Abstract
COP29 ended up with a general discontent and anger for the outcome. Starting without major countries’ leaders, a petrostate as host and a general insecure geopolitical future ahead of us, Baku’s Conference was almost solely focused on climate finance. Most experts didn’t recognize any further step in the fight against climate change.As COP30 will be in Belem, most people are hoping in Brazilian leadership to take a step forward on the climate change fight.
Matilde Pierattini (Head Researcher - G.E.O Environment)
Introduction
COP29 was previously announced as the financial COP, and the forecast was met. From the first days, the main goal was climate finance. COP29 was having the first issues even before it started. In the previous days, Donald J. Trump was winning the US Presidential election for the second time (5th November) and G20 was about to start in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro, 18-19th November). Thus, most of the world leaders were keeping their eyes on anything but Baku’s cause. Someone even talked about a postponed kick-off as many of the main involved countries were absent: Joe Biden, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi, Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Justin Trudeau, Ursula von der Leyen. G20 represents 85% of global GDP and 80% of global emissions: this consequently showed indifference for absent countries.
Climate finance was the main sector on which representatives pushed the most. Same thing happened during the last few Conferences when the goal was finding the most feasible and wide shared economic solution.
COP29’s focus and concern were mainly the amount of money countries had to pay for investments. Developing countries asked for $1.300 billion by 2035. The above request was considered to be too high by developed countries. Thus, at the end of the negotiations, Parties agreed only for $300 billion. This is the main concern for participants as the amount won’t surely be paid by governments, thus private parties are likely to lose any interest on investing, consequently leading to a lack of trust in the resolution.
Carbon markets
From the 2015 Paris Agreement, the international community focused on the carbon markets partial resolution. Carbon market is the carbon credits are sold and bought to allow the buyer to emit a determined amount of Co2 and GHG emissions. There are both mandatory allowances markets and voluntary carbon markets. (A cura di A Sud, “Le parole giuste. Glossario ecologista”, Fandango Libri). Carbon markets are generally based on a cap-and-trade mechanism. Cap is “the limit set on the total amount of GHG that can be emitted at the operations level under particular sectors, such as electricity and heat generation, industrial manufacturing, aviation and maritime transport. The cap is reduced annually in line with the target, which is to become climate-neutral by 2050 according to the EU plan. “One allowance giving the right to emit one tonne of CO2 eq (i.e., carbon dioxide equivalent)” (EU Commission, “What is the EU ETS?”). Allowances are sold in auctions and traded between companies. Companies may receive some allowances for free. A company can reduce its emissions and obtain carbon credits. If the company meets the carbon standards, by applying innovation such as installing or introducing new operative climate-friendly resolutions the following year may be interested in selling the credits to another company which is not able to meet emissions standards.
At the international level, the first global carbon tracing system was ideated in 1997 under Kyoto protocol. Obviously, the carbon market has also been characterized by fraud cases. A year ago, the world’s leading certifier, used by the biggest companies in the world, approved a series of forest carbon offsets completely “worthless”, “phantom credits”, as the Guardian defined them. (Greenfield P, 2023). Only a few rainforest projects were effectively bringing a deforestation reduction, specifically 94% of the credits according to the Guardian investigation.
Main issues are to be found in the not-at-all meticulous design of the carbon market system, such as the lack of a structured monitoring system on the effectiveness of the projects considered valid to obtain carbon credits. Taking the tree-planting resolution, a company located in a continent might meet the carbon credit standards by planting trees in another continent, an action which is not contributing to improving its own country’s emissions level since the company might continue to emit the same amount of emissions it used to.
Technology as key element for a common resolution
Technology was obviously addressed as the main focus during the 10-days Conference as well. On one hand, digitalization and innovation are essential to take action and help climate activism to broaden out. As our colleague Elettra Tirino wrote in “COP29: The Dual Nature of Technology, Innovation, and Digitalization”, during the Early Warning System Discussion Days Parties underlined that tech innovation may help to mitigate climate change’s consequences. On the other hand, there’s an inconsistency in countries’ capabilities to apply and install new innovations. During COP29, previous Conferences’ initiatives were retrieved, such as the events organised by TEC (Technology Executive Committee) and UNIDO (UN Industrial Development Organization) to highlight cement and steel industry is crucial for improving the global decarbonisation process as they are part of the Hard-to-Abate sector.
