People pose near a sign outside the venue for the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan.
| Photo Credit: AP

COP29, termed the “climate finance COP,” has one major objective: establishing a concrete financial commitment from developed countries to support climate action in developing nations. As the United Nations climate talks begin in Baku, the primary debate centers on who will provide funding and, more crucially, how much is needed.

Developing nations face mounting expenses due to climate-driven issues like extreme heat, floods, droughts, and storms, costs they cannot bear alone. Experts and numerous reports estimate that addressing these issues will require trillions of dollars. The financing in question covers three key areas: aiding the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, supporting adaptation to climate impacts, and compensating vulnerable nations for climate-related damages.

However, discussions are likely to be tense following the re-election of former U.S. President Donald Trump, a vocal climate change skeptic whose campaign pledged a second withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.

While the current U.S. delegation is under the Biden administration, Trump’s re-election casts uncertainty over future U.S. climate commitments, putting funding pledges in question and complicating an already challenging negotiation.

Baku:

Tens of thousands of people from around the globe will gather next week for COP29, the annual UN climate summit, in Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku.

But as each year’s summit has produced its own set of promises, plans, and paperwork to chase, the rationale for these discussions can be hard to follow.

Here’s what you need to know about why COP, short for Conference of the Parties, matters:

Why do we have a yearly COP?

Because climate change will affect every country, regardless of whether it contributed to the problem, it demands global solutions that can address the diversity of needs across countries.

In signing the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that launched the global negotiations, the parties that agreed to it took pains to differentiate between the wealthy nations that caused the bulk of warming and poorer countries that suffer disproportionately from it.

Put another way, the talks are framed around the idea that the countries that benefited the most from industrialising should take the most responsibility for dealing with the warming that resulted.

Addressing that imbalance has become more difficult as developing countries’ economies have grown and rich nations juggle competing costs including war.

What can a yearly summit achieve?

The summit provides a place for countries to discuss solutions, including energy policies, financing schemes or funding needs.

Nearly every summit is also attended by world leaders, giving an important signal that their countries are committed to the UNFCCC goals. The leaders’ presence also helps countries hold one another accountable for past promises.

But the annual COP is just the main event in a continuous process. Country representatives meet year round to build support for new climate action proposals ahead of the COP, where they can be agreed by consensus of all countries.

Is the process working?

While each summit is meant to advance global climate action from the year before, the event also offers countries a chance to show their citizens the problem is being addressed.

Importantly, the exercise has seen countries counting and reporting their emissions, and has helped move hundreds of billions of dollars in climate aid to developing nations.

By requiring decisions by consensus, the process also ensures strong global support for agreed actions, improving the chances these actions will be implemented.

But the pace of progress has been too slow to contain the rise in global temperatures. Since COP summits began in 1995, both emissions and temperatures have continued to rise, meaning the world is on track for extreme climate change.

Proponents of the UNFCCC process say there is no alternative for negotiating major socioeconomic changes to try to limit global warming.

What will we get out of COP29?

This year’s summit is hoping for a few headline agreements: a new annual climate finance target, a deal to get multilateral carbon credit markets working, and more aid money pledged for countries already hit by costly climate disasters.

Beyond that, negotiators will continue to work on technical agreements that build on work done at previous summits.

Outside the formal COP framework, groups of countries could launch their own initiatives or pledge funding for specific projects. Companies will likely announce commercial deals related to climate action, while financiers try to raise cash for climate investments.

What is Azerbaijan’s role in COP29?

Azerbaijan holds the presidency of COP29 this year, when the rotating COP presidency fell to Central and Eastern Europe.

Next year Brazil will serve as Latin America’s host for COP30.

As summit host, a country works the entire year to steer pre-summit negotiations and lobby other governments for ambitious action. This gives the presidency an important part in defining the summit’s priorities.

What else happens at COP?

Beyond the country negotiations, the COP summit offers a chance for anyone to try to draw attention – or funding – to their cause.

Hundreds of side events see activists and scientists rubbing shoulders with industry lobbyists and banking heavyweights.

Public-facing conference stages host panel discussions on topics from ocean acidification to designing carbon offset projects.

An exhibition hall, dubbed the “Green Zone,” features discussions led by national delegations, non-profit organisations and corporations.

