For the United Nations, there may never have been a worse time to negotiate on climate change. Post-pandemic inflation has roiled countries around the world, straining public budgets and diverting government attention from climate action. The conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East continues to escalate, disrupting priorities among powers such as Russia, Iran, and the European Union. To make matters worse, the US just elected Donald Trump, who called climate change a “hoax” and removed the US from the 2015 Paris climate accord during his first term.
Nevertheless, thousands of negotiators and activists are expected to gather in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the coming days to try to advance global climate action. This year’s meeting, known as COP29, will be seen as a transitional event, without the high-profile significance of the 2015 Paris talks or last year’s Dubai summit, where countries finally agreed to divest from fossil fuels. Widely recognized. Still, negotiators will make key decisions next week that could determine how the world cuts carbon emissions and deals with the growing toll of climate disasters in the developing world. I plan to find out the problem.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
New goals for international climate change assistance
The most important item on the agenda at COP29 is the so-called “new collective quantitative target”, which sets out how much climate change aid rich countries should send to poor countries. The funding is aimed at helping developing countries transition to renewable energy and adapt to climate impacts such as drought and sea level rise. Negotiations are likely to be tense as rich countries break past commitments and spend large sums of money. have Remittances were made in the form of expensive loans or The value of fighting climate change is questionable. All this comes on top of the fact that developing countries and many experts argue that current aid commitments are insufficiently low. UN report Released earlier this week Adaptation efforts in particular were found to be underfunded by $180 billion to $360 billion annually.
“It’s not just about the amount of money,” said Emily Beauchamp, an advocate at the International Sustainable Development Institute, a think tank focused on climate change. “It’s important that the money actually reaches the people who need it most.”
Negotiators aim to agree on a new goal by the end of the COP. Fragile countries are seeking annual commitments totaling trillions of dollars. But important questions still remain: who should provide the funding and who should receive it. The US and Europe want big economies like China and wealthy oil states like Saudi Arabia. When the United Nations first began negotiations on climate change, these countries were considered “developing” countries, yet they are still giving money to them. These countries resist these calls, pointing to the fact that the United States and Europe have historically been responsible for more total emissions. The geopolitical impasse has stalled progress in negotiations for months, which are key to a global agreement on climate change aid.
restore America’s margins
The first few days of every COP are a series of announcements by world leaders and senior ministers, who take to the stage to tout and quantify their countries’ efforts to combat climate change. This year’s series of announcements will feature an elephant. The United States, the world’s largest economy and historically the largest emitter, is likely to formally withdraw from international climate action as soon as President Trump takes office next year. Current President Joe Biden is not attending the COP, and even if senior administration officials announce new commitments, it may be difficult for other countries to take them seriously.
The question is whether other big emitters, particularly China and the European Union, will step up their ambitions to bridge the gap that President Trump will create. Ministers in these countries are likely already preparing for a Trump victory. But with Europe and China struggling with economic downturns in recent years, it is unclear how much commitments other governments will make on clean energy and adaptation investments.
Coordinating the global energy transition
The big news at last year’s COP28 was the UAE Consensus document, an agreement in which all of the world’s major economies, including the United States and oil nations such as Saudi Arabia, pledged to transition away from fossil fuels. The language calling for a “transition from fossil fuels in our energy system in a just, orderly, and equitable manner” was painstakingly crafted, but now it must be put into practice. The Baku summit is unlikely to yield another deal of this magnitude, but countries will detail more concrete commitments they plan to make to advance the energy transition.
One of the biggest action items is regulation of methanea greenhouse gas that is an order of magnitude more powerful than carbon dioxide. While the United States, European Union and Canada have announced sweeping new regulations on methane from oil wells and industrial facilities in recent years, COP negotiators have warned that methane from agriculture, which accounts for about a third of the population, It is likely to lead to new developments in limiting methane. Global emissions of gas.
“A few years ago [agriculture] It was kind of a third rail for methane. The politics around it are so bad that we didn’t want to touch on it,” said Jonathan Banks, senior policy advisor for the Clean Air Task Force, referring to the backlash from farmers around the world. such as the Netherlands. “But we have turned the corner on agriculture.”
There has also been significant discussion about the role of nuclear energy, which has sparked renewed interest in recent years from countries seeking 24-hour power generation without carbon emissions, and the carbon removal and storage technologies being introduced by the oil industry. You will be killed. is being touted as an important way to reduce emissions. There is strong disagreement within and between countries as to whether these technologies are a solution to climate change. One text of last year’s COP28 agreement suggested that coal-fired power could be used for decades as long as it was accompanied by carbon capture, sparking strong opposition from some negotiators.
force climate compensation
Two years ago, long-wealthy countries pledged to provide the equivalent of reparations for their role in causing climate change. These early industrializing countries have historically emitted the most greenhouse gases, so they should send money to poor countries to help them recover from climate change disasters that they did little to cause. There is an argument that This initiative was the fulfillment of a long-standing demand of Africa’s small island states and developing countries.
But the devil is in the details. The new Loss and Damage Fund is housed at the World Bank, but it has a problematic legacy for developing countries, with rich countries capitalizing on the new fund for only around $700 million. Not yet. Of the total requirement. The big question at this year’s COP is whether the fund will be able to get off the ground, or whether it will become bogged down in bureaucracy and unable to address the challenges facing the countries it was meant to support.
The battle over carbon markets
One of the main ways large companies claim progress towards emissions reduction targets is through what are known as voluntary carbon markets. It works like this: If it is too difficult or too expensive to directly reduce climate pollution, companies can reduce it elsewhere (for example, through reforestation projects that promise to lock up carbon in the trunks of newly planted trees). All you have to do is buy credits that represent emissions prevented or sequestered. tree). The United Nations is currently trying to create its own carbon market, but it will target countries rather than companies. The goal is to provide more ways for countries to work together to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Some experts say such markets could help reduce global emissions. lowering the cost of climate mitigation. But the issue is highly contentious, and environmental groups worry that a UN-backed carbon market will reproduce the same shortcomings seen in voluntary markets. Some scientists believe that carbon markets “junkOffsets that don’t permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere, or were supposed to anyway.
At last year’s COP, diplomats made no progress Whatever the development of the UN carbon market, there have been disagreements over the types of carbon credits that should be traded and the methodology used to generate them. This year’s COP president promises to lead markets ‘to the finish line’, but there are differences of opinion likely to last. Some commentators believe that President Trump’s re-election isenthusiasm has cooled” powerful results.
Joseph Winters contributed reporting to this article.
