COP29, that took place in Baku this year, closed on Sunday November 24. Harriet Klepper, a student at the Sciences Po-Bocconi double degree program, attended the conference as part of the delegation of food awareness NGO ProVeg. In this chronicle, she shares a recap of COP29 and calls for a stronger involvement of civil society in climate action.

By Harriet Klepper

The annual COP (short for Conference of the Parties, meaning the signatories of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) is the pivotal moment of international climate negotiations. More than 65.000 delegates registered to attend the conference in Azerbaijan, a country of around 10 million inhabitants bordering the Caspian Sea in the East, Russia and Georgia in the North, Armenia in the West, and Iran in the South. Harriet Klepper also attented COP28 last year in Dubaï and shared her experience with Émile.

A disputed conference

It did not exactly start out as planned: the decision where COP29 was going to be hosted was announced very late, in December 2023, long after the location for the subsequent COP30 was already clear. The location of the world’s most important climate conference rotates every year by region. This year, it was the turn of Eastern Europe - disagreements between the EU and Russia because of the invasion of Ukraine, as well as regional conflicts between Azerbaijan and its neighbour Armenia, had made finding a compromise a lengthy tightrope act. 

Once the decision became public, critics pointed out the country’s dependency on fossil fuels: they account for over 90% of Azerbaijani export earnings with plans to further expand their production. This seems contradictory to the goal of the conference, given that fossil fuels are recognized as the number one cause of climate change as they account for over 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Additionally, the choice of the Presidency of the host country did not promise ambitious action: the conference’s chairman, who serves as minister for ecology and natural resources, is a former oil executive at the state-owned oil and gas company Socar. Furthermore, media institutions, like the International Press Institute, called out the autocratic government of Azerbaijan for its continued repression against journalists and activists. 

After the election of Trump, known for his scepticism of climate change science and his ‘drill baby drill’ campaign slogans, many wondered about the level of ambition of the final texts if the world cannot count on the US in the coming years to step up climate action. When asked about a possible ‘Trump effect’ in Baku at a press conference on the first day of COP29, November 11, Germany’s Special Representative for International Climate Policy Jennifer Morgan stressed the importance of strengthening the role of Europe in global climate policy. Expressing optimism, she underlined that the Paris agreement – arguably among the most important agreements of the past 10 years – has survived an American exit before.

Still, delegates ended up fighting until the very end: like in the previous year, negotiations run over by almost two days. The results however lack ambition and fall short of expectations, with some small wins, a lot of hope for COP30, and a call for civil society to step up their climate game.

COP 29, the Finance COP?

In the runup to the conference, one nickname for this year’s edition came up again and again: 2024 was going to be the ‘finance’ COP. Even though financial questions have always been an important component of the negotiations, this year was supposed to be particularly decisive for climate finance. It designates money for climate action (mitigation and adaptation) provided by the Global North to the Global South in the form of e.g. grants, concessional loans (loans with more favourable conditions for the borrower than what the market would offer), debt, and other vehicles. Climate finance has been deemed essential to allow low and middle-income countries, which may not have sufficient means, to shift towards more planet-friendly production and consumption – whilst often being the regions that are most affected and the most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. Additionally, it recognises the responsibility of historically important emitters which built their wealth on the exploitation of the earth’s resources. Up until this day, the US has the highest share of cumulative emissions since 1850 in the world. China - which is now the top emitter worldwide with 29.2% of GHG emissions – has just taken over spot #2 from the EU27. 

At COP15, developed countries committed to mobilising 100 billion USD annually for climate finance by 2020. This goal was extended to 2025 six years later in Paris. Depending on what exactly is counted as ‘investments’ into the ‘climate’ field, different estimates say the goal has been achieved twice, in 2022 and 2023 (no numbers available yet for 2024), after failing to achieve the target in the previous years. As the target was set to be renegotiated this year, it was clear that the next goal (called the NCQG: New Collective Quantified Goal) had to be more ambitious. Countries disagreed however about the exact amount: while developing countries stood united in demanding a multiplication of the previous target by 13, to amount to 1.3 USD trillion, Global North negotiators started with offers much closer to the previous goal. In the end, the agreement, reached during the prolongation of talks, was rather disappointing for the Global South: developed nations committed to “taking the lead” in providing increased public and private monetary flows of 300 billion USD annually by 2035.

