The world’s most important climate meeting lived down to expectations when it ended during the weekend on the shores of the Caspian Sea in Baku, Azerbaijan, a country which is highly dependent on fossil fuels.
Azerbaijan’s president had told the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties, or COP29, that oil and gas are a “gift of God” , and defended its plans to boost production. Eventually, after fraught negotiations that extended the 12 days of talks by more than 30 hours, richer countries agreed to raise their contribution – referred to as the ‘New Collective Quantified Goal’, or NCQG – to help less-developed countries tackle climate change from the current figure of $100 billion to $300 billion a year by 2035.
The independent high-level expert group on climate finance released its third report at COP29, indicating that developing countries outside China would need $1.3 trillion a year by 2035 in external finance from all sources to fund the investments necessary to realise the goals of the Paris climate agreement, and that the NCOG, which mainly includes public finance from developed countries, should be at least $390 billion by 2035.
Former US vice president Al Gore declared this aspect of COP29 was ‘far from a success’, India derided the pledges as a ‘paltry sum’. and Michael Wilkins, Executive Director and Professor of Practice at the Centre for Climate Finance and Investment, Imperial College London, said it was “a disappointingly small step”, albeit in the right direction.
After a decade of wrangles, countries also agreed broad rules for a global market to buy and sell carbon credits that proponents say will mobilise billions of dollars into new projects to help curb global warming.
In carbon markets, buyer countries can purchase others’ emissions cuts as carbon ‘credits’ and put them towards their own climate mitigation commitments. Credits are, for example, created through projects such as planting trees or building wind farms or renewable projects in a poorer country that receives one credit for every metric ton of carbon emissions that they reduce or remove from the atmosphere.
If it works well, the market could fund the low-hanging fruit of climate mitigation but Dr Rob Bellamy, Senior Lecturer in Climate and Society, University of Manchester, said a centralised carbon market under the UN could “open the door to risky and reversible carbon credits from so-called ‘natural’ climate solutions.”
Overall, the negotiations “limped over the line with some shreds of progress but represent baby steps forward when we need to be picking up the pace,” commented Eliot Whittington, Executive Director of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.
Last year’s COP28 in Dubai, was the first of three consecutive COP summits intended to ‘reset’ global climate action – what the UN calls the ‘Roadmap to Mission 1.5°C’ – the ambition of the 2015 Paris climate agreement to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. And the global carbon trading market agreement was seen as the last needed to make the Paris Agreement fully operational.
But a new method based on analysing Antarctic ice-core data on atmospheric carbon dioxide has concluded human-caused warming is about to reach the crucial 1.5 deg C limit. The analysis showed that by last year, CO2 levels had increased by 142 parts per million above the pre-1700 baseline, indicating that human-induced warming had reached 1.49 °C, with this year set to be even warmer, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.
Prof Richard Allan, Professor of Climate Science, University of Reading, remarked: “The climate system did not get the memo about COP29, and heat is continuing to accumulate, warming the oceans and the atmosphere above.”
By February 2025, all 195 signatories of the 2015 Paris agreement must announce more ambitious emission targets. Some have already set out their plans, notably the UK, which will cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 81% by 2035, compared to 1990 levels, excluding emissions from international aviation and shipping.
The latest COP got off to a troubled start for assorted reasons, not least the election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States. During his first presidency, Mr Trump reduced environmental protections and made America the first nation to withdraw from the Paris agreement. During his campaign Mr Trump said he would “drill, baby, drill” instead of developing renewable energy sources.
Just before the meeting, the BBC released a secret recording shows the chief executive of Azerbaijan’s COP29 team, Elnur Soltanov, discussing “investment opportunities” in the state oil and gas company.
As COP29 got under way, the World Meteorological Organisation issued its State of the Climate 2024 Update along with a Red Alert as it announced that 2015-2024 will be the warmest ten years on record, when the loss of ice from glaciers, sea-level rise and ocean heating are accelerating; and extreme weather is wreaking havoc worldwide.
Halfway through the meeting, key experts including a former UN secretary general and former UN climate chief declared COP unfit for purpose and demanded reform.
Dr Colin Summerhayes, Emeritus Associate, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, pointed out that, far from falling, emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide increased by a further 0.8% in 2024, according to the 2024 Global Carbon Budget report.
Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, Director of Centre for Climate Repair and Director of Research at Cambridge Zero, University of Cambridge, remarked the COP process is not working fast enough. “I didn’t meet a single scientist at COP who thought that keeping the world below 1.5C was still achievable.”
The next climate summit, COP30, will take place in the rainforest city of Belém, Brazil from 10 until 21 November 2025.
To mark COP30, Roger Highfield, with Julia Knights, curated the online exhibition Vanishing Amazon.