Why COP29 failed
Few were impressed by a late-running conference hosted by a petrostate, but that doesn’t mean we should give up on climate action, says Fin McCarron
COP29 has now been and gone. And it’s fair to say that nobody was impressed. This year’s global climate gathering was supposed to provide a brand new climate finance target that would ramp up spending to help the poorest countries to mitigate and adapt to rising temperatures.
Eventually, after over a day of overrunning, there was an agreement to mobilise $300bn a year in climate finance. Many baulked at the tripling of the target that developing countries only managed to reach last year, while others were frustrated that $300bn was far below estimates of how much money is needed to effectively mitigate climate change.
The beginning of the end?
The difficulties in getting to this agreement in the bounds of the UN processes were such that some are now asking whether this COP will be remembered as the beginning of the end of international efforts to tackle climate change in their current form.
If you looked at the media coverage, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the only people attending this year’s COP were Keir Starmer and the Taliban. But while that wasn’t quite the full guestlist, it was striking that so many big names didn’t attend. Argentina withdrew its negotiators and France cancelled its ministerial visits.
Azerbaijan was a poor choice of host
At least part of this was the fault of the COP hosts, Azerbaijan. The Azeri president was unfazed about attacking fellow parties like France for its hypocrisy and neocolonialism. Yet this is the third COP in a row to be held in an autocratic country that still relies heavily on fossil fuels for its economy. Since COP26 in Glasgow there has been a marked decline in the ambition of the headline agreements at COPs.
But even beyond the choice of hosts, there are wider structural problems with COPs that are becoming a bigger issue. Because any single country can veto any part of the deal, nothing is decided until everybody is happy, so these conferences move at the pace of the least ambitious party. Even the COP insiders are starting to comment that the current process needs reform. Ban Ki-Moon and Christina Figueres were amongst signatories of an open letter that stated that COPs were not fit for purpose.
This doesn’t mean that we should give up on the COP process altogether. The letter highlights possible changes that could encourage ambition. This includes preventing countries from hosting COPs unless they agree to a rapid phase out of fossil fuels. Existing pre-meetings that don’t attract mass media coverage or heads of government are also more important than they used to be. One way to encourage greater ambition would be to shift these pre-meetings to reports on progress and implementing national plans. This means that the headline grabbing targets of COPs are more likely to be delivered, rather than being pushed aside for a newer shiny target the following year.
Even Donald Trump is unlikely to completely dismantle climate provisions
It certainly doesn’t mean that we have to give up on ambitious climate action. The world has changed so much since the first climate COP in 1995. Even Donald Trump is unlikely to completely dismantle the climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, and pure economics will drive emissions cuts in countries with climate-sceptic governments. Smaller groups of high ambition countries are still supporting ambitious side deals and moving ahead of the pack. Perhaps the days of an annual showy climate conference are coming to an end. But serious, informed global collaboration on climate change doesn’t need to.
Fin McCarron is senior international programme manager at Conservative Environment Network