Closing summary
We’re now closing the blog for the day. Cop29 has got off to a bit of a rocky start, with severe delays for the opening plenary, but the hosts will claim that getting the draft decision on article 6 approved is an early win. Environmental campaigners will feel otherwise.
The key events today were:
Diplomats greenlit key rules that govern the trade of carbon credits, breaking a years-long deadlock over contentious carbon markets
The year 2024 is on track to be the warmest year on record after an extended streak of exceptionally high monthly global mean temperatures, the World Meteorological Organisation said
US climate envoy John Podesta said the climate fight will not stop under new president Donald Trump.
Windfall ‘superprofits’ from oil companies totalled half a trillion dollars in a single year
A hyperrealistic “dead beached whale” drew attention in Baku
UN climate chief Simon Stiell told the conference: “What inspires me is human ingenuity and determination. Our ability to get knocked down and to get up again over and over again, until we accomplish our goals.”
Updated
A press conference by the presidency that had been scheduled to take place after the opening plenary has been pushed back to tomorrow morning, so that’s likely to be the last we’ll hear from Babayev and the hosts today.
However, critical reaction to the article 6 will continue – Erika Lennon, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, has said:
Today, states allowed this rogue move from the supervisory body to prevail in the quest to start Cop29 with a ‘win’. But this is hardly a win for people or the planet. Approving these carbon market rules without discussion or debate, sets a dangerous precedent for the entire negotiation process. This is very concerning from a procedural standpoint: it bypasses states’ ability to even discuss, much less revise the standards before they go into effect. States’ oversight is all the more critical as the supervisory body’s efforts to get this done has resulted in risky rules that will lead to human rights violations and environmental harm.
While states won’t be able to undo this move, they can still partially correct the wrong by giving strong guidance to the supervisory body that ensures further rules are adopted in line with science, human rights, and international law.“
Lise Masson of Friends of the Earth has responded to the article 6 news with disappointment, a reaction likely to be shared by many climate campaigners:
“The gavelling through of carbon markets on the first day of Cop29 is unacceptable and undermines the credibility of the whole process. Further, it is opening the floodgates for a global carbon market that will have devastating impacts on communities in the global south, on Indigenous peoples, and on small peasant farmers first and foremost. Carbon markets are not climate finance, and we cannot accept these neocolonial schemes to be propped up as a success of Cop29 in lieu of paying the climate debt owed to the global south.”
Carbon credit trade rules approved
Diplomats have greenlit key rules that govern the trade of “carbon credits” at the end of the first day of Cop29 in Azerbaijan, breaking a yearslong deadlock over contentious carbon markets.
The draft decision on article 6 (which can be read here) goes through with no objection to a round of applause.
This will concern some delegates, and one speaker immediately expresses concern that the way the decision was rushed through at the start of the conference does not reflect the collaborative way these things should be worked on, and urges the conference not to continue this trend. This is a reference to Cop28, where the UAE similarly pushed through a first day decision despite the worries of some countries.
In London, climate activists marked the first day of the Cop29 climate summit in Azerbaijan with a protest outside the headquarters of the oil and gas company BP.
Protestors held a banner reading: “BP, stop fuelling genocide and climate breakdown.” They called on the company to halt its oil and gas extraction, its “hijacking” of the conference of the parties process and its ‘profiteering from genocide’.
A statement to press circulated by Fossil Free London, which organised the protest, said BP has a long-term corporate relationship with the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (Socar) and that the two companies recently agreed to explore new fields to drill.
The Cop29 president, Mukhtar Babayev, spent 26 years working for SOCAR.
BREAKING: We're outside BP's HQ to demand they stop fuelling genocide and climate breakdown.
— Fossil Free London (@fossilfreeLDN) November 11, 2024
COP29 starts today in Azerbaijan. This action is part of a global callout to highlight the links between BP, SOCAR and the Azerbaijani pipeline, BTC, which fuels Israel's genocide. pic.twitter.com/ubFkbR9VZt
The demonstration was responding to an international campaign coordinated by Energy Embargo for Palestine, Filistin İçin 1000 Genç and the Palestinian-led Global Energy Embargo for Palestine.
About 30% of Israel’s oil is sourced from Azerbaijan, reaching the middle east via Turkey through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which is majority owned by BP. Socar is the second largest shareholder in the pipeline.
Joanna Warrington, a campaigner with Fossil Free London, said: “It’s the very same fossil fuel giants that profit from the suffering of billions as our climate tips closer to collapse, which are fuelling and enabling Israel’s horrific colonial genocide. This is all playing out right in front of our world leaders, who sit clapping in the audience instead of standing up to protect human rights and life.
“Climate crisis and genocide are being made and supported here in London. Our global political processes are being polluted by corporations like BP that continue to tear up our society so that the resultant blood flow can carry massive profits to them.”
Food and drink is always a crucial element at the annual climate summits, and as journalists and negotiators begin the long journey of finding their way around the texts and issues, they also put time into finding their way around the massive site, and discovering what they’re going to be eating for the next two weeks.
Sadly for a climate conference, it looks as if the vegan option is currently the most expensive one.
And an Americano with soy milk is a handsome £7.50.
The UK’s net zero secretary is heading for Cop which is, he says, the “once a year chance to put countries on the spot”.
“At this summit you’ll have a British government representing which believes in doing its bit at home and abroad,” he says in this wee video. Of course, he has a fair point; in a number of countries around they just don’t have that luxury.
