Damian Carrington
The first national leader to speak at Cop29 on Wednesday was Shina Ansari Hamedani, Vice President of Iran, and her speech was a heady mix of climate policy and geopolitics. Her key point was that the “illegal and unilateral” international sanctions against Iran prevent it accessing the finance to build a green economy. In this she included nuclear power, the development of which is a key reason for the sanctions.
She also called the sanctions “unjustified and irrational”, before also condemning the war in Gaza calling Israel the “occupying Zionist regime”. Her final point struck a milder note as she appealed for global action: “Our shared environment is a common bond.”
Iran is both heavily dependent on oil for revenue and very vulnerable to climate impacts, including droughts and deadly humid heatwaves.
As we are waiting for things to get going in Baku today this is a useful refresher on all things Cop from my colleague Fiona Harvey
Damian Carrington
It’s day three of Cop29 here in Baku and more global leaders will take to the stage, including Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif. The aim is to spur negotiators towards a strong deal by setting out the stark impacts of the climate crisis and the “terrible truth” brought by Spain’s Pedro Sánchez and by Mohamed Muizzu from the Maldives did just that.
The president of host nation Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev took a different tack and said his nation’s oil and gas was a “gift from God”.
But all countries are today facing a disastrous report card on climate action in the publication of this year’s Global Carbon Budget report. This finds that emissions from fossil fuels, the overwhelming cause of global heating, will rise in 2024 to another record high.
That is a stark contrast to the agreement at the last summit, Cop28, to “transition away from fossil fuels”, which was hailed as a landmark for the simple but astonishing reason that no previous summit agreement had mentioned fossil fuels. It is also a stark contrast to the reality that emissions must plunge by 43% by 2030 to have any chance of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5C and limiting the climate carnage.
“The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked,” says Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, at the University of Exeter, who led the report.
So the negotiators have their work cut out to ensure that the next round of national climate commitments, due by February, deliver a step change. Tuesday did see a positive moment when the UK announced a strong commitment, pledging to cut emissions by 81% by 2035, a move that was widely welcomed in Baku.
Wednesday will also see events backed by the Cop29 presidency on advancing the effort to triple nuclear energy and address the challenges for small island developing states, who face literal extinction from the rising seas.