The resolutions reached at Cop29 on tackling the climate crisis, in the early hours of Sunday morning, are gravely disappointing but much better than nothing. And “nothing” was almost the result of this climate conference in Baku.
The deal falls a long way short of hopes at the start of the climate summit, and even further behind what the world urgently needs. But coming after negotiations that frequently teetered on the very edge of collapse, the result does keep climate talks alive despite Donald Trump’s second coming, and has laid the first ever international foundation, however weak, on which the world could finally construct a system of financing poor countries’ transition away from fossil fuels.
The meeting was always going to be difficult given that it requires reaching decisions by consensus among nearly 200 governments, a process described by energy secretary Ed Miliband as playing “198-dimensional chess”. And in focusing on this issue of finance, the first Cop to do so, it was addressing the thorniest issue of all.
But this was made worse by incompetent leadership from fossil-fuel-rich Azerbaijan, which opened proceedings by calling oil and gas a “gift of God”. And it was bedevilled by obstructionist tactics from Saudi Arabia and weakening political will in industrialised countries, even as evidence builds that the climate crisis could be escalating out of control.
Records for soaring air and ocean temperatures, and for vanishing sea ice at both poles, are being broken by enormous margins. Last month a group of the world’s most respected climate scientists concluded that the world is “stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis”, putting it “on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster”.
It is hurtling towards permanently exceeding the internationally agreed 1.5C guardrail against catastrophe. Five tipping points that threaten to plunge the world into a more hostile climate will be triggered at that point, said the scientists – and 11 more lie beyond it.
Yet emissions continue to increase while government engagement withers. Even before Trump’s victory, EU countries had been scaling back environmental action. And Germany, France, Australia and Canada may soon elect more climate-sceptic governments too.
Britain, increasingly a climate leader, is an exception, announcing a pioneering new emissions target at Cop29, where both Miliband and Keir Starmer made a big impact. But longstanding political consensus is fracturing, with Kemi Badenoch calling herself a “net zero sceptic” even though more than three-quarters of Tory voters support a net zero target.
At Baku, as in countries around the world, the politics largely trumped the science. Take climate finance. It is authoritatively estimated that developing countries will need some $2.4tn (£1.84tn) a year. They are expected to meet nearly half of that themselves, leaving $1.3tn to come from the rich world. Most of that is expected to flow from business and “innovative sources” such as taxes on aviation and shipping, leaving a core to be provided by more prosperous country governments.
Before the conference, some rich counties indicated that this figure could be about $500bn a year; developing ones hoped for more. But the Cop struggled – and only after a walkout by the poorest countries – to agree on “at least $300bn”. While nominally three times more than the existing $100bn originally promised in 2009, the past 15 years of inflation mean it is only twice that amount. And much would be provided as loans, adding to poor countries’ debt burdens.
Nevertheless, the overall $1.3tn target was voted through, and though the result was widely condemned by campaigning groups and developing countries, veterans of the negotiations hailed any result as a modest breakthrough and hoped that it could be built on in the future.
There is more disappointment over failure to endorse a landmark agreement at last year’s Cop to “transition away from fossil fuels”. After a determined Saudi bid to kill it, the final text only refers to it in a roundabout way, and the issue has effectively been shelved for a year. But Baku did agree on long-controversial rules for carbon trading that finally complete the implementation of the Paris agreement.
As in previous Cops, the most constructive developments occurred outside the formal negotiations. Britain announced £239m of new funding to help countries preserve forests. Mexico U-turned on its position as the last holdout against net zero in the G20. And Indonesia, the world’s eighth biggest CO2 polluter, unexpectedly pledged to phase out fossil-fuel power generation.
More significantly still, a coalition of more than 30 nations – including the UK and the EU – jointly promised to adopt tougher measures consistent with meeting the 1.5C target. They were inspired by a new report by the international Rhodium Group which concluded that such steps could reduce the temperature rise from the expected 2.7C to 1.4C by 2100.
This is important as, under the Paris agreement, all countries must make new commitments next year, when the coalition hopes others will follow its lead. The US was expected to join them but ducked out after Trump’s election – a sign of things to come.
The US president-elect will not shut down climate negotiations despite his intentions to leave the Paris agreement. Nor might he make much difference to US decarbonisation. Most of the Biden adminstration’s clean energy investments are in Republican-voting areas, which don’t want to lose them. And despite Trump’s pledge to “drill, baby, drill”, fossil fuel companies already have excess capacity and don’t plan to increase it. But his stance will make it harder to accelerate action that is needed to avoid disaster.
Everything depends on how the rest of the world responds, both at next year’s Cop in Brazil and in pursuing other ways of combatting climate crisis, the most effective of which would be to agree a mandatory treaty to slash emissions of methane, now seen as the fastest way to reduce global warming. If political will continues to wane, we will regret it bitterly – not just for our children, but for ourselves.