COP29 Summit on Climate Change: What did this year’s negotiations achieve?

The COP29 conference, the latest round of international climate change conferences held this year in Baku, Azerbaijan, concluded over the weekend after a deadline on Friday to help developing countries address their climate change challenges. It made a new promise to raise $1 billion. The effects of global warming and the transition to clean energy.

“In a year of geopolitical division, people doubted whether Azerbaijan could deliver. They wondered whether they could all agree,” COP29 President Mukhtar Babaev said during the meeting. said. “They were wrong on both counts.”

But despite the host country’s optimistic reading of the summit’s conclusion, many delegates and activists were furious, seeing it as a small investment. Yes, the new commitment will triple the current $100 billion per year climate finance agreement. But rich countries are already two years behind the original goal, and the new goal is still far short of the $1.3 trillion goal that developing countries have long sought to secure.

“After months of negotiations, waiting until the last official day of the COP to issue the disastrous numbers did not allow enough time for deliberations among parties, and to make matters worse, the numbers were shockingly low. That’s too much,” he said. The environment minister of the West African country, The Gambia, Rohay John Manjan, said in a statement.

Negotiations also failed to reach an agreement on reducing consumption of fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming.

The climate change talks mirrored last year’s COP28 meeting in the United Arab Emirates, in that it was once again held in a country whose economy is dependent on oil. Azerbaijan derives two-thirds of its income from oil and gas production, and COP organizers were once again accused of using the process to falsify fossil fuel export deals. COP29 was also one of the most well-attended climate change conferences, with 66,000 registrants, down from last year’s record 80,000. Like 2023, this year’s negotiations ended near the end of what is likely to be the hottest year on record.

COP29 faced further complications. After a plateau and expectations for a decline, global greenhouse gas emissions are on the rise again, and are likely to continue to increase. To meet the Paris Climate Agreement’s goal of limiting this century’s warming to less than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels, humanity will need to cut emissions by more than half by 2030. . Most contributors to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believe this goal is currently out of reach, according to a survey of scientists.

With the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter is likely to withdraw completely from the Paris Agreement. President Trump will be fulfilling a campaign promise after President Joe Biden brought the United States back into the country following a withdrawal during Trump’s first term. President Trump also wants to expand fossil fuel production, potentially cutting incentives for clean technologies such as electric vehicles.

Against this backdrop, the urgency to address climate change only increases. 2024 is a year of large-scale disasters such as heat waves, hurricanes, coral bleaching, floods, and wildfires, and the raw materials for these events will become even more powerful in a warming world. i am ready.

These disasters are already having a major economic impact. And further changes in climate could bring some of the most severe impacts, such as rising sea levels, more extreme rainfall, and extreme heat waves, to the countries that contribute the least to the problem. But while the United States is retreating, other countries like China are preparing to take a step forward.

America’s role is small, China’s role is big.

Because the COP29 conference began after the U.S. election, U.S. negotiators were still part of Mr. Biden’s team, trying to wrap up as much as possible before he leaves office in January. They highlighted how the United States has made the single largest clean energy investment in the world through the Inflation Control Act.

U.S. negotiators say the U.S. is contributing $11 billion to an international climate finance pool, more than its share of the $100 billion pool pledged by rich countries. did. The US also highlighted its goal of tripling nuclear energy by 2050 compared to 2020 levels, a greenhouse gas that is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. Efforts were also made to gradually reduce methane emissions.

However, Biden himself did not attend the meeting. Instead, he attended the G20 summit in Brazil, where he visited the Amazon rainforest and pledged an additional $50 million to protect it.

Biden acknowledged that his successor wants to undo many of his climate efforts, but said in a statement that many cities and states will be tackling climate change issues. , noted that many aspects of the transition to cleaner energy sources are unstoppable. Growth in solar energy continues to defy predictions, wind energy competes with fossil fuels in some markets, and EVs are growing in popularity around the world. “Some may try to deny or slow the clean energy revolution underway in America and around the world, but no one can reverse it,” Biden said.

But under the Biden administration, the U.S. also reached record high oil and gas production levels and maintained tariffs on Chinese clean energy products such as solar panels and electric vehicles. Despite the moratorium on new liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, the United States is on track to double its LNG exports by 2030.

President Trump wants to impose more tariffs on China, which would further increase the price of imported EVs and make many essential components of clean energy systems, such as batteries and steel, more expensive.

But as the United States retreats from the international arena on climate change, China is preparing to fill the void, emphasizing its willingness to cooperate with other countries. China sent nearly 1,000 delegates to COP29. The company is already a leader in both domestic consumption and exports in solar energy, wind power, batteries and electric vehicles, and is seeking new customers.

China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is expected to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions this year, but it is unclear whether this trend will continue. Like the United States, China is experiencing increased energy demand from the technology sector, particularly from technologies such as artificial intelligence.

The next climate change negotiations are scheduled for 2025 in Belem, Brazil, where countries will come to the table with even more ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gases. But if countries break their existing commitments and emissions continue to rise, there is little point in setting even tougher targets.

“We had hoped for more ambitious outcomes, both in financing and mitigation, to address the great challenges we face,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. “I appeal to governments to take this agreement as a foundation and build on it.”