The next major United Nations meeting on climate change, known as COP29, is about to get underway in Baku, Azerbaijan. These annual meetings are the key international summits as the world attempts to address the unfolding climate crisis.
The talks this year are crucial as climate change worsens. In recent years, a series of , from Australia’s bushfires to Spain’s floods, have wrought havoc around the world.
What’s more, the continuing upward trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions suggests the window to limit warming 1.5°C is . And the re-election of United States President Donald Trump casts a pall over global climate action.
So, let’s take a look at the agenda for this vital COP meeting – and how we can gauge its success or failure.
The big issue: climate finance
COP stands for Conference of the Parties, and refers to the nearly 200 nations that have signed up to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Like last year’s conference in Dubai, the choice to hold this year’s meeting in Baku is controversial. Critics say Azerbaijan’s status as a “” with a questionable means it is not a suitable host.
Nevertheless, the meeting is crucial. COP29 has been dubbed the “”. The central focus is likely to be a much bigger target for climate finance – a mechanism by which wealthy countries provide funding to help poorer countries with their clean energy transition and to strengthen their climate resilience.
At the Copenhagen COP talks in 2009, developed countries committed to collectively providing for climate finance. This was seen as the big outcome of otherwise unsuccessful talks – but these targets .
The meeting also represents an opportunity to engage the to play a bigger role in driving investment in the renewable energy transition.
But controversial questions remain. Who should be giving money and receiving it? And how do we ensure wealthy countries actually make good on their commitments?
The big outcome from last year’s COP was the establishment of a experienced by vulnerable states as a result of climate effects. We’ve since seen some .
But the US$700 million committed to the fund is far short of what is already required – and finance required is certain to increase over time. suggested US$580 billion will be needed by 2030 to cover climate-induced loss and damage.
Alongside these issues, the Baku talks will hopefully see some movement on adaptation finance, enabling further funds for building climate resilience in developing countries. To date, contributions and commitments have been well short of the goal .
A final issue will be how to clarify rules around carbon markets, especially on the controversial topic of whether nations can use carbon trading to meet their Paris Agreement emission cut targets.
Talks on the latter . Some analysts see movement on for building momentum for the transition from fossil fuels.
Storm clouds over Baku
By far the biggest shadow over the Baku talks is the election of Republican Donald Trump as United States president.
Trump famously withdrew the US from the climate agreement in 2016, and has declared climate change as “”.
Trump’s re-election will significantly affect US cooperation on climate change at a time when the stakes for the planet could barely be higher.
More broadly, geopolitical tensions and conflicts – – also risk crowding out the international agenda and undermining the chance of cooperation between key players.
This especially applies to Russia and China, both of which are crucial to international climate efforts.
At past COPs, difficult geopolitics elsewhere haven’t been fatal for cooperation on climate policy – but it does make things harder. For this reason, Azerbaijan has called for a “” in global conflicts to coincide with the conference.
National commitments loom large at Baku
This COP represents the last big climate talks before national governments have to publicly state their new emission cut goals – known as “nationally determined contributions” – which are due in .
A few big players – such as Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates – have already indicated at Baku.
There will also be plenty of pressure on other nations to ramp up their targets. That’s because existing commitments put the world far off track to of limiting planetary warming to 1.5°C – a threshold beyond which devastating climate harms are expected.
The host nation Azerbaijan is also keen to increase for countries, to make it easier to track progress against emissions targets.
What about Australia?
Australia will almost certainly not be outlining a new emissions target in Baku. It has already signalled it may announce its updated targets .
For Australia, the main issue at Baku may be whether we – alongside at least one Pacific country – will be announced as the hosts of COP31 . Australia is , but Turkey is a .
What does success look like?
Azerbaijan sees agreement on a new collective quantified goal for climate finance as the most important outcome of the conference.
This and other finance outcomes will be important in ensuring a fair distribution of costs from the impact of climate change and the necessary energy transition.
Action on long stalled carbon trading cooperation would also be a win, and could turbocharge the global energy transition.
But real success would come in the form of significant new emissions targets and explicit endorsement of the need to move away from fossil fuels. Sadly, the latter is not prominent on the .
Humanity has run out of time to prevent climate change, and we are already seeing real damage. But an opportunity remains to minimise the future harm. We must pursue urgent and sustained international action, regardless of who is in the White House.
, Professor of International Relations,
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