Baku climate summit starts on sombre note

The Conference of Parties 29 (COP29), the United Nations climate summit, began in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, on Monday on a sombre note. Many of the presidents and prime ministers who had attended the Dubai COP28 summit were absent on Monday.

The meeting has the toughest agenda of pushing for the $1 trillion annual climate finance commitment, raising it from the $100 billion annual commitment made in 2009 and which has not been honoured.

The fund is to help the poorer and developing countries make the transition to green energy sources. In more than a decade, the costs have indeed grown up. Had the developed countries kept to their promise to fund $100 billion annually, then the task would have been slightly easier. But the developed countries were always asking the question as to who should pay, and how much. The maximum amount the green funders ever touched was $40b.

And now the developed countries argue that the situation has changed radically since 2009, and now the emerging economies of oil-producing countries and China should be contributing to the climate fund as well. The new goal of the COP29 is to define the terms of the New Climate Quantitative Goal (NCQG), and who should pay and in what manner.

It is quite unlikely that the developed countries would agree to it easily. There will be hard bargaining and it has to be some sort of a compromised formula. But host Azerbaijan and the UN are keen to push for meeting the NCQG. The United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell said in unambiguous language, “Let’s dispense with the idea that climate finance is charity. An ambitious new climate finance goal is entirely in the self-interest of every nation, including the largest and wealthiest.”

There are other factors that are casting a shadow over the summit, especially the election of Republican candidate Donald Trump as the US president. He will take over office on January 20, 2025. He has been opposed to any kind of reduction of carbon emission, nor is he willing to contribute to America’s share of the global climate fund.

But John Podesta, the US envoy at the summit, and member of the outgoing President Joe Biden team, has assured that the US will sit committed to its climate commitments, and the Trump presidency can slow the process but there will be no change in direction. President Biden in his landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has provided finances for the Clean Air Act and many other green provisions which the states can implement.

Podesta said, “For those of us dedicated to climate action, last week’s outcome in the United States is bitterly disappointing. But what I want to tell you today is that while the United States federal government, under Donald Trump, may put climate action on the backburner, the work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States.”

 In the next 10 days, there will be intense and tortuous parleys over many minor agreements and the major one on climate finance. Dubai’s COP28 summit ended on the positive note that there would a move away from the fossil fuel economy. At the time, it was considered a vague commitment, but there was unanimity that everyone was committed to it.

The Biden Administration tried to push some of it into law through the IRA. A similar commitment followed by action however small would alter the picture in a big way across the world. What is required is movement, and the ball is set rolling. The hesitancy and the procrastination would end. There is need for an urgent and decisive move forward. If the big economies like the US would take a step forward then it would pick up momentum as the US and rest of the world move forward.