This Government believes that climate security is national security.
— Ed Miliband (@Ed_Miliband) November 11, 2024
That will be our message at COP29 in Baku 👇 pic.twitter.com/WfAxMAfoIu
Updated
Cop29 president Mukhtar Babayev finally appears on stage to apologise for the delay and says he hopes to conclude today’s meeting by 11pm tonight local time (7pm GMT).
Most of his statement is formulaic, announcing when various subsidiary bodies will report back on their progress through the conference.
Babayev says he will do everything he can to conclude negotiations in the second half of the conference.
The crucial matter of article 6.4 is agenda item 15b, but Babayev is moving fast. To read more about that thorny issue, my colleague Patrick Greenfield has explained more here:
Cop-watchers hoping for an early breakthrough on carbon markets are instead waiting for a much-delayed plenary session to resume. This morning’s opening session, which was paused due to fights over the summit agenda, has been inching back in one-hour and half-hour increments as the new scheduled times approach.
Pauses to proceedings aren’t a new phenomenon at climate summits - the talks are complex and procedural issues are often a source of frustration for weary negotiators - but delays are more common at the end of the conference, when they enter their final frantic phase, rather than on the first day.
Mohamed Adow of the thinktank Power Shift Africa has been tweeting about the reasons behind the delays to the opening, which he attributes to wrangling over what the global stocktake covers:
Thirdly, the adoption of the COP29 agenda has been delayed, as developed and developing countries fight over the ‘scope’ of the UAE Dialogue, and whether it is only on finance related outcomes of the Global Stocktake (GST) or whether it covers all the GST outcome and this…
— Mohamed Adow (@mohadow) November 11, 2024
'Fossil fuel companies broke the planet, they should pay for it,' says website cop29.com
Anyone clicking on to www.cop29.com is in for a surprise. The site has been acquired by Global Witness and now leads with the faces of five big oil bosses and the headline “Fossil fuel companies are destroying the planet for profit. They broke it, they should pay for it.”
The CEOs are Mike Wirth at Chevron, Patrick Pouyanné at TotalEnergies, Murray Auchinloss at BP, Darren Woods at ExxonMobil and Wael Sawan at Shell.
The site is promoting Global Witness’s “Payback Time” campaign, which is supported by actor Rosario Dawson, film director Adam McKay, activists Vanessa Nakate and Luisa Neubauer and more.
The oil and gas industry made $4tn in pre-tax profits in 2022, notes Global Witness. That is 10 times the annual cost of climate damages in developing countries, estimated at about $400bn a year. The UN’s Loss and Damage Fund, aimed at helping poorer nations hit by climate disasters, contains less than 0.2% of this $400bn figure.
Mary Robinson, formerly UN climate envoy and President of Ireland, said: “People need money to rebuild and adapt to our increasingly extreme climate. But right now the oil and gas companies fuelling climate collapse are getting away scot-free – making immense profits from products they have known for decades would harm the planet. It’s high time we made them pay up.”
Luana, an Indigenous climate activist whose community was hit by the recent devastating floods in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, said: “Everyone is afraid of the rain now, and all four seasons can happen on the same day. It’s the big companies who are largely responsible, so they should pay more, right?”
Global Witness said it acquired thecop29.comsite from an Indian couple who used the domain for their family business. They were offered a significant sum by Azerbaijan’s COP29 team for the site, Global Witness said, but the owners were worried about climate breakdown and decided to let Global Witness have it instead.
Updated
Trump victory 'not the end of fight for a cleaner planet', says US climate envoy
At Cop29 on Monday evening, US climate envoy John Podesta said the climate fight will not stop under President Trump.
“Although under Donald Trump’s leadership the U.S. federal government placed climate-related actions on the back burner, efforts to prevent climate change remain a commitment in the U.S. and will confidently continue,” he said.
Trump has pledged to deregulate the energy sector and pull the nation from the Paris Climate Agreement. Yet “this is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet,” Podesta said.
Under President Biden, the US passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest downpayment on the green transition seen in US history. “The fight is bigger than one election, one political cycle in one country,” said Podesta. The UN climate conference in Baku represents a “critical opportunity to cement our progress.”
Among the United States’ top goals for the climate talks will be securing mitigation plans for greenhouse gases other than CO2, such as methane. On Tuesday, the nation will co-host a summit on the issue with China and Cop29 host Azerbaijan.
Other major priorities, Podesta said, will be reaching an agreement on the use of carbon trading and increasing ambition on clean energy deployment,
Another crucial component of the climate talks, Podesta said, will be ensuring small economies have access to climate finance from rich nations — “very important work”.
“COP29 is a crucial opportunity to solidify our progress and keep 1.5 degrees alive, accelerate progress in reducing all greenhouse gases, and perhaps most importantly, strengthen global cooperation in adaptation and climate finance. We are here to work, and we are committed to achieving a successful outcome at COP29.”
Updated
The Cop29 presidency is hoping to score an early win by ending a years-long blockage over rules to govern carbon markets.
In theory carbon markets let rich countries or more often corporations buy “carbon credits” from poor countries; the company or country buys them via an organisation which promises to pay communities to do things like planting trees and building wind turbines, and that buys the country/corporation more time to cut their own pollution. It’s an idea that could speed up the energy transition by bringing cash to where it’s needed - but has been held back by the dodgy and harmful projects that have plagued the system since the start.
