Cop29 in Baku has concluded but its outcome is disappointing – in many dimensions. Its decisions on finance – agreeing that the developed world would provide US$300bn a year by 2035 – come nowhere close to what’s needed. Ultimately, it may even be poisonous because of its lack of ambition and muddled scope – it does not even cover loss and damage.
Baku saw little sense of urgency or increased climate action, despite the universal message from scientific studies, including the Climate Action Tracker. Our global update this year found that in the last three years there’s been virtually no improvement in either action on the ground, nor ambition to take action in the future. And this is despite a series of seemingly never-ending, global warming-linked deadly catastrophes unfolding around the world.
It deferred implementation of the first global stock take, the most critical part of the Paris agreement that assesses progress every five years. Last year it found in the strongest terms that the world was far off track to meet the Paris agreement’s 1.5C warming limit and that we need to urgently transition away from fossil fuels.
How did this all come about? There are several themes that interrelate.
There has long been serious concern at the prospect of a petrostate in charge of the climate talks for the second year in a row. Few had any confidence that the Azerbaijan presidency would put aside its........