COP29 president-designate Mukhtar Babayev has sent out his first communication as head of the United Nations climate conference in November, urging governments to start negotiating over how to break the deadlock on finance to help developing nations tackle global warming.
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In a climate action plan addressed to about 200 nations, Babayev described the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) on climate finance – the first climate finance goal after the Paris Agreement – as the upcoming conference’s “top negotiating priority”.
The letter comes following the mid-year negotiations in Bonn, Germany in June which ended in stalemate, as rich countries started ducking their commitments to provide more finance as agreed in COP28.
Part of the deadlock was due to a possible return of Donald Trump to the White House a few days before COP29, according to some negotiators. Rich countries worry about agreeing on a financial target that the United States might not contribute to, based on Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement when he was in office, leaving them to foot the bill.
US politics not withstanding, climate finance has eroded trust at the climate talks for years. One of the most complex issues is whether high-emitting developing countries, notably China, should have to contribute.
US special presidential envoy for climate John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua give a joint news conference COP28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Image: Fadel Dawod/Getty Images
Apart from funding, the COP29 presidency stated that it will prioritise asking parties to resubmit their targets to reduce harmful greenhouse gases. It also highlighted how it aimed to include all voices in its climate plans, especially Indigenous peoples, local communities, women, youth, and other sectors.
Babayev’s action plan is released amid concerns over Azerbaijan’s record on climate and human rights.
A fossil fuel heavyweight, the small Caucasus country relies on oil and gas for 90 per cent of its export revenues. At the same time, the authoritarian state has been called out by activists for curtailing media and civic freedoms.
Eco-Business spotlights the climate summit agenda and examines how COP29 leadership can help steer its climate objectives through the haze of geopolitics and doubts cast by a petrostate hosting the world’s biggest climate conference.
Easing United States-China tensions for the sake of climate finance
The COP29 presidency says in its letter that its top negotiating priority is agreeing a “fair and ambitious NCQG”, but but makes no mention of how the world’s biggest emitters, United States and China, are not contributing much to it.
The US and China account for about 80 per cent of global industrial nitrous oxide emissions – two-thirds of which comes from China.
As of March, the US has pledged US$17.5 million to the loss and damage fund – a minuscule contribution compared to counterparts like France and Germany, who each committed US$100 million or more. China did not make a pledge to the loss and damage fund established at COP28, but has provided alternative climate funding through its South-South Climate Cooperation Fund and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
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The traditional climate finance debate, which argues that developed countries must contribute more resources because they are responsible for most of the world’s emissions, will not result in significantly more funding from them.
Li Shuo, director, China Climate Hub, Asia Society Policy Institute
The US has argued for China to start contributing to the loss and damage fund, but the latter has so far resisted, as it is not categorised as a developed country under international standards.
Such tension could be used by the two super powers to weaponise climate finance during COP29 as “countries are more interested in fighting each other than climate change,” said Li Shuo, director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
“This dynamic needs to be avoided because the US and China will play a prominent role in unlocking the NCQG package. But leaving all decisions to the COP talks would be too dangerous,” said Li.
Both countries need to come to an agreement before the actual summit, he said. Although there will be no more pre-COP talks, another opportunity for both nations to meet will be when a top US climate diplomat travels to China ahead of the conference to continue discussions on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The COP29 presidency can resolve tensions around NCQG by finding a way to reflect China’s low carbon support to other developing countries through its overseas infrastructure initiatives, he said.
“The traditional climate finance debate, which argues that developed countries must contribute more resources because they are responsible for most of the world’s emissions, will not result in significantly more funding from them,” he said.
“For real world impact, a much larger scale of finance should be mobilised. This is where China will play a much bigger role, simply because it is the largest clean technology provider in the world.”
Is Azerbaijan making a “mockery” of the climate talks?
The letter called on parties to submit their updated 1.5 Celsius-aligned targets to reduce harmful greenhouse gases, noting that Azerbaijan would lead by example, along with its COP28 and COP30 partners, the United Arab Emirates and Brazil.
The target, known the “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) is submitted or updated by countries every five years, as requested in the Paris Agreement commitment made in 2015.
But Azerbaijan’s pledge to submit a national climate plan contradicts its ramping up of fossil fuel production, said Laurie van der Burg, public finance lead of US-based nonprofit Oil Change International.
An oil field in Baku, Azerbaijan. Image: Adam Jones, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
During a high-level meeting in April to prepare for COP29, Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev told participants that the country’s oil and gas reserves were “a gift from God,” while announcing plans to expand gas production mainly to respond to European Union market demands.
Early this month, the COP29 host launched a venture with its state oil company to raise at least US$50 million for what it said were green projects ahead of the summit.
“Unless the COP29 host recognises that there is no such thing as a 1.5-aligned climate plan with more coal, oil, and gas infrastructure, it risks making a mockery of the unprecedented mobilisation that led to the COP28 decision to phase out fossil fuels,” said van der Burg.
Climate plan promises inclusion but keeps mum on human rights
Babayev wrote in his letter that COP29 is committed to inclusivity throughout the process, holding over 170 consultations in Bonn, so that upcoming climate plans will reflect the needs of Indigenous peoples, local communities, women, youth, and other sectors.
Such inclusion starts with the presidency’s appointment of women and youth leaders in its organising committee, following its short-lived all-male COP29 board announced in January that was met with widespread criticism.
The Azeri government’s COP29 organising committee now has 12 women, including three in the presidency team. It initially received backlash for its original all-male committee. Image: COP29 Baku
Its initial idea that it was acceptable to nominate an all-male organising committee for the UN climate conference reflects the gender landscape in the traditionalist country, which ranked 85 out of 100 countries surveyed by the World Bank in 2023 for gender equality. Notable in the analysis was how there were no women who held ministerial level positions in government and its parliament was only 18 per cent female.
Human rights is absent from the climate plan, amid the authoritarian state’s history of stifling press and civic freedom. Human Rights Watch reported in 2023 that people suffer torture, arbitrary detentions and government critics are persecuted, while independent media is stifled.
The US-based non-profit said during the Bonn talks that governments should press Azerbaijan “to allow civil society to demand and scrutinise climate action before, during, and after the conference.”