Civil society groups fear the final rules to bring the market to life may be gavelled through in Baku without a proper debate, after a supervisory body adopted standards last month in a process that critics say overstepped its mandate.
They are also keen to stress that the money from carbon markets should not replace the vast sums of climate finance that poor countries say they are owed by richer ones - a point also made by a Drake-themed sticker spotted on a water bottle at the conference.
Updated
2024 is on track to be hottest year on record as warming temporarily hits 1.5°C
The year 2024 is on track to be the warmest year on record after an extended streak of exceptionally high monthly global mean temperatures, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has announced.
The January – September 2024 global mean surface air temperature was 1.54 °C (with a margin of uncertainty of ±0.13°C) above the pre-industrial average, boosted by a warming El Niño event, according to an analysis of six international datasets used by WMO.
Greenhouse Gases reached record observed levels in 2023. Real time data indicate that they continued to rise in 2024. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) has increased from around 278 ppm in 1750 to 420 ppm in 2023, an increase of 51%. This traps heat and causes temperatures to rise.
Ocean heat content in 2023 was the highest on record and preliminary data show 2024 has continued at comparable levels. Ocean warming rates show a particularly strong increase in the past two decades. From 2005 to 2023, the ocean absorbed on average approximately 3.1 million terawatt-hours (TWh) of heat each year. This is more than 18 times the world’s energy consumption in 2023.
Sea level rise is accelerating because of thermal expansion of warmer waters and melting glaciers and ice sheets. From 2014-2023, global mean sea level rose at a rate of 4.77 mm per year, more than double the rate between 1993 and 2002. The El Niño effect meant it grew even more rapidly in 2023. Preliminary 2024 data shows that, with the decline of El Niño, it has fallen back to levels consistent with the rising trend from 2014 to 2022.
Glacier loss is worsening. In 2023, glaciers lost a record 1.2-meter water equivalent of ice – about five times the amount of water in the Dead Sea. It was the largest loss since measurements began in 1953 and was due to extreme melting in North America and Europe. In Switzerland, glaciers lost about 10% of their remaining volume in 2021/2022 and 2022/2023.
Ben Spencer, science editor at the Sunday Times, is also at the press conference. John Podesta has stated that climate change “is a matter of life and death”, and warns that when Trump says he will dismantle the fight against global warming “we should believe him”. #cop29
Biden's climate envoy John Podesta: climate change "is a matter of life and death". And when Trump says he will dismantle the fight against global warming "we should believe him". #cop29 pic.twitter.com/D94TbIcX6c
— Ben Spencer (@Ben_Spencer) November 11, 2024
Updated
On X Lauren Boland notes that John Podesta, senior advisor on climate to US President Joe Biden, says the US election outcome was “bitterly disappointing” for climate. “It’s clear that the next administration will try to make a U-turn and reverse progress”
John Podesta, senior advisor on climate to US President Joe Biden, answering the question on everyone's mind at #COP29 - says US election outcome was “bitterly disappointing” for climate
— Lauren Boland (@laurenanna_1) November 11, 2024
“It's clear that the next administration will try to make a U-turn and reverse progress” pic.twitter.com/1NFC5gF9W0
Updated
“Is there an opening for China to now take the lead?” Justin Rowlatt from the BBC asks the US’s John Podesta.
“As the world’s largest emitter they have an obligation to … come forward with a 1.5 aligned NDC,” says Podesta. That’s a nationally determined contribution and indicates how countries will reduce their emissions. “They have an important role to play.”
There will be a joint summit on methane tomorrow as well.
John Podesta, senior adviser to US president Joe Biden on climate policy, is now heading a press conference.
One journalist asks if the US has been diminished at the summit. Podesta says: “We’ve been working very hard with countries … We’ll continue to encourage people work diligently.”
“We’re making progress on finally finishing article 6 and we’re working on important articles to build on the Dubai Consensus, particularly on tripling renewables and building more battery capacity.”
Updated
The first of our new series This is Climate Breakdown has just launched.
When heavy rain came to her neighbourhood in Nova Scotia in 2023, Tera Sisco’s youngest son was staying with her ex-husband, and got caught up in the terrible flash floods that followed.
We’ve been working with the Climate Disaster Project and the International Red Cross to collect testimonies from people hit by the affects of the crisis. Over the next two weeks we’ll share more stories from Brazil, Burkina Faso, France, South Africa, China, and more.
Windfall ‘superprofits’ from oil companies totalled half a trillions dollars in a single year
The windfall “superprofits” from oil and gas companies totalled half a trillions dollars in a single year, analysis has revealed. The researchers say it shows that there is “plenty of potential funding out there in the hands of the fossil fuel companies that helped create” the climate crisis.
The central task of Cop29 is to agree on delivering at least $1tn a year to developing nations so they can cut emissions, build protection against extreme weather for their citizens and recover from disasters.
The researchers examined the earnings of 93 of big fossil fuel companies in 2022 comparing their expected profits to their actual profits after Russia’s war in Ukraine spiked oil prices. They found $490bn in unearned superprofits, above and beyond usual high profits. It is also a minimum estimate, as big oil and gas producers in Russia, Iran and Venezuela keep their earnings secret.
“We urge governments around the world to use their power to use such superprofits for the benefit of those most affected by climate change at Cop29 in Baku,” said Prof Florian Egli, at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, who led the research. UN secretary general António Guterres has called for windfall tax.