While some summits have seen big organized protests, such as the rally of thousands outside of COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, the last two conferences in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have allowed for protests only in designated, roped-off areas.

Azerbaijan, which also has banned public protests, will likely see little civic action outside of the high-security conference site.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A view shows a sign of the COP29 United Nations Climate Change Conference with a backdrop of the cityscape in Baku, Azerbaijan October 31, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

This month’s U.N. climate summit – COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan – has been dubbed the “climate finance COP” for its central goal: to agree on how much money should go each year to helping developing countries cope with climate-related costs.

That discussion could be tough following Tuesday’s re-election of former U.S. President Donald Trump, a climate denier whose campaign vowed to remove the top historic greenhouse gas emitter and leading oil and gas producer from the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement to fight climate change for a second time.

COP29 delegates will also be looking to advance other deals made at previous summits.

Here are some of the top agenda items for the Nov. 11-22 summit.

Climate finance

The acronym dominating this year’s summit is NCQG – which stands for the New Collective Quantified Goal.

That refers to the new annual climate financing target, which is meant to kick in when the current $100 billion pledge expires at the end of this year.

Wealthy nations have only sometimes met that annual goal since 2020, leading to growing mistrust among the world’s climate-vulnerable nations.

As COP29 aims to set a much higher target for the years ahead, wealthy nations insist the money cannot come entirely from their budgets.

Instead, they are discussing a far more complex effort that would involve reforming the global multilateral lending complex in ways that de-escalate climate-linked financial risks and encourage more private capital.

It is unclear how much of the total annual target would be offered by rich nations. Also unresolved is whether fast-developing nations like China or the Middle East Gulf oil states should also contribute, a position championed by the United States and European Union.

By reforming the global banking system, countries hope to drive up the annual climate finance sum. U.N. agencies estimate that trillions of dollars are needed yearly, but officials with the COP29 host Azerbaijan said that a number in the “hundreds of billions” has a more realistic chance of being approved by consensus.

Fossil fuel transition

Last year’s COP28 summit in Dubai ended with countries agreeing for the first time to “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems.”

Since then, however, both fossil fuel use and export sales have continued to rise globally, while new areas have been approved for oil and gas production in countries like Azerbaijan, the United States, Namibia, and Guyana.

With countries and companies unclear in their resolve to quit coal, oil and gas, negotiators said COP29 was unlikely to deliver timelines or stronger language on fossil fuels, though some countries might push for a halt in new coal plant permitting.

Countries will also be discussing progress in their pledge to triple renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency, as a way of easing demand for fossil fuels.

Rules for carbon market

Governments are eager to resolve rules for trading carbon credits earned through the preservation of forests and other natural carbon sinks.

While these credits are meant to be issued to nations as optional offsets to their countries’ emissions, they can also be traded on open markets. Business leaders are looking for COP29 to set rules for guaranteeing transparency and environmental integrity in projects logged with the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM).

Still to decide are key issues including how the PACM supervisory body will set standards, if credits should be evaluated before being traded, and whether and when credits can be revoked.

Boosting transparency

Azerbaijan hopes countries will submit their first climate action progress reports during the summit ahead of a Dec. 31 deadline, but it is unclear if countries will do so.

These so-called Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs) are meant to describe a country’s progress in reaching its climate goals – and how much further they need to go in setting fresh goals by February. As it stands, national pledges to cut emissions still fall far short of what is needed, the U.N. said last week.

The BTRs will also offer insight into how much finance is currently needed in developing countries, both for transitioning their economies away from fossil fuels and for adapting to the conditions of a warmer world.

Adaptation in focus

Countries last year committed to a framework of guidelines for national plans to help people adapt to climate disruptions such as warmer days, rising sea levels or parched farmlands.

But the framework for adaptation lacks details, such as quantifiable targets for measuring progress or strategies for linking projects with climate finance.

Countries hope to set more specific adaptation goals during COP29.

Money for loss and damage

Two years since Egypt’s COP27 summit agreed to help poor countries with the costs of climate-driven disasters like extreme floods, storms or drought, about $660 million has been mobilized through the newly created Fund For Responding To Loss and Damage, that will be headquartered in the Philippines.

Climate-vulnerable countries will call on wealthy nations to offer more for the fund.

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