Here are the 5 issues to watch at COP29

There may never have been a worse time for the United Nations to conduct climate change negotiations. Post-pandemic inflation has rocked countries around the world, putting pressure on government budgets and distracting governments from climate action. Conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to rage, challenging the priorities of powerful countries such as Russia, Iran and the European Union. To top it all off, the United States just elected Donald Trumpwho has called climate change a “hoax” and removed the US from the 2015 Paris climate accord during his first term.

Nevertheless, in a few days, thousands of negotiators and activists will gather in Baku, Azerbaijan, to try to make progress in the global climate fight. This year’s conference, known as COP29, is widely recognized as a transitional affair without the grand significance of the 2015 Paris talks – or even last year’s summit in Dubaiin which the countries of the world finally agreed to move away from fossil fuels. Still, negotiators plan to resolve key issues next week that could shape how the world cuts carbon emissions as well as how it tackles the rising toll of climate disasters in developing countries.

Here’s what to look out for:

A new target for international climate aid

The most important agenda item at COP29 is the so-called ‘new collective quantified objective’, a target that determines how much climate aid money rich countries should send to poorer countries. This financing should help developing countries transition to renewable energy and adapt to climate impacts such as droughts and sea level rise. The negotiations will be tense because rich countries have done the same reneged on previous obligationsand a large part of the money they have to have sent in the form of expensive loans, or otherwise sent questionable value for the climate fight. All this is in addition to the fact that developing countries and many experts argue that current aid commitments are insufficiently low. A UN report released earlier this week found that adaptation efforts in particular are underfunded, at a cost of between $180 and $360 billion per year.

“It’s not just about the amount of money,” said Emilie Beauchamp, an advocate at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a climate-focused think tank. “It’s about whether the funding actually reaches those who need it most.”

Negotiators aim to reach a new goal by the end of the COP. Vulnerable countries are pushing for an annual commitment totaling trillions of dollars. But there are still important questions about who should put in money and who should receive it. The United States and Europe have called for huge economies like China and rich oil states like Saudi Arabia to contribute money even though they were considered “developing countries” when the UN first started negotiating on climate change. These countries have resisted these calls, pointing to the fact that the United States and Europe have historically been responsible for more total emissions. This geopolitical impasse has held up negotiations for months, and is crucial for a comprehensive global agreement on climate aid.

Picking up the slack from the US

The first few days of each COP are marked by a parade of announcements from world leaders and their senior ministers, who take the stage to tout – and quantify – their countries’ commitment to the climate fight. This year’s round of announcements will include an elephant in the room: The United States, the world’s largest economy and largest historical emitter, will likely formally withdraw from the international climate fight once Trump comes to power next year. Current President Joe Biden is not attending the COP, and even if his senior administration officials make new commitments, they could be difficult for other countries to take seriously.

The question is whether other major emitters, notably China and the European Union, will step up their ambition in an effort to bridge the gap that Trump is likely to create. Ministers from these countries have probably already prepared for a Trump victory. But as both Europe and China have suffered economic malaise in recent years, it is unclear how much other governments will be willing to promise when it comes to clean energy investments and adaptation.

Coordinating the global energy transition

The big news from last year’s COP28 was the ‘UAE consensus document’, an agreement in which all the world’s major economies, including the United States and oil states like Saudi Arabia, pledged to move away from fossil fuels. The language calling for “the transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner” was carefully worded, but must now be put into practice. The Baku summit is unlikely to produce another deal of this magnitude, but individual countries will set out more specific commitments they plan to make to advance the energy transition.

One of the biggest action points is the arrangement of methanea greenhouse gas orders of magnitude more potent than carbon dioxide. The US, European Union and Canada have all unveiled sweeping new rules on methane from oil wells and industrial facilities in recent years, but COP negotiators are likely to make new progress in limiting agricultural methane, which is responsible for about a third of global gas emissions.

“A few years ago, agriculture was like the third rail of methane – you didn’t want to touch it because the politics around it were so bad,” says Jonathan Banks, senior policy advisor at Clean Air Task. Force, referring to the backlash from farmers in countries such as the Netherlands. “But we have turned agriculture around.”

There will also be major debates about the role of nuclear energy, which has attracted renewed interest in recent years from countries seeking 24-hour energy that does not emit carbon, and carbon removal and storage technologies, which will industry uses. is being touted as an important way to reduce emissions. There are fierce disagreements both within and between countries as to whether or not these technologies represent climate solutions; a line in last year’s COP28 deal, which suggested coal power could be used for decades, as long as it was accompanied by carbon capture, sparked strong objections from some negotiators.

Eliminating climate reparations

Two years ago, rich countries traditionally promised to provide what amounts to reparations for their role in causing climate change. Because these early industrializing countries have historically emitted the most greenhouse gases, the argument goes, they should send money to poor countries to help them recover from climate-induced disasters that the latter have done little to produce. This commitment was the realization of a demand that small island states and developing countries in Africa had been seeking for years.

But the devil is in the details: the new ‘loss and damage fund’ is housed at the World Bank, which is a problematic legacy with developing countries, and rich countries have only capitalized the new fund to the tune of $700 million, a fraction of the total need. The big question at this year’s COP is whether this fund can or will get off the ground bogged down in bureaucracy that the country is failing to meet the challenges facing the countries it was intended to help.

Bickering over carbon markets

One of the main ways in which major companies claim progress towards their emissions reduction targets is through the so-called voluntary carbon market. It works like this: When climate pollution is too difficult or expensive to reduce immediately, a company can simply buy credits that represent emissions prevented or captured elsewhere (for example, through a afforestation project that promises to keep carbon locked in the trunks of newly planted forests). trees). Now the United Nations is trying to create its own carbon market – but for countries, not companies. The goal is to give countries more ways to work together to achieve their Paris Agreement goals.

Some experts say such a market could speed global emissions reductions reduce the costs of climate mitigation. But the issue is extremely controversial, and environmental groups are concerned it could create a UN-backed carbon market repeat the same shortcomings as seen in voluntary markets. Some scientists have criticized carbon markets for legitimizing ‘junk‘ compensates for that don’t keep carbon out of the atmosphere permanentlyor that would happen anyway.

Bee Last year’s COPdiplomats no progress has been made on the development of the UN carbon market, and disagree on the types of carbon credits that should be eligible for trade and the methods used to generate them. This year’s COP president has promised to get the market “to the finish line,” but there are disagreements will probably continue to exist. Some commentators say that Trump’s re-election “tempered enthusiasm” for one strong outcome.

Joseph Winters contributed to this article.

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