US companies, such as ExxonMobil, gained $143bn, while $103bn went to companies headquartered in the UK, France and Canada, such as BP and TotalEnergies, the researchers found. Some countries did introduce windfall taxes but these covered only a fraction of the superprofits and were not used for climate action.
Colossal profits are nothing new in the oil and gas industry. It has made $1tn a year in pure profit every year for the last 50 years, with the recent energy price crisis only boosting profits higher.
Furthermore, big oil is also the recipient of huge subsidies from governments - almost literally pouring petrol on the climate crisis fire. Another report released at Cop29 by justice campaign group One found rich countries spent $2.7tn on domestic fossil fuel subsidies between 2010 and 2022, six times more than they committed for international climate finance.
“This data shows the true scale of climate hypocrisy: instead of fulfilling their promises to support climate-vulnerable countries, wealthy countries are propping up a trillion-dollar industry with trillions in subsidies. World leaders at Cop29 have a clear choice: redirect resources for everyone’s benefit,” said Joseph Kraus at One.
The world’s biggest oil and gas producer, the US, spent five times more on fossil fuel subsidies than climate finance over the period, while the UK both spent nine times more.
Cop29 hosts Azerbaijan spent 1800 times more, while the host of last year’s Cop28, the United Arab Emirates, spent over 150 times more. The world’s second biggest oil producer, Saudi Arabia spent 1200 times more.
The G20 agreed in 2009 to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, which largely benefit the well-off. Little progress has been made since.
The Cop opening plenary still hasn’t resumed, says Carbon Brief’s Simon Evans.
No, the #COP29 opening plenary did not resume at 1600h either, since you ask – it is now scheduled to restart at 1700h – but as I said earlier, don't hold your breath
— Simon Evans (@DrSimEvans) November 11, 2024
The Azerbaijan presidency wants to repeat last yr's deal for 1 item on day 1…instead they are stuck in midst of… pic.twitter.com/3sPts2Lohv
Interesting piece of analysis in Politico about the role that one of Britain’s own companies BP plays in Azerbaijan.
BP is Azerbaijan’s biggest foreign investor. There’s even a joke popular in the region that the Azerbaijani government sees two U.K. power bases in Baku: the British Embassy and BP’s office.
That three-way relationship means the U.K. oil and gas multinational’s influence — and the British government’s ties to it — will loom large over the U.K.’s participation in the key United Nations-organized climate summit in Baku this week….
BP did more than any company to help Azerbaijan build up its oil and gas wealth after the fall of the Soviet Union, creating a lasting bond between London and Baku.
There are reports on social media of a hyper realistic model of a dead whale being shown in Baku. According to Zahra Badalbayli, the model is by the Belgian art collective Captain Boomer.
Artists and eco-activists are gathering worldwide for COP, including in Baku at COP29.
— Zahra Badalbayli (@ZahraBadalbayli) November 11, 2024
Belgian art collective Captain Boomer has created a hyper-realistic installation of a dead whale to highlight environmental destruction. #COP29 #Baku #EcoArt #CaptainBoomer pic.twitter.com/PMYTqs9MDU
Updated
Cop29 is taking place in the shadow of the re-election of Donald Trump in the United States.
His win was “horrible” news for the climate movement, said Allie Rosenbluth, co-manager of the climate NGO Oil Change International, at a press conference about the election result in Baku on Monday.
During his first term, Trump rolled back dozens of environmental regulations. He also pulled the US from the Paris Climate Agreement — something he has pledged to do again.
Jacob Johns, an Indigenous organizer with the US group A Wisdom Keepers Delegation, at the presser called the former president a “fascist dictator.”
“As a Native American we are just devastated to see a second Trump presidency,” he said.
Trump’s impending role could place a major damper on US climate action plans and commitments to fund climate finance. But not all is lost, said Dean Bhekumuzi Bhebhe, senior just transitions and campaigns advisor with campaign group Power Shift Africa, said at the event.
Other rich countries should be willing to fill the gap left by the US, he said: “They should be willing to pay more than their fair share of climate finance.”
There appear to be a few issues causing problems already at the conference. According to Carbon Brief’s Dr Simon Evans the “opening plenary has been paused for consultations on the draft agenda, which includes a few disputed items”.
Among those disputed items are the EU’s CBAM – that’s the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, a kind of carbon tariff, which has been under discussion for a long long time. According to Evans the attempt to get it onto the agenda last year failed.
Second, the recently-proposed agenda item on "climate change related, trade-restrictive unilateral measures", put forward by the BASIC group inc China/India
— Simon Evans (@DrSimEvans) November 11, 2024
This is, er, basically about the EU's CBAM – and an attempt to get it on agenda last year failed
Background… pic.twitter.com/6MnOCDy5Gr
Apparently negotiators were up late last night trying to sort out this and other issues.
According to Evans’ latest update, the opening plenary will now resume at 1600 Baku time.
Hallo, this is Bibi van der Zee, taking over from my colleague Damien Gayle. You can email us on Cop29@theguardian.com with thoughts, photos, and suggestions for what we should be reporting. Follow along for updates from Baku, on day one of this vitally important climate summit.
Australia is hoping to secure hosting rights (in partnership with Pacific nations) for Cop31 in 2026, with an announcement on whether it has been successful possible – though not guaranteed – over the next fortnight. But the competition with Turkey for hosting rights has not been enough to get the Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to Cop29, writes Adam Morton, Guardian Australia’s climate and environment editor.