New collective quantified goal on climate finance (NCQG)
During COP29, the Paris Agreement art.2 goal, which was to try to “Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels” (UN, Paris Agreement, 2015), was reiterated as in the last-10-years bilateral and multilateral meetings on climate issue. Specifically, the NCQG was established to support developing countries on their national plans. The main reference is to final negotiation doc’s art 9: developed countries “takes the lead” in public and private, bilateral/multilateral sources, as well as in mitigation and adaptation action, recognizing “the voluntary intention of Parties to count all climate-related outflows from and climate-related finance mobilized by multilateral development banks towards achievement of the goal set forth in this paragraph”. (United Nations, 2024).
Most of the 38 points reiterated already consolidated concepts such as helping developing countries to increase their financial capabilities for adaptation and mitigation actions, or encouraging bilateral and multilateral meetings to enhance access and effectiveness of previous agreements. Most of the time, the reference text was the 2015 Paris agreement: this means that since 2015 only few developments were made within the almost 10 Conferences of Parties. Furthermore, used terms were analysed: the developing countries’ request was, again, unchained by any obligation for industrialized countries, causing outcry and anger among citizens and activists at Baku’s stadium.
General opinion on the final draft
Journalists were not surprised about the final outcomes. The host country’s interests are quite crucial to outline the global fallout at the end of the 10 days of Conference. One of the most disappointed countries was India, which publicly defined the agreed amount of money as inadequate and declared that developing countries’ opinion was ignored. Simon Stiell, UNFCCC Secretary underlined that none of the Parties achieved what they wanted to.
Conclusion
Baku's days ended with general dissatisfaction. Even the core issue, climate finance, was solved with a “paltry sum” of $300 billion instead of $1.300 billion as developing countries requested. According to many experts, the final decision could enlarge the gap between wealthier and poorest countries during a historical time when the wealth of the world's richest people and poverty of the poorest people are increasing. Thus, few representatives argued that “this document is little more than an optical illusion. This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face." (BBC, 2024). As specified in the final text, richest countries have to “help” developing countries to reduce emissions. The concept doesn’t apply to the so-called developed countries. It is known that generally Western and petrostates contribute to increasing global emissions.
As a consequence, we could have expected the COP29 outcome since the host country is a petrostate, its president is an authoritarian leader and its ecology and natural-resources minister is the ex-executive of an oil-company. Almost all Azerbaijan’s exports are oil and gas. (Burrows E., 2024) Some concerns were raised on Azerbaijan using its spotlight to make new commercial deals for national oil and gas interests. We must remember that, from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Azerbaijan was able to close deals with a few EU countries, such as Italy, Greece, Bulgaria. Azerbaijan exports 57% of its oil to Italy. (ECCO, 2024)
What needs to be highlighted is China’s role. China is still defined by the UN as a developing country, which leads to the first most polluted country with no formal obligation to cut its GHG emissions or be mandatory involved in the financial plans. However, China has agreed to a “formula in the finance deal that would allow its contributions to be counted” (BBC, 2024). This shift could be a foresight for next year's COP in Belem (Brazil).
Next COP30 will be 10 years after Paris COP21, thus would be a time to reflect on what has been done in all these years. All eyes will be on Brazil as President Lula da Silva has described it as a “turnaround Cop”: as G20 Brazil Leader’s declaration reports, we need to urgently address reforms in international financial structures, ensuring just transition as well as social commitments such as recognizing indigenous people’s roles in the forest conservation (Group of Nations, 2024), which was not even named during Baku’s Conference.
For further information on the COP 29 topics, here is our series:
Franzoni M., “COP29: analysis of the opportunities and challenges”, Mondo Internazionale, 11 November 2024, https://mondointernazionale.org/focus-allegati/cop29-analysis-of-the-opportunities-and-challenges
Lorenzon L., “COP29 Action for climate empowerment: the relevance of active participation of young people”, Mondo Internazionale, https://mondointernazionale.org/focus-allegati/cop29-action-for-climate-empowerment-the-relevance-of-active-participation-of-young-people
Tirino E., “COP29: The Dual Nature of Technology, Innovation, and Digitalization”, Mondo Internazionale, 03 Dicembre 2024, https://mondointernazionale.org/focus-allegati/cop29-the-dual-nature-of-technology-innovation-and-digitalization
Franzoni M., Viscusi M., “Cop29: Market and non market mechanisms and climate finance”, Mondo Internazionale, 03 Gennaio 2025, https://mondointernazionale.org/en/focus-allegati/cop29.
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