COP29: negotiations blocked before the G20 and the arrival of ministers

In principle, at this stage of the COPs, after six days, the technical negotiators are supposed to give the ministers a relatively clean copy. But after six days of intense negotiations in Baku under the auspices of the UN, they left them with a draft agreement full of totally incompatible options on how to mobilize the 1,000 billion dollars, or more, deemed necessary to help developing countries reduce their dependence on oil and adapt to climate disasters.

“There remains a lot, a lot to do,” admitted Saturday Samir Bejanov, one of the negotiators of the Azerbaijani presidency of the UN conference, who will now take control. It is in this heavy atmosphere that some 200 activists demonstrated on Saturday, as at each mid-COP, and in silence according to UN rules so as not to disturb the meetings in progress. “We demand that developed countries (…) pay their climate debt,” summarizes Joira, a demonstrator who prefers not to give her last name.

Saturday evening, despite a night of nocturnal negotiations, the latest compromise text is almost unchanged compared to the 25-page version of the day before. There is one week left before COP29 ends on November 22. “Clearly we are blocked and we are not where we should be to have an agreement,” regrets a French diplomatic source.

“Given the divisions between the North and the South, no major progress was expected” and the negotiators “left the more thorny problems to the ministers”, puts into perspective the observer Iskander Erzini Vernoit, of the Moroccan institute IMAL. “It’s not as bad as it seems from the outside,” reassures Irish Minister Eamon Ryan. A European negotiator also moderates the concern, describing “very constructive” political meetings between countries and in complete discretion.

This year, COP29, hosted by Azerbaijan, must conclude with a “New quantified collective objective”. From 2025, this objective will replace that of 100 billion dollars per year in financing provided by developed countries to developing ones to confront climate change.

But many questions remain debated: who should pay, what types of funding to count in the total, on what time scale… and above all how much? The figure of 1,300 billion per year claimed by developing countries is already taken up by some Westerners. But they warn that their public funds will only be able to cover a fraction of it. They rely on the private sector, multilateral banks and new contributors, such as China.

On this sensitive issue, Chinese climate envoy Liu Zhenmin and Vice Minister of the Environment Zhao Yingmin met behind closed doors on Saturday with the European Commission, Germany, France, Denmark and the Netherlands. Low, according to sources close to the negotiations. The Europeans are careful not to put forward a figure. 200 billion dollars per year? 400?

The thousands of participants test their hypotheses between the sofas and food stands that dot the aisles of the “Olympic” stadium in Baku, which has certainly never hosted an Olympic Games. The concomitance of the G20 summit in Rio, Monday and Tuesday, could provide a remote impetus, or not. Because Lula’s Brazil is keen to find a solution to the financial issue before COP30 which it will host next year in Belem, negotiators and observers believe.

But the corridors of COP29 are also buzzing with the fear of a withdrawal from the Paris agreement by the United States of Donald Trump or the Argentina of Javier Milei.

Whatever happens, “countries will take the lead in climate action and China is very involved,” Susana Muhamad, the Colombian Minister of the Environment, told AFP, confident in the strength of the COPs, “a forum where we can globally debate the climate situation in a peaceful, science-based way”