Follow our full coverage of COP29 on ThinkLandscape.
From 11–22 November, world leaders are in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the 2024 UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) – the biggest climate event of the year.
This blog will be updated daily by our team on the ground. Read our preview article for an overview of what to expect, and stay tuned for the latest news.
How far have we come since countries agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels at COP28 last year?
Not very far at all – and in fact, fossil fuel emissions are set to grow by 0.8 percent this year to reach another record high, according to data released at COP29 this morning.
Today is the second day of the World Leaders Climate Action Summit, which has seen dozens more world leaders address the stage here in Baku.
Leaders from across the Global South have demanded that rich countries ramp up their climate finance commitments. The prime ministers of Pakistan and Antigua and Barbuda were among the multitude of voices calling for grants, not loans that would mire their countries further in debt.
Bangladesh’s interim leader, Muhammad Yunus, compared the climate crisis with colonialism, saying that there is no reason to even negotiate when the Global North is clearly responsible and should pay for the damage it has caused.
Likewise, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama ventured off script to question the point of these annual climate talks, calling out his fellow leaders for allowing business to continue as usual.
But Argentina will take no further part in the negotiations, with its team having been ordered home. Its president, Javier Milei, has previously described the climate crisis as a “socialist lie.”
A diplomatic spat has kicked off between France and Azerbaijan, with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev criticizing France’s heavy-handed response to pro-independence protests in New Caledonia earlier this year.
In response, France’s minister for ecology, Agnes Pannier-Runacher, has canceled plans to attend COP29, calling Aliyev’s comments “unacceptable.”
No countries announced any major new commitments today, but a group of development banks, including the World Bank, has pledged to increase their climate financing to Global South countries by 60 percent by 2030, reaching USD 120 billion.
Today also saw a new report from Global Witness – which is hosting the protest site cop29.com – revealing that the oil and gas industry is making more than enough profit to pay for all climate loss and damage across the Global South.
As a reminder, this is the second year in a row that the UN Climate Change Conference has been hosted by a petrostate, following the U.A.E.’s hosting of COP28.
After a slow start yesterday, today was the day COP29 really kicked into gear as world leaders took to the stage for the World Leaders Climate Action Summit. But would their words amount to anything of substance?
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has taken the headlines by pledging to reduce emissions by an ambitious 81 percent by 2035 from 1990 levels. This new NDC builds on the U.K’s existing commitment to reduce emissions by 68 percent by 2030, earning cautious praise from civil society.
But that was the only major new commitment today, with the leaders of most major industrialized countries absent from the UN climate summit this year – a year that UN Secretary-General António Guterres has dubbed “a masterclass in climate destruction.”
Those that did show up had three minutes each to address the stage. Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley, a familiar face at climate COPs, has decried the lack of funding for loss and damage and called on rich countries to develop new sources of climate financing.
Another small island leader, Hilda Heine, president of the Marshall Islands, has encouraged fellow Global South countries to make ambitious new commitments even in the face of inaction from the Global North.
There was more to report away from Baku than at the COP29 venue itself. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) released a report revealing that a record 120 million people are now forcibly displaced – three-quarters of whom are in countries highly exposed to climate risks.
Other reports released today found that climate disinformation is more ubiquitous on social media than ever before, while the world is now on track to melt large parts of Greenland and west Antarctica, causing devastating sea level rise.
And yet, oil and gas companies enjoyed windfall profits of almost half a trillion USD in 2022 – nearly as much as the climate finance provided to the Global South over the past five years.
Nor do fossil fuel companies have any legal obligation to slash their emissions, apparently. A Dutch court of appeal has overturned a 2021 ruling ordering Shell to reduce emissions by 45 percent by 2030.
First, a reminder of where COP28 left off: with a historic, yet disappointing, commitment to “transition away” from fossil fuels, as well as the first pledges to the then brand-new Loss and Damage Fund.
This year’s UN Climate Change Conference is much smaller than last year’s in Dubai, with 40,000 to 50,000 people expected to attend, compared to the 90,000 that showed up at COP28.
Several major world leaders are also skipping COP29, with U.S. President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olof Scholz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen all missing.
Today’s main headline is that countries have finally agreed rules to govern carbon credits under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement – though some delegates felt that the decision had been rushed through without proper deliberation.
U.S. climate envoy John Podesta has called out President-elect Donald Trump for his climate denial and pledged to push on with climate action, saying “the fight is bigger than one election, one political cycle in one country.”
In reality, the new administration is unlikely to abide by anything the U.S. agrees to at this summit.
Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization has announced that 2024 is almost certain to be the hottest year on record – and the first to ever hit 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
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