Albanese has not attended a Cop since becoming national leader in 2022. Instead, Australia will be led by the climate change minister, Chris Bowen, who will arrive for the second week and lead negotiations on the new collective quantified goal for climate finance (NCQG) along with the Egyptian environment minister, Yasmine Fouad.
The assistant climate minister, Josh Wilson, is attending the first week, including representing Albanese at leaders’ events.
Bowen spoke with the Guardian shortly before the US election on what a second Donald Trump presidency could mean, the importance of a deal on finance in Baku and how the Australian government justifies approving new and expanded fossil fuel export developments while saying it is committed to limiting global heating to 1.5C. He acknowledged work on the NCQG would largely determine whether Cop29 was a success or failure.
“I probably should manage expectations, but… this is the finance Cop…Getting an NCQG right is the key element.”
You can read the full interview at the link below.
Notwithstanding fears of a lack of civic space for protests and activism at Cop29 in Baku, some people have staged a small demonstration at the summit.
Azerbaijan has come under fire for its poor human rights record at home, its war against ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and its supplying oil to Israel through a pipeline transiting Turkey.
Azerbaijan’s state oil company potentially sealed deals worth $8bn since the spotlight turned on the country as the next host of the UN’s Cop climate talks, an analysis claims.
Global Witness said the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (Socar) had signed 25 deals with foreign firms in the year it is hosting talks aimed at slashing fossil fuel emissions to try to avert the worst consequences of climate breakdown.
The environment NGO said the dealmaking was worth close to three times as much as the contracts signed with foreign firms in the previous 12 months.
Patrick Galey, senior fossil fuels investigator at Global Witness, said:
The climate crisis gets worse each year, and it seems as if each year we have another fossil fuel company using climate talks to secure pursue ever more oil and gas deals.
Cop29, which vulnerable nations are depending on to secure a path for a future they can survive, risks being co-opted by Azerbaijan’s state oil company. SOCAR’s aims – to produce vast quantities of oil and gas for decades – is directly opposed to the stated aim of UN climate talks.
This conflict of interest is undermining progress towards the one thing we know will prevent climate breakdown: a rapid and fair phase-out of fossil fuels. Big polluters should have no place in this discussion. We must kick them out of these talks before it’s too late.
In April, president Ilyan Aliyev – himself a former senior SOCAR executive – said hosting climate talks would not prevent Azerbaijan from exploiting oil and gas reserves he described as “a gift from the gods”.
To meet increased EU demand for Azeri gas since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, SOCAR plans to produce the 2nd-highest percentage of new oil and gas of any state fossil fuel company, according to the Global Witness analysis.
Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist, has also written for the Guardian this morning, her op-ed a foil to that of Cop president Mukhtar Babayev’s on our comment pages.
In her article, Thunberg dismisses Cop29 as just another at an “authoritarian petrostate with no respect for human rights”, adding:
Cop meetings have proven to be greenwashing conferences that legitimise countries’ failures to ensure a livable world and future and have also allowed authoritarian regimes like Azerbaijan and the two previous hosts – the United Arab Emirates and Egypt – to continue violating human rights.
Thunberg goes on:
Azerbaijan’s entire economy is built on fossil fuels, with the state-owned oil company Socar’s oil and gas exports accounting for close to 90% of the country’s exports. Despite what it might claim, Azerbaijan has no ambition to take climate action. It is planning to expand fossil fuel production, which is completely incompatible with the 1.5C limit and the goals of the Paris agreement on climate change.
Many attenders of this year’s Cop are scared to criticise the Azerbaijan government. Human Rights Watch recently published a statement explaining how it couldn’t be certain that attenders’ rights to peacefully protest would be guaranteed. In addition, Azerbaijan land and sea borders will remain closed during Cop29, making it only possible to travel in and out of the country by air, which causes pollution and which many Azerbaijan citizens can’t afford. The reason given for closing borders at all Cops since the start of the Covid pandemic is to maintain “national security”, but I’ve heard many Azerbaijanis describe the situation as being “kept in a prison”.
Thunberg herself is in Tbilisi, the capital of neighbouring Georgia, where – as we reported earlier – she has called for a demonstration this evening. You can read more of her op-ed by clicking the link below.
Updated
Global north owes $5tn a year climate debt to global south, campaigners say
A huge “climate debt” is owed by the global north to the global south, according to campaigners at Cop29, writes Damian Carrington, environment editor.
“We are asking for the down payment of a very large debt – a down payment of $5tn [a year],” said Tasneem Essop, executive director of Climate Action Network, global alliance of more than 1900 civil society organisations in over 130 countries.
The argument is simple: rich nations prospered by burning fossil fuels and now need to fund poorer nations to avoid the same path, and cope with the severe heatwaves, floods and storms fuelled by global heating and already here.
NGOs play a crucial role at climate summits, ensuring the voices of those most affected by the climate crisis are heard, and their participation is formally recognised by the UN. The groups are particularly important as many developing countries have small and overstretched delegations.
“We know the debt is much larger, but $5tn is what we come here to demand,” Essop said, wearing a bright lanyard stating “Global North, pay up!! $5tn!”.
“Governments out there are absolutely capable of finding the money that does wrong in the world,” she said. “They found the money for military spending. They found the money for the genocide in Gaza. They find the money to subsidise and support the fossil fuel industry. To come here and say that they do not have money is absolutely untruthful and unacceptable.”