Apart from the actual sum, a number of technical questions still need to be resolved: under what form should climate finance be provided? And who exactly should contribute? While many low and middle-income countries call for grants-based funds – or at least concessional loans on favourable terms –, many developed countries prefer to heavily build on loans. Critics argue that this approach would however leave poorer countries even more indebted than many of them already are, which conflicts with their effective sovereignty. Richer countries also call for petrostates and big emerging economies with high GHG emissions, like China, to contribute. The negotiation of details has been postponed to COP30, which will take place in Belém, Brazil. 

Unfortunately, postponing action until next year has also been the way to go for the discussions around the global stocktake, the key outcome of last year’s COP, which takes stock of the world's progress in tackling climate change. The decision to transition away from fossil fuels – which had been a historical first-time pledge in Dubai – could therefore not be concretised.

Mixed results in negotiations on other topics

Some progress was still made: the Loss & Damage fund, launched at last year’s COP to cope with climate-related disasters, can finally start transferring money from 2025 onwards, as pledges increased to $759m. Additionally, almost 10 years after it was signed, countries achieved to reach common ground on Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. It encourages countries to set up a carbon credit mechanism to contribute to meeting climate goals. With this last element being closed, all parts of the 2015 milestone in climate policy have finally come to term.

Furthermore, technical details around the set-up of an online portal on how to foster climate action in food security and agriculture have been agreed upon during talks around the SJWA (Sharm-el-Sheikh Joint Work on the Implementation of Climate Action on Agriculture and Food Security). Even though they make up for around 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions, food emissions are far from being a central topic at an international level.

The role of civil society at COP

Apart from formal negotiations between countries (called ‘Parties’), there is much more going on at COP. Civil society is invited to participate at the conferences as observers. As such, they can for example rent a pavilion (a small space on the conference venue), organize side events around their key topics, campaign, protest, and communicate around negotiations. Many use the opportunity to leverage their year-round activism by connecting with others, setting up new collaborations, and lobbying for their interests.

Within the ‘observer’ category, there are three groups: one is for the UN System and their Specialized Agencies (like the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). The second one is for Intergovernmental Organizations (like the European Investment Bank, or the OECD). The third one – by far the most important one in absolute terms – is NGOs, whose number has been rising over those past few years to reach a total of 3631 organizations in 2024. Around 90% of them are members of the nine official constituencies. Those constituencies represent different interest groups: the most important one is ENGO (environmental groups) – in 2023, 41.7% of admitted NGOs were affiliated with them. The second largest group is researchers and academic institutions (RINGO – 23.5%), ahead of business and industry (BINGO – 11.9%), YOUNGO (Youth and Children groups – 5.2%) and five small ones around Women & Gender, farmers, indigenous populations, labour unions, and LGMA (local governments and municipal authorities).

The constituencies have for example the right to take the floor during plenary sessions and express their standpoint in the formal negotiation process. Additionally, they can submit statements at different stages to comment proposed versions of the final text. Apart from constituencies, observer organizations can also choose to instead join one of the three informal groups recognised by the UNFCCC secretariat which are organised around faith, ECO (education, communication, and outreach stakeholders) and parliamentarians.

Seeing so many motivated participants of civil society at COP has been what has given me hope. We can still act to minimize the disastrous consequences of climate change – without waiting for the 198 signatories of the UNFCCC to agree. Their results are obviously decisive for us and our planet – which is why I explicitly want to underline here that the COP conferences are still essential. They represent our main tool to combat climate change, even if this article has echoed some voices critical of this year’s outcomes. However, given the significant time necessary to find a compromise between almost all countries in the world, this COP has shown more than ever that civil society needs to voice their demands in a clear, unified way and act directly.

What can we do as individuals?

Climate action also concerns our own preferences and choices over what we eat, how we consume, how we travel, what we post, what we recommend to our friends, etc. It is essential to stay informed, crosscheck information, and learn about our environment. If enough of us express our opinions and step up our climate game, we can reflect to democratic decision makers that protecting our planet in an inclusive way is a priority to us, as their electorate. From there, we can take it further, by writing to local, regional, or national representatives, by donating to climate projects, by holding businesses accountable of their carbon footprints. We can join global movements that promote sustainable practices, set up a local climate action group, participate in protests, call out greenwashing, inform friends and family. In both a literal and figurative sense, every step counts.