COP29 summit in Baku: what to expect – Carswellfamilyfoundation

Alice K. Hill is the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. Priyanka Mahat is a CFR fellow on climate change policy.

What’s at stake at this year’s summit?

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COP29 comes ahead of an upcoming deadline for countries to submit updated plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under Paris Agreement by February 2025. These commitments, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), underpin the Paris Agreement’s goal of curbing rising global temperatures. To date, these voluntary commitments have not led the world to limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C, much less 2°C. Current policies are putting the planet on the path to experience an increase of approximately 2.6-3.1°C according to UN estimates, by 2100. However, with every tenth degree of warming, the weather becomes more extreme. Meanwhile, the accumulation of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere is at the highest levels ever recorded. Human combustion of fossil fuels accounts for approximately 90 percent these emissions. According to the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific group that advises the UN process, insufficient commitments paint “gloomy picture“for the future.

What can we expect from Azerbaijan as host of COP29?

COP29 marks the halfway point Three Chairmen of the Constitutional Court”, a collaboration between the United Arab Emirates (UAE, host of COP28) and Brazil (host of COP30 in 2025) to accelerate progress towards the 1.5°C temperature reduction target. Unlike COP28 in Dubai last year, which was a record-breaking one hundred thousand participantsCOP29 will be smaller: Baku is expected to host about fifty thousand participants. This decline in the number of participants is partly explained by Baku’s more limited hosting capacity and the relatively late confirmation of Azerbaijan’s host status. Lower representation of the corporate and private sector is expected. The U.S. Congress is expected to have smaller representation at COP29 this year. Conference organizers announced that they will allocate more observer badges to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from countries in the Global South to increase the representation of these countries.

The choice of Azerbaijan as the host country raised concerns about the credibility and fairness of the COP process. COP29 will be the third time a major fossil fuel producing country has hosted the conference and the second time in two years. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced plans to increase gas production in part to meet European Union (EU) demands and called the country’s oil and gas reserves “gift from God” Baku chooses Mukhtar Babayev outstanding personality in Azerbaijan’s oil industry, as the conference’s chief negotiator raised concerns that conflicts of interest could undermine the COP process. The country’s restrictions on freedom of speech and civil society are also alarming. The fact that there were no women representatives on the original COP29 organizing team led to high level criticism early in the planning process. In response, Azerbaijan expanded the committee to include twelve women.

What’s on the agenda?

Azerbaijan has developed several commitments to implement ambitious actions. These include:

Reducing emissions and increasing clean energy. The President has launched a series of commitments to invest in renewable energy, such as the Global Storage and Grid Commitment, which aims to improve energy infrastructure and storage capacity around the world, the ambitious Hydrogen Declaration, and the Landfill Methane Reduction Declaration. . In the Green Digital Declaration, the COP29 leadership aims to reduce emissions in the information and communications sectors. The agenda, however, does without direct mention transition away from fossil fuels, despite hard-earned language finally reached at last year’s Conference of the Parties that signaled “the beginning of the end» fossil fuel era. The omission has fueled concerns about the possibility of a rollback in Baku, especially given the country’s heavy reliance on natural gas.

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Building resilience to climate change. The COP Presidency launched a climate initiative for farmers and a declaration calling for integrated approaches to combat climate threats to water basins and ecosystems. In addition, Baku intends to introduce the Human Development Initiative for Climate Resilience, which focuses on education, skills, health and well-being, as well as the COP29 Multisectoral Action Pathways (MAP) Declaration, aimed at making cities more resilient to climate change .

New climate finance targets. The countries are expected to replace the previous annual commitment of US$100 billion to developing countries under the 2009 Copenhagen Accord. The new target, known as the New Collective Quantitative Target (NCQG), will be discussed at the COP in November and is due to come into force from 2025. A report for 2022 (PDF) The Independent High-Level Panel on Climate Finance found that developing countries will need about $1 trillion a year by 2025 and $2.4 trillion by 2030 to meet their climate finance needs.

Among the most contentious issues remains how much money developed countries will provide and who should provide climate finance. The United States and other major economies want to expand their donor base, but developing countries argue that this goes beyond the NCQG’s mandate. Other areas of conflict include who should receive money – all developing countries or just the most vulnerable – and what type, with developing countries seeking to avoid debt financing. A recent study found that the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries pay twice as much annually to repay external debt as they receive financial assistance to address climate change. This financial strain limits their ability to invest in critical climate resilience and adaptation efforts, exacerbating their exposure to climate risks.

The focus on climate finance could influence the level of ambition reflected in NDC commitments due early next year, particularly for developing countries. These countries are hesitant to commit to more ambitious goals without first securing clear financial support through the NCQG. Although the joint initiative between Azerbaijan, Brazil and the UAE aims to recognize this link between finance and ambition, both the United States and the EU remain opposed to such explicit conditions. Consequently, developing countries have expressed skepticism that their needs and problems will be adequately addressed.

How do the US elections affect climate negotiations?

COP29 will begin just six days after the US presidential election on November 5, and the outcome of the vote will impact the COP negotiations. A potential Kamala Harris administration is expected to prioritize climate action and international climate cooperation. Conversely, another Donald Trump presidency would likely result in the US withdrawing (again) from the COP process and the Paris Agreement, as well as a significant rollback of US emissions reductions and international climate commitments. Given that the United States is the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases and is among the world’s largest current emitters, a second Trump administration’s abandonment of action on climate change could undermine enthusiasm for broader global climate ambitions.

The effectiveness of the international negotiation process itself is under scrutiny, and the question often arises: “Are communities of practice working?” Al Gore and John Kerry, two prominent figures in US climate policy, express general skepticism about the prevailing process. Gore insists the process needs to be overhauled to meet the urgent demands of the climate crisis. In contrast, Kerry recognizes the value of the COP but argues that it needs to be changed to make it more effective and inclusive. The results of recent elections around the world will also play a major role in determining whether leaders and their regimes can bring more ambition to the fight against climate change. A critical question remains: will country pledges contribute to what the COP28 President has called the “1.5°C North Star?”

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the authors. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher that does not take institutional positions on policy issues.