Climate Finance and Global Warming are COP29’s Top Agenda

COP29, short for Conference of Parties, is the UNFCCC annual international climate change meeting where national leaders and ministers of the 197 parties and representatives of all sectors of society – NGOs, scientists, students, businesses, journalists, and experts come together to address the climate crisis and negotiate a response to it.

The parties consist of countries and European Union members who have ratified the UNFCCC treaty that aims to stabilise and reduce GHG concentrations and emissions to prevent the dangerous impacts of climate change.

Last year’s COP28 in Dubai, UAE, from 30 November to 12 December 2023, was controversial. The summit’s president, Sultan al-Jaber, has deep ties to the oil patch and is also the CEO of UAE’s state oil company ADNOC. There were leaks surrounding his presidency that he planned to use the climate talks to make fossil fuel deals with 15 nations, but the COP28 team denied this as fake news.

As early as the controversy surrounded al-Jaber’s presidency, so was the breakthrough he managed to pull through early in the summit by creating the world’s first climate damage fund, or the “Loss and damage” fund.

CBC reports that the new fund has been set up to help developing countries cope with the impacts of climate change, such as floods, drought and rising sea levels. The UAE and Germany both pledged $100 million each.  Overall, the total pledge of countries for the loss and damage fund reached $700 million but still fell short of the target of $400 billion per year.

For details of what COP28 has achieved, the UNFCCC prepared a report.

What to expect at COP29

The 29th UNFCCC climate summit (COP29) session will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 11 to 22 November 2024, against record-breaking temperatures worldwide.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) data shows that the 10-year global average temperature for 2014–2023 is 1.20°C above the preindustrial (1850–1900) average and the warmest 10-year period on record. Last year, 2023, was the warmest year in recorded history, with the global average temperature at 1.45°C above the 1850–1900 average, surpassing the previous warmest years of 2016 and 2020, respectively.

Temperature records have fallen like dominoes in the last decade, highlighting the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels. However, how fast and equitably the world will phase out fossil fuels will depend on the parties of the UNFCCC.

COP29 President designate Mukhtar Babayev has laid out plans for the upcoming climate summit. Mr Babayev is Azerbaijan’s ecology and natural resources minister and a veteran of a state oil company. He worked in various roles for 26 years at Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company, Socar. This is now the second year in a row that COP has had a president with vast experience in the oil industry, taking over from Sultan al-Jaber at last year’s COP.

Mr Babayev vowed to continue to focus work on the Paris Agreement, specifically keeping the global warming limit to 1.5°C. Negotiations will centre on two key pillars: the first is to increase ambition and implement actions to reduce GHG emissions in countries, and their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) need to reflect this. The second is to determine how to increase climate finance. These actions are required to achieve the global warming limit target.

“Climate finance will be an important part of the negotiations at COP29,” Mukhtar says. He also adds that finance is one of the kcriticaltools to turn ambition into action (King, 2024).

Ahead of the COP29 summit, the Allied for Climate Transformation By 2025 (ACT2025) consortium released a call to action for leaders to ensure decisions made at the COP29 summit respond to the urgent needs of climate-vulnerable developing countries. 

At the heart of their call is to increase climate finance and support to help vulnerable and developing countries adapt to the growing impacts of climate change.

The stakes in Baku could not be higher. Finance and support are essential to implement ambitious national climate plans and adapt to increasingly severe climate impacts. 

ACT2025’s Call to Action lays out four key priorities:

• Set an ambitious new climate finance goal that responds to the urgency of confronting the climate crisis. 
• Advance just and equitable ambition per the Paris Agreement, with G7 and G20 countries leading on new and enhanced national climate plans (NDCs). 
• Drive people-centred and livelihood-sustaining adaptation through action and support that closes the adaptation implementation and finance gap.
• Address loss and damage with sufficient action and support by bolstering the Loss and Damage Fund launched at COP28.