This year's United Nations climate summit delivered a deal on climate finance two days past the deadline, after two weeks of tense negotiations. It's a far-from-perfect arrangement, with many parties still deeply unsatisfied but some hopeful that the deal will be a step in the right direction. World Resources Institute president and CEO Ani Dasgupta called it “an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” but added that the poorest and most vulnerable nations are “rightfully disappointed that wealthier countries didn’t put more money on the table when billions of people’s lives are at stake.”
The summit was supposed to end on Friday evening but negotiations spiraled on through early Sunday. With countries on opposite ends of a massive chasm, tensions ran high as delegations tried to close the gap in expectations.
Here are some of the takeaways from the COP29 summit held in Azerbaijan's capital of Baku:
Cash for climate remains tight
The summit's main agenda item - setting a new annual target for global climate finance - had nations wrangling for two weeks. Even after reaching a deal for $300 billion a year by 2035, many developing countries said the amount was far too low. They also warned that the deadline for a decade away in 2035 would hold back the world's transition to clean energy. Some including India also lambasted wealthy nations for seeking to include contributions by developing countries in the annual target.
What will the money be spent on?
The deal decided in Baku replaces a previous agreement from 15 years ago that charged rich nations $100 billion a year to help the developing world with climate finance. The new number has similar aims: it will go toward the developing world's long laundry list of to-dos to prepare for a warming world and keep it from getting hotter. That includes paying for the transition to clean energy and away from fossil fuels. Countries need funds to build up the infrastructure needed to deploy technologies like wind and solar power on a large scale.
Communities hard-hit by extreme weather also want money to adapt and prepare for events like floods, typhoons and fires. Funds could go toward improving farming practices to make them more resilient to weather extremes, to building houses differently with storms in mind, to helping people move from the hardest-hit areas and to help leaders improve emergency plans and aid in the wake of disasters.
The Philippines, for example, has been hammered by six major storms in less than a month, bringing to millions of people howling wind, massive storm surges and catastrophic damage to residences, infrastructure and farmland. “Family farmers need to be financed," said Esther Penunia of the Asian Farmers Association. She described how many have already had to deal with millions of dollars of storm damage, some of which includes trees that won't again bear fruit for months or years, or animals that die, wiping out a main source of income.
“If you think of a rice farmer who depends on his or her one hectare farm, rice land, ducks, chickens, vegetables, and it was inundated, there was nothing to harvest,” she said.
Trump tamps the mood
Though he has yet to take office, climate denier Donald Trump's victory in the November 5 presidential election soured the mood at COP29. Trump has vowed to remove the United States from global climate efforts, and has appointed another climate skeptic as his energy secretary.
Trump's election meant the US could offer little at COP29, despite being the world's biggest historical polluter and most responsible for climate change. It also curtailed ambitions on the finance target, with the world's biggest economy unlikely to contribute.
Green light for carbon credits
After nearly a decade of efforts to establish a rulebook for carbon credits, COP29 reached a deal to allow countries to begin establishing these credits to bring in funding and offset their emissions, or to trade them on a market exchange. There are still some smaller details to be worked out, such as the registry's structure and transparency obligations. But proponents hoped the boost to carbon offsetting would help draw billions of dollars into new projects to help the climate fight.
COP process in doubt
Despite years of ballyhooed climate agreements, countries raised alarms about the fact that both greenhouse gas emissions and global temperatures are still rising. Countries have been hit by increasingly extreme weather, making clear that the pace of progress hasn't been fast enough to prevent a climate crisis.
This year is on track to be the warmest ever on record, with evidence of climate impacts spiralling faster than expected. Widespread flooding has killed thousands and left millions hungry across Africa; deadly landslides have buried villages in Asia. Drought in South America has shrunk rivers - vital transport corridors - and livelihoods. And rain-triggered floods in both Spain and the United States have killed hundreds of people while wiping out billions in economic value.
Trade tensions
Developing countries pushed hard at COP29 to open discussions about climate-related trade barriers, arguing that their ability to invest in greening their economy was undermined by costly trade policies imposed by the world's wealthiest economies. In focus was Europe's planned carbon border tax (CBAM). But equally worrying is the prospect of Trump introducing broad tariffs on all imports.
The UN climate body agreed to add the issue to future summit agendas.
Fossil fuel interests
This year's COP was the third in a row to be held in a fossil fuel-producing country, with both the OPEC secretary general and the president of host country Azerbaijan telling the summit that oil and gas resources were "a gift from God." In the end, the summit failed to set steps for countries to build on last year's COP28 pledge to transition away from fossil fuels and triple renewable energy capacity this decade. Many negotiators saw that as a failure - and a sign that fossil fuel interests were overpowering climate talks.
Why was it so hard to get a deal?
Election results around the world that herald a change in climate leadership, a few key players with motive to stall the talks and a disorganized host country all led to a final crunch that left few happy with a flawed compromise. The ending of COP29 is "reflective of the harder geopolitical terrain the world finds itself in,” said Li Shuo of the Asia Society. He cited Trump's recent victory in the US — with his promises to pull the country out of the Paris Agreement — as one reason why the relationship between China and the EU will be more consequential for global climate politics moving forward.
Developing nations also faced some difficulties agreeing in the final hours, with one Latin American delegation member saying that their group didn't feel properly consulted when small island states had last-minute meetings to try to break through to a deal. Negotiators from across the developing world took different tacks on the deal until they finally agreed to compromise.
Meanwhile, activists ramped up the pressure: many urged negotiators to stay strong and asserted that no deal would be better than a bad deal. But ultimately the desire for a deal won out. Some also pointed to the host country as a reason for the struggle. Mohamed Adow, director of climate and energy think tank Power Shift Africa, said Friday that “this COP presidency is one of the worst in recent memory,” calling it “one of the most poorly led and chaotic COP meetings ever.”
The presidency said in a statement, “Every hour of the day, we have pulled people together. Every inch of the way, we have pushed for the highest common denominator. We have faced geopolitical headwinds and made every effort to be an honest broker for all sides.”
Shuo retains hope that the opportunities offered by a green economy “make inaction self-defeating” for countries around the world, regardless of their stance on the decision. But it remains to be seen whether the UN talks can deliver more ambition next year. In the meantime, “this COP process needs to recover from Baku,” Shuo said.
(With inputs from agencies)
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