Delivering a finance deal for developing countries is the central task of Cop29. There is widespread agreement that trillions are needed and available, but who pays what and how is far strongly contested.
Essop warned that failing to deliver a good finance deal will severely damage trust among the negotiating nations and therefore impact all other climate issues at Cop29, from carbon cutting plans to a fair transition for workers: “Developing countries will just put their foot down and say, if we’re not going to settle on finance, we’re not settling on anything else.”
Updated
Mukhtar Babayev, the president of Cop29, has used a Guardian op-ed to call on the private sector to stump up cash for the developing world to invest in a low-carbon economy, writes Fiona Harvey, environment editor, who is in Baku.
Babayev, the environment minister of Azerbaijan, the host of this year’s climate conference, wrote in Monday’s Guardian:
The onus cannot fall entirely on government purses. Unleashing private finance for developing countries’ transition has long been an ambition of climate talks.
Without the private sector, there is no climate solution. The world needs more funds and it needs them faster. History shows we can mobilise the resources required; it’s now a matter of political will.
At Cop29, countries will try to forge a new global framework for providing the funds that developing nations need to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of worsening extreme weather. Poor countries want climate finance to ramp up from about $100bn a year today to at least $1tn every year by 2035.
At the Cop29 venue itself, the ground quite literally feels unsteady, with the carpeted platform floors sinking slightly underfoot with each step, writes Dharna Noor, the Guardian US’s fossil fuels and climate reporter.
The conference is taking place in an enormous, labyrinth-like temporary structure constructed at Baku Olympic Stadium – a misleading name for a venue that has never hosted an Olympic event.
Though it is chilly outside in Baku, it is uncomfortably warm inside the venue’s blinding fluorescent lights.
Unlike in some editions of the summit, food at Cop29 is abundant, with coffee, Domino’s Pizza, and Turkish sesame-topped bagels known as simit served from stands made of unfinished composite wood.
Despite its unsettling appearance, the venue is “one of the best I’ve seen at Cop,” said Collin Rees, a program manager at the nonprofit Oil Change International, who has attended 10 previous Cop meetings.
“There’s actually food available, it’s well-laid out, and there’s actually enough space to work,” he said, “which is not always the case.”
Sultan Al Jaber, the president of Cop28, has some warm words for his own achievements as he hands over to Cop29 president Mukhtar Babayev, writes Damian Carrington, environment editor.
“By delivering the historic, comprehensive, balanced and groundbreaking UAE Consensus, we accomplished what many thought was impossible,” said Al Jaber, who is also CEO of the United Arab Emirate’s national oil company Adnoc.
He’s largely referring to the pledge to “transition away” from fossil fuels, which was historic given the astonishing fact that none of the previous 27 climate summits mentioned fossil fuels, the overwhelming driver of the climate crisis. It was however a serious disappointment to the many nations who wanted a “phase out” of fossil fuels.
Al Jaber also mentioned that the voluntary industry initiative, the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter, now has companies representing 44% of global production committing to zero methane emissions by 2030.
“History will judge us by our actions, not by our words,” he told delegates in Baku. The UAE’s own national pledges are rated as “critically insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker.
Whether there is any sign that the “transition away” from fossil fuels is being put into action may come with the release of the 2024Global Carbon Budgeton Wednesday.
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Do you find yourself in need of an easily digestible briefing on Cop29?
Damian Carrington, environment editor, has spoken to the Guardian’s Today In Focus podcast team about the main objective of this year’s climate summit: getting richer nations to agree to inject climate finance into developing countries.
“Everyone’s focus is on $1tn [£774bn],” Damian tells podcast presenter Helen Pidd. “Which sounds like a crazy big number. Personally, actually, I think it’s a bargain.”
Click below to listen to the full podcast.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell gave a moving speech at the Cop29 opening plenary on Monday, writes Dharna Noor, fossil fuels and climate reporter for Guardian US, who is reporting from Baku.
“In tough times, up against difficult tasks, I don’t go in for hopes and dreams,” he said. “What inspires me is human ingenuity and determination. Our ability to get knocked down and to get up again over and over again, until we accomplish our goals.”
Stiell hails from the Grenada island of Carriacou, which was pummelled by Hurricane Beryl in July. He showed a photograph of himself standing with an elderly neighbour, Florence, whose home was flattened by the storm.
“At 85, Florence has become one of the millions of victims of runaway climate change this year alone,” he said. “There are people like Florence in every country on Earth. Knocked down, and getting back up again.”
UN negotiations can feel “far away” from the environmental disasters harming people like Florence, said Stiell. Yet the climate crisis “is affecting every single individual in the world in one way or another,” pushing up energy bills, furthering global instability, and taking lives, he said.
Among the top priorities at Cop29, he noted, will be setting a new global finance goal, finalising the rules for carbon markets, and making commitments to mitigate planet-warning pollution.
“Now is the time to show that global cooperation is not down for the count. It’s rising to this moment,” he said. “So let’s rise here together.”
Greta Thunberg calls protest against Cop29 in Georgia as Azerbaijan closes land borders
Greta Thunberg, the climate activist, has called a protest tonight in Tbilisi, Georgia, where she has been for some time.
It is the closest that the Swede is able to get to Baku, since Azerbaijan has closed its land borders, posing an insurmountable barrier to those who wish to attend the climate talks but do not wish to fly there, due to the carbon impact of aviation.
