The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) kicked off on Monday in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Delegates from about 200 countries, business leaders, climate scientists, Indigenous Peoples, journalists, and various other experts and stakeholders are expected to attend the summit, which will last until November 22. The primary goal of COP29 is to bring together countries to develop a shared plan for curbing further global warming. It would also focus on scaling up climate finance to help developing nations tackle the adverse effects of climate change. What is COP? COP, or Conference of Parties, is the annual meeting of the members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) — an international agreement, signed in 1992, that has provided a basis for climate negotiations. The UNFCCC commits members or parties to act together to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations “at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human-induced) interference with the climate system”. Currently, there are 198 parties (197 countries plus European Union) to the UNFCCC, constituting near universal membership. Every year since 1995 — except in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic — the parties come together to discuss and agree on international climate policy. One of the significant tasks for COP is to “review the national communications and emission inventories” submitted by member states, according to the UNFCCC’s website. “Based on this information, the COP assesses the effects of the measures taken by Parties and the progress made in achieving the ultimate objective of the Convention,” the website said. What are some of the milestones of COP? The first major breakthrough came at COP3 in Kyoto in 1997 when the parties adopted the Kyoto Protocol. The international treaty placed obligations on the set of rich and industrialised countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by assigned amounts. “Targets varied by country but averaged at a 4.2% reduction by 2012 below 1990 levels,” according to a report in the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). However, the Kyoto Protocol did not last long as the rich and powerful countries were not happy with its provisions. For example, the United States signed the protocol but never ratified it. At COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, parties tried to establish a successor to the treaty but the attempt failed. A second attempt was made at COP21 in Paris in 2015 which led to the landmark Paris Agreement — a legally binding international treaty to limit global temperatures to below 2 degree Celsius, and preferably below 1.5 degree Celsius. The parties also agreed to submit their climate action plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), by 2020. The next milestone came during COP26 in Glasgow 2021 in the form of the Glasgow Pact. The parties made a commitment to “phase down” the use of coal (this language was weakened from “phase out” late in the negotiations) and to phase out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”. This was the first time that a UN climate agreement explicitly mentioned coal. At last year’s COP28 in Dubai, a Loss and Damage fund was officially launched. The fund is meant to provide financial help to countries struck by climate disasters. What are some of the criticisms of COP? The biggest criticism is that COP has failed to enable enough emission cuts to put the planet on a pathway to meet the 1.5 or 2 degree Celsius targets. Studies have shown that the world must cut its emissions by at least 43% by 2030 relative to 2019 levels to keep alive any hopes of achieving the 1.5 degree Celsius target. However, by 2023, the world had not even begun the downward journey. Emissions are still rising, and not yet peaked. In the best case scenarios, global emissions are projected to be just 2% below 2019 levels in 2030 instead of 43% that is required. COP has also been unable to provide climate finance to developing nations. For instance, in 2009, the wealthiest countries — which are disproportionately responsible for the climate crisis — promised to raise every year from 2020 for developing nations to help them reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis. They failed to deliver on their promise. What should be expected from COP29? Climate finance is at the top of the agenda of COP29. The parties are negotiating the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), a new amount that must be mobilised by developed countries every year from 2025 onward to finance climate action in developing countries. It has to be more than the $100 billion that developed countries, collectively, had promised to raise every year from 2020. However, talks over the NCQG in recent months have been deeply divided. Parties disagree on almost every element of the fund, including “the amount of money that needs to be raised, who should contribute, what types of finance should feed into it, what it should fund and what period of time it should cover”, according to a report by Carbon Brief. It remains to be seen how member states finalise the NCQG.
