New Delhi: Climate change is set to take centre stage next week onwards as the world focuses on the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) set to begin in Baku, Azerbaijan, on 11 November. Leaders from different countries will gather for the climate talks, which will end on 22 November.
After a year of record-shattering global warming and extreme weather events through most parts of the globe, COP29 is expected to be the ‘Finance COP’ given that the focus is on long-term climate finance, adaptation and loss and damage funding. All this is mentioned in the provisional agenda for the conference.
This COP also comes a few months before countries are supposed to revise their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for the Paris Agreement in February 2025. NDCs refer to plans and commitments by countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of climate change mitigation efforts.
Next year would officially mark 10 years since the Paris Agreement was signed by 195 countries and the European Union (EU) at COP21, signifying a watershed moment as countries pledged to limit global warming to 1.5 to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The Print takes a look at the expectations from Baku’s COP and the global climate action story 9 years since the Paris Agreement was signed. From Paris to Baku, how has the world tackled climate change?
Why COP29 is termed ‘Finance COP’
COP29 has been called ‘Finance COP’ because it will see negotiations for the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCGQ) on climate finance. As the name suggests, NCQG is a target for climate finance which the countries that signed the Paris Agreement need to agree upon, starting with a minimum of $100 billion annually.
The NCQG is supposed to be set by 2025 and is a follow-up to COP15, which was held in Copenhagen in 2009. At the conference, developed countries agreed to provide developing countries with $100 billion in climate finance every year until 2020 to aid with their climate needs from several sources including public, private and alternate sources of funding.
In 2021, at COP26 in Glasgow, it was decided that countries would agree on a new target for climate finance by 2025.
Now, 15 years after the $100 billion annual commitment, NCQG will establish a new financial target, with new sources and new benefactors of climate funding. However, despite negotiations for over three years, questions of how much money will be given, by whom and who will be the beneficiaries of the NCQG remain unanswered before COP29.
In February this year, India took the lead in demanding $1 trillion per year until 2030 for climate finance from developed countries. There are also some reports by UNFCCC and the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance, a group mandated by the COP27 and COP28 Presidencies that peg the amount of climate funding needed by developing countries at $1 to 2 trillion a year by 2030. The main conflict arises in developed countries asking to increase the number of funders to include emerging economies like China, while developing countries, including G77 (Group of 77, a coalition of developing countries that aims to promote their economic interests), insist that only developed countries should pay for this goal.
At the Bonn Climate Change Conference earlier this year, India, China and Brazil—member states of G77—insisted that they “cannot go beyond COP29 without a decision on the NCQG”.
Therefore, the stage is set for tough negotiations to ensue at Baku.
COP21 to 29—North vs South negotiations
The developed vs developing countries conflict has often delayed negotiations at COP. While 2015 officially marked the signing of the Paris Agreement, reports by Third World Network—a Malaysia-based independent, non-profit researching and advocating for issues related to development, developing countries and North-South relations—show how there are clauses in the deal over which countries like the US and France disagreed, and the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) came together.
For instance, the US insisted on adding a clause in the Paris Agreement which explicitly states that there is “no basis for liability and compensation” when it comes to addressing loss and damage from extreme weather events.
This demand by the US directly tied into the country and other developed nations’ attempts at thwarting the creation of the loss and damage fund, which the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) had been asking for since 1992.
From 2015 to 2022, studies have documented the US and the EU’s vociferous opposition to the inclusion of a loss and damage fund as an agenda item in any COP. The Loss and Damage Fund was finally accepted and created in 2022, at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt and operationalised in 2023, at COP28 in Dubai. This is a financial mechanism that aims to help developing countries respond to the economic and non-economic losses caused by climate change.
However, negotiations then ensued on who will eventually provide the money, with China and India insisting they “will not contribute financially to the fund”.
Not to mention, COP27 also witnessed developed and developing countries arguing over the unfulfilled commitments made as part of the Adaptation Fund, an international fund signed at COP21 to finance projects that will help developing countries adapt to climate change.
Africa and small island states, supported by India and Brazil, expressed their disappointment at the Global North not fulfilling commitments worth $174.6 million made as part of the Adaptation Fund, while the EU defended itself saying that the contributions to the fund were made voluntarily.
Paris Agreement goals not met
Months before COP28 in Dubai, the UNFCCC released a report which said the world’s climate action plans are “insufficient” for limiting global warming in accordance with the Paris Agreement.
An analysis of the NDCs of all Parties showed that if the world continues on this path, global emissions will decrease by 2 percent by 2030 compared to 2019 levels. But the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need to reduce emissions by 43 percent by 2030.
The countries gathered at COP28 were hailed for their historic decision to adopt the final text which said the world needs to “transition away from fossil fuels”. This phrase was part of the report on Global Stocktake, an exercise conducted in 2023 to assess how countries have worked so far to fulfil the goals of the Paris Agreement.
All of this contributes to the challenge facing countries in Baku—to take into account the UNFCCC report on Paris Agreement goals, the results of the Global Stocktake and the NCQG on climate finance to deliver newer, more ambitious NDCs to reduce emissions and limit global warming.
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)
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