Reflections on COP29: A Global Climate Gathering with Local Implications

By Jenna Clark

My experience at the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) in Baku, Azerbaijan this fall was fascinating, chaotic, illuminating, and frustrating. Imagine thousands of people from hundreds of countries in a series of enclosed spaces, darting between negotiations that never seem to be in the right place at the right time, official events, and among crowded, colorful pavilions. It’s layered, but at its heart, is a negotiation among Parties, which if you don’t pay attention, can take a backseat to the rest of the hubbub.

This year’s COP was the 29th, which is more years than I have been alive, and far too many years for countries to still be debating whether to agree to phase out fossil fuels. If you think this sounds counterintuitive, it is. Expectations for this year’s COP were low at the onset. Most public attention was put on the “New Collective Quantified Goal” which would provide climate finance for developing countries and raise ambition from the former goal of $100 billion per year. However, issues around climate finance are fraught, and many Parties could not even agree to language about whether the original goal had even been met, let alone who would be obligated to provide the finance, or what quantity. Countries’ positions were more nuanced than this, but in general, at the beginning of negotiations, developing country Blocs set a ‘floor’ of $1.3 trillion annually, which they expected to come from public sources, mainly grants, from developed countries as designated in Annex I. Developed countries refused to give a number publicly for the first week and a half, but in general, wanted the pool of those obligated to grow, for many sources of finance to be considered, and wanted carve outs for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS). At its conclusion, the President gaveled in an agreement for $300 billion/year from all sources to developing countries by 2035, with developed countries ‘taking the lead’ plus an overall goal to collectively mobilize $1.3 trillion by 2035.

The President gaveled in the decision despite India and other countries publicly stating their disappointment, and that this deal was pushed through without their input. Why the outrage? First of all, $300 billion USD today is not actually triple the original goal, which some news articles and the UNFCCC have claimed. Adjusted for inflation, the original goal of $100 billion USD, agreed to at Copenhagen in 2009, is about $150 billion in today’s dollars. If inflation proceeds at the same rate, the Copenhagen agreement may look more like $200 billion in 2035 dollars. This means that accounting for inflation, the new goal is roughly 1.5 times the old goal, not 3 times. Further, this text agrees to count private finance, as opposed to just public expenditures. This sounds like semantics, but by broadening the pool of what is counted, we further reduce ambition and reduce how much we improve on old agreements. Finally, the amount of money on the table is simply dwarfed by the size of need, which is estimated to be between $1-2 trillion per year for developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Given the disappointing conclusion to COP29, the slow pace of international climate agreements, their non-enforceable nature, and the way that countries never seem to meet their goals, a growing chorus now questions “are COPs worth it?” Maybe they don’t need to be this big or shouldn’t be inundated with thousands of fossil fuel lobbyists, or hosted by a country with very limited freedom of speech, as climate activist Greta Thunberg argued. Others have pointed out that countries use COPs to greenwash their own actions. I certainly saw evidence of this, including dozens of EV charging stations conveniently arranged in front of one of Baku’s most famous buildings, without a single EV in sight. However, I left Baku still convinced of the vital nature of these events, including as a convening of people from hundreds of different countries and backgrounds, an amalgam of cultures, languages, knowledge, and ideas. One event that I attended was a panel in English, Spanish, and Quechua about indigenous, female and locally led climate adaptation. Partway through, a Dutch negotiator came in and grabbed a mic, she was meant to be on the panel but was held up in negotiations. She faced the panelists and answered their question, the gist of it being: how will you tangibly help us? How will any of this affect us? What will it change? Maybe nothing came of this exchange, the negotiator could have left and never thought of it again. However, there are not a lot of spaces where local activists and leaders can hold decision makers to account in the middle of their work. I believe that meetings of this nature can spur change. I just don’t think that international environmental negotiations should be seen as the only or even the primary source of international climate progress. International environmental negotiations are not change-making, they are a lagging indicator. Progress on an international stage reflects local change, domestic ambition. On my plane returning home, after a U.S. election that is bound to pull the country out of the Paris Agreement, I was re-inspired to push for local and state level progress.

Jenna Clark is a MALD student at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.