The 29th UN climate conference opened Monday in Azerbaijan with a first blockage between different blocs of countries on the agenda, despite calls for cooperation six days after the re-election of Donald Trump.
“It is time to show that global cooperation is not at a standstill. It is rising to the moment,” said UN Climate boss Simon Stiell at the opening of the huge conference in Baku. on the shores of the Caspian Sea, without ever mentioning the country whose name is on everyone’s lips here: the United States.
The main issue of this COP, which will last until November 22, is to set the amount of climate aid from developed states for developing countries so that they develop without coal or oil, and can face more heatwaves and floods. Today at 116 billion dollars per year (in 2022), the new commitment must amount to thousands of billions annually, demand the poor countries.
Unrealistic order of magnitude
Developed countries have contracted a “climate debt” and “we will not leave this COP if the level of ambition on finance is not up to par”, launched South African Tasneem Essop, executive director of Climate Action Network (CAN), which brings together thousands of NGOs from around the world. But Westerners consider this order of magnitude unrealistic for their public finances.
COP29 President Mukhtar Babaev spoke of “hundreds of billions” in his opening speech on Monday, but no negotiator revealed his cards.
On Monday, the program was already several hours late, due to lack of agreement to adopt the official agenda, essential for the start of the dozens of specific negotiations planned in the tents installed on the lawn of the Baku stadium.
Reason: several countries, including China and India, only want to discuss the application of the COP28 agreement from the angle of the development of climate finance. While the COP in Dubai last year also set objectives to launch the exit from fossil fuels.
Another point of dispute: China demands, on behalf of Brazil, India and South Africa, to add the subject of unilateral climate-related trade barriers, mainly targeting the European Union.
“Moment of truth”
“COP29 is a moment of truth for the Paris agreement,” said Mr. Babaev, Azerbaijani Minister of Ecology, and former executive of the national oil company, Socar.
Around 51,000 participants are accredited, according to the UN Climate, fewer than at the extravagant COP28 in Dubai last year. Many NGOs criticize the holding of the conference in a country which celebrates oil as a “gift from God”, and where the authorities have arrested and are prosecuting several environmental activists.
It will only take one signature for Donald Trump, when he enters the White House on January 20, to join Iran, Yemen and Libya outside the agreement adopted in Paris in 2015 by countries around the world. This agreement is the driving force that has made it possible to reverse the trajectory of global warming over the past ten years to around 3°C or less by 2100, according to calculations.
The text commits the world to limiting warming to 2°C and continuing efforts to contain it to 1.5°C, compared to the end of the 19th century. But these ambitions are “in great danger”, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a UN agency, warned on Monday.
The year 2024, torrential for many countries, will almost certainly be at this level. If this continues in the long term, the climatic limit would be considered to have been reached.
Lots of absentees
The Europeans swear that they will redouble their efforts to compensate for the American withdrawal, but few will go to Baku. Neither Emmanuel Macron nor Olaf Scholz will participate in the summit of around a hundred leaders on Tuesday and Wednesday. Only a handful of G20 leaders will attend. The Brazilian Lula, host of COP30 next year, is also absent.
For Switzerland, Minister of the Environment and Energy Albert Rösti will be present in the second part of the conference.
“Everyone knows that these negotiations will not be simple,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
Uganda’s Adonia Ayebare, president of a negotiating bloc called G77+China, which brings together developing countries, warns that the two-week negotiations will be difficult. “As soon as we talk about money, everyone shows themselves in their true light,” the diplomat confides to AFP.
China: no question of paying
Public money from the North, today at 69% of loans according to the OECD, makes it possible to build solar power plants, improve irrigation, build dikes or help farmers face droughts.
“We must (…) abandon the idea that climate finance is charity. An ambitious new climate finance target is in the interest of every nation, including including the biggest and richest,” said Simon Stiell.
But the mood in rich countries is one of austerity (in Europe) or international disengagement (in the United States). Many are calling for China and the Gulf countries to contribute more.
To which the Chinese negotiator replied that there was no question of “renegotiating” the UN texts, which clearly stipulate that only developed countries, according to an old UN definition, have the obligation to pay.
This article was automatically published. Sources: ats / afp
