Maia Zasler
January
My aunt handed me a rectangle wrapped in dreidel-adorned paper. I opened my Hanukkah gift: a teal notebook from the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) hosted in Baku, Azerbaijan. She let out a laugh as I processed the gift in front of me. “Even the swag wasn’t sustainable!”
Climate change is arguably the most substantial issue of our time. Transcending borders, unbothered by race and religion, the often catastrophic impacts of detrimental anthropogenic activities affect us all. We need no more reminders after this first month of 2025, from the destructive Palisades fires, tearing through 23,700 acres in California during the state’s historically wettest month to the news of Hong Kong breaking 35 temperature records—recording its hottest year since 1884. 2024 marked the “decade of deathly heat;” “once-in-a-generation” storms occur once a year, blizzards reach the southern points of the U.S., and other climate-related disasters destroy food supply chains. A global issue necessitates global solutions. Theoretically, COP provides a forum for some of the brightest diplomats, world leaders, climate negotiators, and activist groups to come together and formulate a way forward, making concessions to mitigate a devolving climate crisis and plan for future problems. The first COP was held in Berlin, Germany in 1995; under a framework of international cooperation, with various required reduction targets for “developed country Parties,” COP stands as the singular format for climate negotiations in the global space.
But it’s not enough anymore—if it ever was in the first place.
From 11 to 24 November, COP29-goers engaged in a series of lackluster strategy drafts, missing necessary benchmarks for CO2 reductions and commitments to climate finance. A London School of Economics study estimated that 6.5 trillion USD would be needed on average per year by 2030 to meet climate targets in advanced economies, China, and emerging markets and developing countries (EMDCs) other than China. The G77 bloc—developing countries plus China—demanded 1.3 trillion USD by 2035 from historic emitters such as the United States and European Union countries. Another clear and worrying misstep was a missing follow-up to COP28’s declaration of a determined “transition away” from fossil fuels. No concrete decisions were made in Baku, largely in part of Saudi Arabia’s refusal to “accept any text that targets any specific sectors, including fossil fuel.”
Was COP29 doomed from the start? Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev told the UN climate conference that oil and gas are a “gift of God.” His father (and the former President of the Republic of Azerbaijan), Heydar Aliyev, phrased the country’s vision for its natural resources years ago: “Oil is the greatest wealth of Azerbaijan and belongs to the people, and not just to the current generation, but also the generations to come.” Azerbaijan was created in the wake of political and economic disarray, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991; Azeris needed a long-term, national development plan to turn their resources into a means of profit. For Azerbaijan, these resources are oil and natural gas, and Azeri leadership continues to expand these sectors. The fact that the COP presidency was secured by a country confident in expanding its fossil fuel market speaks to just part of the problem.
Of course, no Azeri official would admit to a potential conflict of interest. As reported by the BBC, President Aliyev said Azerbaijan had been subject to "slander and blackmail" ahead of COP29. According to Aliyev, a “Western fake news media” campaign had been waged in advance of conference proceedings. But the Baku leadership was tenuous at best. The chairman of the conference, Samir Nuriyev, was also the Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources and a former oil executive for Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company, Socar. On the first day of the conference, Baku’s leadership did push forward and closed an issue that had previously been at a stalemate: operationalizing carbon markets. Parties could make the (hasty) choice of either accepting or rejecting a framework for country-to-country carbon trading and crediting mechanism—the opening of a carbon market, finalizing the last remaining component of the Paris Agreement, which was drafted a decade ago. Baku’s leadership was not as heavy-handed with mobilizing recovery funds for climate-related disasters. The UN Adaptation Fund, “a two-decade cornerstone of resilience-building against extreme weather and rising seas,” secured just 61 million USD against its 300 million USD annual target. And, as previously stated, the provisions of curbing future fossil fuel production went unaddressed.
However, it would be foolish to divert all blame for conference shortcomings to one Party, even if that Party was the esteemed host. Azerbaijan contributes only 0.15% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the U.S., which has added the most CO2 into the atmosphere since the inception of the Industrial Revolution, and is often perceived (and portrays itself as) the “world’s police,” is likely to abandon future climate talks (follow-ups to the decisions pushed off at COP29) with the next Trump administration—one of Trump’s first actions this term was to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. China, whose production operations and general fossil fuel-centric activities account for 35% of the world’s carbon emissions, was expected to step-up at this last conference. Another global superpower, attention has shifted to China as the “natural successor” to spearheading climate adaptation and mitigation. Yet China was “largely silent” over the course of the two-week conference.
There is much to do at COP30, to be held in Belém, Brazil in November this year. Aggressive climate action is required to turn back the already surpassed 1.5-degree Celsius warming limit. Each of the past 10 years (2015–2024) was one of the 10 warmest years on record, and 2024 was the first year to go beyond 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Dancing around the issue, pivoting focus to climate financing and “ambitious” goals for a green energy transition—although both important—cannot erase the fact that the continued burning and reliance on fossil fuels will bring about an infernal end. We can keep coping for now, putting off somewhat painful choices and making difficult concessions. We could wait to see how long nations—that should have learned from environmentally costly development—will avoid leading by a better example, using their resources to aid so-called “developing” countries reach their goals in a greener way.
But I’ve never liked when things are done at the last minute. You never know when you just might run out of time to get a job done. Maybe I’ll jot that down in my new notebook.
Photo credits: Wikimedia