanov posed as a potential person about an “investment opportunity” in Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company. An investor who was allegedly overheard discussing it with a person who appeared willing to negotiate such a deal on the sidelines of Kopp itself.
“This is not the first time for us [summit] Fossil fuels are president…” Ms. Pasquali said. Last year, leaked documents revealed that host UAE’s Cop28 team had plans to discuss oil and gas deals with more than a dozen countries.
“All countries have a responsibility to step up and show leadership. This is the challenge of our generation, it is getting worse every year, and time is running out,” she said.
