By Will Raven
COP 29, the 29th meeting of the UN’s Climate Conference, this year met in Baku, Azerbaijan. Hosting the conference in the ‘Land of Fire’, so called because of the unique availability of gas and oil which seeps from the ground in the Absheron Peninsula, may seem perverse; however, as with the 2023 conference held in Dubai, there is an emerging majority opinion amongst climate scientists that meaningful change will be impossible without the cooperation and agreement of the planet’s foremost fossil fuel dependent economies. Equally, as with common attempts at ‘greenwashing’ seen in sports or the arts, countries with high fossil fuel production such as Azerbaijan, where carbon-based fuels make up over 90% of the nation’s exports, are keen to hold COP conferences as a means both to curry favourable opinion and perhaps more ominously to influence and lead discussions with the intention of limiting harm to their own economies. This year’s conference, held in the Baku Olympic Stadium, saw the fight with the demands of those most affected by the climate crisis and scientists on the issue pitted against the opposition of leading fossil fuel producers and climate change sceptics. Ultimately, the paltry final agreement that the conference offered was an agreement compromise that, as the climate envoy from Panama described, means “death and misery for our countries”.
Key to the debate is the Paris Agreement, made in 2015, which sets the target to limit global warming to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial averages. Scientific studies show that with the continued burning of oil, gas and coal climate breakdown will be almost inevitable along with the destruction of many of the earth’s ecosystems. Scientists such as Drew Shindell are, and have been for some time, sounding the alarm about the achievability of the Paris Agreement with current rates of warming looking set to blast past the 1.5°C target. In hopes of bettering this prognosis, one of the goals of this year’s conference was to agree on a financial settlement that would set the infrastructure for transferring money to poorer countries to adapt their economies and enable the shift toward net zero. It has been estimated that this will cost around £1 trillion per year until 2035 for these countries to achieve this and for the global 1.5C target to be anywhere near achievable.
The agreement that the conference ended up reaching after running into overtime was described by some attendees as a “betrayal”, with around only a quarter of the required total money being agreed upon. Even then the wording of the document describes a “wide variety” of sources for this money including both public and private financing further reducing the significance of financial compensation included in the agreement which for such lesser developed countries should take the form of grants to prove effective. Additionally, this means that where money has been promised there are unspecified sources for capital which are likely to be difficult to achieve. Negotiators of this deal stressed its significance, yet, in the face of such damming scientific evidence and an ever-increasing instance of experienced natural disasters, such as the flooding caused by Storm Bert in Wales, it is difficult to perceive this agreement as anything other than a compromise that will have decimating long-term consequences.
"Ultimately, the paltry final agreement that the conference offered was an agreement compromise that, as the climate envoy from Panama described, means 'death and misery for our countries'."
Around the world, progress on dealing with the issue of climate change is hugely varied and while the political debate becomes ever more fractured the consensus among leading scientists grows ever stronger. In a world that is currently seeing an increased prevalence of natural disasters, up tenfold from 1960 to 2019, the assumption that increased collective action on the issue would take place has been proved profoundly wrong. This year, the conference took place less than seventeen days after President Donald Trump won the US election on a platform that involved reducing environmental protections and promises to “drill baby drill”. Using the climate crisis as a wedge issue to extract political gain is by no means new and is demonstrated by Kemi Badenoch, the new leader of the Conservatives, choosing to use her third opportunity at PMQs to bemoan the financial pressure that “net-zero by 2035” laws put upon households. With government budgets increasingly “stretched”, the costs of the ‘green shift’ often fall upon the individual and as a result end up being increasingly unpopular. The ease of exploiting this for political gain was made clear in the 2023 Uxbridge and South Ruislip when Steve Tuckwell, the Conservative candidate, won the by-election by campaigning on a platform against the ULEZ scheme being expanded in London by the Labour mayor Sadiq Kahn. This demonstrated then how economic concerns typically take precedence over environmental ones when it comes to the ballot box, a sentiment which President elect Trump also exploited.
This leaves the future uncertain and the impact of COP 29 in particular will be unknown for years to come although the portends point to the compromise reached being a particularly damaging one. Led by fossil fuel producing giant Saudi Arabia, this COP conference was repeatedly held back by the actions of fossil fuel dependent economies who sought to water down the strength of the agreement. In one particularly telltale moment a Saudi delegate was discovered to be making unauthorised changes to the official COP 29 negotiating text but weakening language which referred to the shift toward renewable energy sources. This appeared to be reminiscent of the agreement reached a year prior at the COP 28 conference when the transition away from fossil fuels was caveated by the emphasis on doing this “in a just, orderly and equitable manner”. This continued experience of limited progress being achieved at COP conferences has brought the system into disregard, with many world leaders now snubbing and failing to attend the event altogether. Ultimately, however, it remains to be seen what the long-term consequences of yet another COP conference full of concessions shall be. There remain hopes that in Belém next year the conference shall be far more successful, with more rigorous chairing by Brazil. However, as the consequences of global warming continue to manifest themselves in the world around us, it remains to be seen how many more wasted opportunities can be allowed to pass before it is too late.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
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