In any case, Thunberg – in common with many climate activists – has said she would not attend the conference in Baku, due to the repressive political climate.
The protest in Tbilisi will take place at 7pm, in Liberty Square, she wrote on Instagram. She added:
Join us as we rally against the wave of authoritarianism and exploitation sweeping through the Caucasus. Azerbaijan, using COP29 as a façade, is ramping up control under a false “green” agenda, tightening its grip on power, and escalating regional tensions.
For over 20 years, Azerbaijan’s regime led by Aliyev have kept people oppressed, fostering poverty, fear, and silence. This authoritarian trend isn’t isolated–across the region, people like Ivanishvili, Putin, Erdogan, theocratic regime in Iran are deepening control, stifling dissent, oppressing their own people and using war and ethnic cleansing against Armenians, Ukrainians, Kurds and other ethnic minorities to justify brutal policies. Those who speak out–journalists, activists, scholars–are often met with imprisonment and violence. Under this system, climate action is reduced to corporate profit schemes, leaving people’s needs ignored and communities devastated.
The collective West’s role in this authoritarian drift is undeniable, as it continues to legitimise and finance oppressive regimes for the sake of energy and profit. By turning a blind eye to oppression in exchange for resources, Western powers are complicit in the repression and suffering faced by the people of the Caucasus.
The Caucasus Feminist Anti-War movement demand a future free from the chokehold of authoritarianism, war, and capitalist greed. We stand for real freedom, equality, justice, and a region where people, not profits, come first.
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Like most international diplomatic jamborees, Cops take place in fairly lavish surroundings, and Cop29 is no different. Here are a few views of the sights delegates and visitors are enjoying in the Baku conference centre.
The opening ceremony of Cop29 has begun. Mukhtar Babayev, the summit president-elect, has called it a “moment of truth for the Paris agreement”.
Here are the first of his remarks, filed by Reuters:
Colleagues, we are on a road to ruin. But these are not future problems. Climate change is already here.
Whether you see them or not, people are suffering in the shadows. They are dying in the dark and they need more than compassion, more than prayers and paperwork. They are crying out for leadership and action. Cop29 is the unmissable moment to chart a new path forward for everyone.
We need much more from all of you.
Cop29 is a moment of truth for the Paris Agreement. It will test our commitment to the multilateral climate system. We must now demonstrate that we are prepared to meet the goals we have set ourselves.
Developing nations need $1bn a day to pay for climate impacts - UN
Finance is at the top of the agenda here at Cop29 but the maths is brutal, with a chasm between what is being supplied and what is needed. That is particularly true for the funding needed by vulnerable communities to build protection against climate impacts, such as flood defences, so-called adaptation.
The world’s developing nations need about $1bn a day just to cope with the extreme weather impacts of today, with only 1.3C of global heating, according to a UN Environment Programme (Unep) report published on Thursday. What they are actually receiving is less than a tenth of that, about $75m a day.
What’s worse is that while adaptation funding is increasing – from $22bn in 2021 to $28bn in 2022 – the deadly impacts of the climate crisis are increasing far faster, said Henry Neufeldt, lead author of the Unep report.
UN secretary general António Guterres put it in typically stark terms: “Climate calamity is the new reality and we’re not keeping up. The climate crisis is here. We can’t postpone protection. We must adapt – now.”
He noted that while adaptation funding is falling far short of what is required, “the purveyors of all this destruction – particularly the fossil fuel industry – reap massive profits and subsidies”.
At Cop26 in 2021, the Glasgow Climate Pact set a goal of doubling adaptation finance to at least $38bn by 2025. That may be achieved, but will remain far below the $230bn – $415bn range estimated by the UN as necessary.
“The gap is extremely large – we need a step change,” said Paul Watkiss, another author of the Unep report.
There are three strands of climate finance: money for cutting emissions, also called mitigation, money for adaptation, and money for disaster recovery, also called loss and damage.
Watkiss said all are interrelated: “If you don’t mitigate and you don’t adapt, you get really high loss and damage. So we’re starting to see these very large scale events [like the recent floods in Spain] coming through. The tragedy is terrible, but hopefully it starts to provide an impetus to say, if you don’t adapt, that will lead to much higher costs overall. It’s much more efficient and effective to finance adaptation than it is to do nothing.”
The negotiators at Cop29 have been told what is at stake. Now the hard work of delivering a meaningful finance deal begins.
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As well as hard coverage of the talks, throughout the day our correspondents will be filing lines on some of the experiences that offer some sense of the vibe in Baku. Here is the first, from Damian Carrington:
Azerbaijan Airlines had been given the Cop29 script, with passengers from London to Baku warmly greeted and promised as “inspirational meeting of minds”. We’ll see.
The Cop29 branding is an appealing shade of teal and has some intriguing logos. One shows a factory with a chimney emitting a leaf, while another has a plant which is flowering an electric plug. The industry that underpins the entire Aezrbaijan economy – oil and gas – is understandably absent.
Every great arena of international diplomacy comes complete with its own dictionary of jargon, and Cop – being about a particularly complicated and somewhat scientific problem – are in no way an exception. Thankfully, the Reuters news agency has provided a glossary of terms. Here are some you will see peppered throughout our coverage in the coming fortnight.
UNFCCC: This acronym stands for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is the name of both the 1992 treaty committing nearly 200 countries to fighting global warming and the secretariat set up to implement that treaty.
