The Outcome of COP29 – A Summit of Losers

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A minimal consensus was achieved in Baku, just barely warding off the looming collapse of multilateral climate policy. Agreement was achieved when it came to identifying the total amount of international funding necessary each year, with the sum for the Global South pegged at $1.3 trillion USD. However, the willingness to compromise on the part of both the industrialized countries and the emerging economies, including oil and natural gas exporters, was not sufficient for finding a viable and fair solution. It clearly revealed that the voluntary Paris Agreement will only work if all signatories muster sufficient political will to achieve the targets they have identified. The fact that this political will is increasingly in short supply and that fossil fuel beneficiaries are more and more open in their efforts to torpedo the negotiations undermines trust in multilateralism, deepens the divides and casts a dark shadow over international climate policy.

A Difficult Inheritance for the Brazilian COP Presidency

While the climate financing target has been set at $1.3 trillion USD per year until 2035, industrialized countries have thus far only pledged a total of $300 billion USD. On top of that comes the fact that in addition to grants and subsidized loans, all other investments, including private investments that are leveraged or co-financed by public funds, can also be counted towards this core quota. Efforts to close the sprawling gap between the amount pledged and the targeted total of $1.3 trillion USD have been limited to appeals for cooperation by all countries on such initiatives as the reform of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and in finding new sources of financing. To make progress toward that goal, a “Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3 Trillion” was adopted. It was, to be sure, never realistic to expect that binding resolutions pertaining to the provision of over $1 trillion USD per year would be made in Baku. Not only was there a lack of sufficient delegations at Baku, but COP also does not have a mandate for projects such as the reform of international financial architecture. At the same time, more ambitious statements of intent, a greater acceptance of responsibility from China and the Gulf states and a more constructive approach to leading the negotiations from the COP presidency would have been required. Instead, insiders have described the negotiations as poisoned and the attitude of Saudi Arabia in particular as destructive.

The results are correspondingly underwhelming: The “Baku Climate Unity Pact” is extremely thin when compared to the “UAE Consensus” reached in the last COP. In terms of climate protection (“Mitigation Work Program”), it was only with great difficulty that the status quo was maintained. The operationalization resolution pertaining to the compensatory trading of emission reduction measures is weak and raises concerns of greenwashing. Decisions made on the issue of climate adaptation were exclusively of a procedural nature. The Just Transition Work Program continues to be stuck in neutral and the only resolution reached on the Work Program on Gender was to continue the program for an additional 10 years, without defining its scope. In no way can the results from Baku be seen as a balanced, much less as an ambitious package of decisions in line with the gradual intensification of joint efforts as foreseen by the Paris Agreement. It is a challenging inheritance for the Brazilian COP presidency.

International Climate Policy Needs a Reboot

First and foremost, it will be the poorest countries of the Global South that will suffer. In the long term, however, we all will, because global warming will only continue to accelerate and cause ever greater damage that will not stop at international borders. Resignation is no alternative – international climate policy needs a reboot. The time has come to find new formats for cooperation, in which willing parties from the North and the South work more closely together and no longer have to rely on almost 200 signatory nations with diverging interests to agree on anything greater than the minimum consensus. The COP format remains necessary, but it is insufficient to limit climate change and its consequences. It is only through bi- and plurilateral cooperations that trust can be rebuilt and even greater harm can be staved off. This is where Germany’s new government should concentrate its efforts. Doing so won’t make the need for financing any smaller, but it offers the opportunity to invest funding more effectively and to quickly tap into new sources of financing. The focus must finally be placed on pricing fossil fuels consistent with the polluter-pays principle. Social hardship must be ameliorated and fair competitive conditions assured. The latter can be achieve through border adjustment levies for imports from countries without effective emissions taxes. The proceeds could be channeled into international compensation mechanisms that favor poorer populations in the Global South. In countries belonging to the Global North, climate money could fulfill this function.

The Transformation Can Be Slowed, But Not Prevented

There was a fair amount of talk in Baku of “disenabling factors,” a term that refers to elements that are hindering the transformation. The biggest hurdles include the significant geopolitical shift toward a new systemic competition and confrontation in addition to the defensive battles being fought by the fossil fuel industries. Although these factors can delay the transformation, they cannot stop it altogether. These and other factors do, however, reduce the chances of a controlled and solidarity-based transition, which hurts the weakest. As the narratives of climate justice, risk avoidance and climate-friendly prosperity fade away, there is a growing danger that the law of the jungle will take the place of a solidarity-based struggle for the best common solution. It is in all our interests to counteract this trend quickly and decisively.

Translated from the German by Charles Hawley