Sonja Rzepsiki is a JURIST Senior Editor. She attended the COP29 conference in Azerbaijan as part of a group from the Vermont Law & Graduate School.
The painfully slow march of climate action was profoundly evident at COP29 this year. As a JURIST staff editor who attended the conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, I am proud of our service’s reporting on the lack of justice and prevalent human rights violations intertwined in these negotiations. However, the glacial pace of progress made does warrant attention.
The UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) closed Sunday with the central focus of climate finance. Nearly 200 countries gathered in Baku agreed to triple finance contributions to developing countries, with 300 billion dollars pledged annually by 2035. The agreement secures finance scaling to developing countries from public and private sources to 1.3 trillion dollars annually by 2035.
Known formally as the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG), Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Climate Change, commented on the final agreement, “This new finance goal is an insurance policy for humanity amid worsening climate impacts hitting every country. But like any insurance policy, it only works if premiums are paid in full and on time. Promises must be kept to protect billions of lives.”
A perspective on the positive aspects of the latest conference acknowledges how the new finance goal at COP29 builds on agreements for a Loss and Damage Fund made at COP27 and COP28, which enumerated the goal of a swift and fair transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems. Yet the deep disappointment of the most vulnerable of developing nations prevailed as the talks simultaneously seemed to walk back a past focus on phasing out fossil fuels. A new “Baku to Belem Roadmap” was designed to ensure that the commitments made for 1.3 trillion dollars annually are indeed met. The road map will work to find “additional resources” to drive low-carbon, climate-resilient development and was led by the African Group, Barbados, Colombia, Honduras and Panama.
COP29 did significantly reach an agreement on carbon markets. This mechanism, the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism, will help countries deliver their climate plans more quickly and cheaply and progress faster in halving global emissions this decade,’ as science requires.’ COP29 also celebrated the first biennial transparency reports as “vital enablers” of climate action. This encourages parties to comprehensively report their nation’s status of emissions and climate action policies. Reflecting on the parties’ transparency’s unifying role, Prime Minister Philip Davis of the Bahamas stated, “Transparency is the thread that unites us all.” The intention is to provide high-quality, consistent climate data because this, in turn, provides inherently greater predictability for investment mechanisms.
More robust national climate plans (Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs) are required from all participating actors next year. These new climate plans must cover all greenhouse gases and sectors to keep the 1.5°C warming limit within reach. COP29 saw two G20 countries—the UK and Brazil—signal clearly that they plan to ramp up climate action in their NDCs because they are “entirely in the interests of their economies and peoples.”
Another progressive element was the inclusion of the Baku Workplan and the renewal of the Report of the Facilitative Working Group of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform. COP29 took a small step forward in elevating the voices of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. The adopted decision simply acknowledges the progress made by the FWG and points to the leadership of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in addressing the climate crisis.
Ani Dasgupta, President and CEO of World Resources Institute, addressed the fact that many parties were perhaps worried about the United States’ recent election and its projected lack of engagement in substantive climate action, Dasgupta said, however, “This is a global and generational fight – no one country or one election is going to derail it.”