COP: This acronym stands for Conference of Parties, and describes the annual summit of countries that have signed the UNFCCC treaty. This year’s COP29 meeting in Baku marks the 29th such gathering since the UNFCCC took effect in 1994.
NCQG: This relatively new acronym will be focal at COP29. It stands for the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance, an annual target for funding developing country climate efforts.
NDC: Most often, these NDCs or Nationally Determined Contributions are referred to simply as “country pledges” and describe national action plans for reducing its emissions and adapting to climate impacts. The next round of NDCs are due in February, though some countries plan to submit new plans in Baku.
GLOBAL WARMING: The term describes the gradual increase in the global average temperature.
CLIMATE CHANGE: While this term is often used interchangeably with “global warming,” it means something different. Climate change describes global warming as well as its consequences, such as extreme weather events. (At the Guardian, we will often use the terms CLIMATE BREAKDOWN or CLIMATE CRISIS to better convey the gravity of the situation.)
GREENHOUSE GASES: These gases, sometimes referred to simply as GHGs, are able to trap solar heat in the atmosphere and cause global warming. The most powerful GHGs are methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2), which are also referred to as “carbon emissions” because both molecules contain carbon. The world’s excess carbon emissions come mostly from the burning of fossil fuels and other industrial activities.
PARIS AGREEMENT: Under this 2015 treaty from the COP21 talks in Paris, countries agreed to try to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) above the pre-industrial average, with a goal of holding it to 1.5C (2.7F). The Paris pact also calls for national emissions-cutting pledges to be updated every five years
NET ZERO: This term does not mean releasing zero emissions, but rather releasing no more than the amount being recaptured by CO2 abatement technologies, tree planting, or other means. Reaching “net zero” would mean atmospheric GHG concentrations stop increasing.
LOSS AND DAMAGE: Governments last year pledged $800 million toward a new ‘loss and damage’ fund to help poorer nations being hit by climate-fueled disasters. The fund, which now has a director and a host nation, will now be deciding how the funds should be dispersed and calling for more contributions at COP29.
CARBON OFFSET: Also known as a “carbon credit,” these instruments allow a country or company to compensate for some of their carbon emissions by investing in projects to bring emissions down elsewhere.
ARTICLE 6: This term refers to a provision in the Paris Agreement on carbon offsets, and is used as shorthand for UNFCCC efforts to regulate international trading in carbon credits. Governments are hoping to resolve rules for trading carbon offsets at COP29 to allow for these markets to become operational.
Here are some pictures of how things are looking in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, which has been set up in full summit mode.
WHAT IS COP29 IN AZERBAIJAN AND DOES IT MATTER?
The 29th United Nations climate conference has begun, with diplomats descending on Baku, Azerbaijan, to thrash out arguments over planet-heating pollutants and the money needed to deal with them.
Like the 28 “conferences of the parties” that came before, Cop29 is not expected to stop the climate from changing - but delegates say that’s no reason to dismiss it as hot air. Cops are the key diplomatic arenas in which poor countries that have done little to heat the planet can put pressure on rich countries that hooked the world on fossil fuels. In turn, rich countries with the resources to transition quickly can encourage poor countries to clean up faster and sooner.
WHAT WILL BE THE OUTCOME OF COP29?
This year’s meeting will revolve around efforts to stump up the funds needed to cut pollution and adapt to more violent weather. Rich countries missed a goal to get poor countries $100 billion a year in climate finance from 2020, a target set in a previous Cop that experts deemed weak and patchy. Poor countries are now pushing for $1tr a year by 2030 - including cash to fix the destruction caused by extreme weather - but rich countries are reluctant to go higher unless the pool of contributors grows larger.
If diplomats reach a good deal on money this month, it could build trust and spark greater ambition when countries submit sorely-needed action plans to cut pollution at Cop30 in Brazil next year.
WILL COP29 SUCCEED?
More than 32,000 participants have registered for the conference but observers are not expecting them to deliver transformational change. Several prominent world leaders are skipping the summit and sending deputies instead - including the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, the US’s Joe Biden, China’s Xi Jinping and Germany’s Olaf Scholz. The US just elected Donald Trump as president, who took the country out of the Paris climate agreement when he last sat in the White House. Papua New Guinea has pulled its ministers out of this year’s Cop altogether in protest at the failure of rich countries to live up to their promises.
And beneath the high-level geopolitics, observers have also questioned whether the host is up to the task of shepherding overworked diplomats to find common ground. Azerbaijan, a middle-income country in central Asia that is rich in oil but poor in water, is well-poised to bridge the divide between the different interest groups. But a secret recording last week appeared to show the Cop29 CEO agreeing to facilitate fossil fuel deals.
The hope is that the conference can really bring countries together, and continue to push progress on reducing the world’s CO2 emissions.
Good morning, this is Damien Gayle, your online guide to Cop29 …
The 29th Conference of the Parties is beginning in Baku, Azerbaijan, this morning and, as we do every year, the Guardian environment desk will be blogging every cough and spit by the thousands of delegates, campaigners, lobbyists and others who have travelled to visit the climate talks.
Our team of reporters has already travelled to Baku, and I will be anchoring coverage from London, weaving together their contributions while scanning social media and wires news feeds to achieve as close to total coverage as is possible for one man and a blog.
If you have any comments or suggestions on things we could be covering, or news to share, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line via email. My address is damien.gayle@theguardian.com.
