The annual climate change conference (COP29) opened this Monday in Baku with calls for global cooperation, under the impact of Donald Trump’s electoral victory in the United States.
The annual climate summit, under the auspices of the UN, is taking place as the world is heading towards breaking another temperature record. “We are heading towards ruin.” And it’s not about future problems. “Climate change is already here,” warned the COP29 president, Azerbaijan’s Minister of Ecology, Mukhtar Babayev, at the opening ceremony. “The moment of truth has arrived,” he added.
US in doubt
But the United States, the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, could again abandon the Paris Agreement that underpins all negotiations, as Trump did during his first presidential term. (2017-2021).
Trump, a declared skeptic of the phenomenon of climate change, could decree that exit from the Paris Agreement upon taking power, a decision that would be formalized a year later. COP29 must demonstrate that global cooperation “is not at a standstill,” declared the head of the UN Climate Body, Simon Stiell.
Months of negotiations
For months, the countries attending COP29 have been negotiating a draft agreement to set a new amount of aid that developed countries, those that have historically emitted more greenhouse gases, must deliver to the most affected countries. COP29 officially ends on Friday, November 22.
In 2009, at COP15 in Copenhagen, it was agreed that industrialized countries would provide 100 billion dollars annually, in direct aid or multilateral loans. That volume of aid was reached two years late, in 2022, and now experts say that at least ten times that amount is needed.
This aid should be used both to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, particularly through a gigantic global energy conversion, and for adaptation, that is, the construction of dikes, the adaptation of homes to extreme temperatures…
A region like Latin America emits less than 10% of greenhouse gases, but it is one of the most affected by global warming. The disagreements are deep and negotiations over the agenda forced a pause this Monday. The financing of the climate fight is not “charity” but “in everyone’s interest,” insisted Stiell, who called for an “ambitious” agreement.
In addition to the amount of aid and the schedule, nations must agree on who pays. In 2009, the group of countries that took on the $100 billion was just over 30, and China was left out. Now the European Union and the United States, among others, want Beijing to foot part of the bill, which is proving difficult.
China, the main emitter of gases, has its own climate aid agenda. And on the other hand, it dominates large sectors of the energy transition, such as rare metals.
Oil-producing and host countries
Last year, in Dubai, the countries managed to extract with difficulty a final declaration from COP28 in which it was assumed, for the first time, that the countries should undertake a “transition” towards the end of fossil fuels.
But the International Energy Agency (IEA) reminded in its latest annual report that 80% of the world’s energy still comes from these sources (coal, oil, gas). After the opening, the COP gathers world leaders for two days each year.
But this year, the major protagonists of the climate dialogue will not be present: neither the American President Joe Biden, nor the Brazilian Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, nor the French Emmanuel Macron…
The atmosphere of budget austerity in wealthy countries, the ongoing wars in Ukraine or the Middle East, and the outcome of the U.S. elections have overshadowed diplomatic prospects. “The ambitions of the Paris Agreement are in serious danger,” warned the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) from Geneva.
