COP29: Halftime in Baku

Every climate COP opens with a lot of anticipation, it seems. Climate change poses an existential threat to human life on earth, and the pressure from increasing impacts of global warming and growing anxiety over the gap between what is needed and what is being mobilized to address the crisis is palpable.

This year, however, the mood has sobered considerably since last year in Dubai. Although there were early predictions that this would be a smaller COP, it has turned out to be the second largest after Dubai, with over 60,000 badged registrants.

The attendees have a lot to consider. A UNEP report released a little over a week before the COP indicated that unless the nations of the Paris Agreement acted very decisively and swiftly to start cutting back on fossil fuels, we would not only miss the mark on holding global warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius, we would miss the mark on holding to under 2 degrees. Failure to meet the 2-degree threshold has, according to IPCC research, deep consequences in terms of impacts to our communities, to nature and to our global economy.

To put it simply: while things have been urgent for some time, we have come to a dire moment.

Sadly, in this critical moment, we are seeing signs that governments are faltering. The Argentinian delegation abruptly left after a few days, called home by their President. The Azerbaijani COP President in his remarks so offended the French government that the French Minister of Ecology aborted their plans to attend COP29. And with the incoming Trump Administration again threatening to leave the Paris Agreement, concern is welling up among those here in Baku. Will we really see any progress here?

The news isn’t entirely bad, however. On the first day of the COP, the leaders announced that agreement had at long last been reached on highly important rules around carbon markets in Article 6, specifically rules for a United Nations administered global carbon market. While it remains to be seen whether the rules of this market will ensure high-integrity, highly impactful and equitable efforts to address carbon emissions, the agreement itself is progress.

The draft text of the New Collective Quantified Goal for finance, also called the NCQG or the Finance Agreement, was released on November 13^th. The 34-page document (expanded from its original nine pages earlier in the year) generally outlines a path for providing needed funds to developing countries to meet the challenges they face from climate impacts. But with so many different options for action on the table in the newly expanded document, reaching a final consensus will be challenging. But we can’t afford to fail.

Also in the more hopeful column were some inspiring words from Washington State Governor Jay Inslee, whose term ends at the end of the year. Inslee is one of the Co-Chairs for the America Is All In coalition, a group that was forged precisely to build and sustain climate action among the state and local governments, among businesses and tribal nations and religious, educational, medical and cultural institutions, at a time when Federal climate leadership just wasn’t there. Inslee reminded international colleagues that sub-nationals or “super” nationals as he calls them can often be more innovative and quicker than Federal governments and are the key to meeting global climate commitments.

WWF’s presence at COP29 once again played host to the America Is All In Action Center this week, and that team led an inspiring program highlighting the determination of Americans to stand firm in our commitment to defend and build on climate progress. Not only do an overwhelming majority of Americans support climate action; job creation and the clean energy manufacturing boom are also benefiting millions of Americans. No matter what, we are determined in our commitment to combat climate change.

Ending the first week of COP29 with this strong statement of resolve on the part of so many leaders at the state and local level seemed an important highlight.

Looking ahead to week two, here are the three things I’m looking out for as next week unfolds:

1. Creating a workstream focused on nature as a climate solution, one that hopefully links the work done at Biodiversity COP16 a few weeks ago with the work of COP29 and future climate COPs.
2. The evolving nature of the Finance Agreement – that it ultimately creates an ambitious finance goal that enables a needs-based, predictable, transparent, and accessible climate finance apparatus. And that what is designed has the objective of effectively providing for both emissions reductions and adaptation to climate impacts. The need is great, and we need to deliver financing at scale, quickly.
3. More commitments to ambitious NDCs and to collaborative action to transition away from fossil fuels. In the end, the money is only half of the equation. There is the matter of how we plan to use it to achieve our Paris Agreement goals. Nations are required to submit their plans as to how they will reduce emissions through 2035, their new NDCs, early next year. And there are many ways in which the private sector can and must step up as well. While the carbon markets agreement is a significant development, we need more action, now.

Follow WWF’s Changing Climate on LinkedIn or my LinkedIn and Instagram accounts as the WWF team continues to engage at COP29 in Azerbaijan.