51.000 participants
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. 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.
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.
“We are on the path to ruin. And it’s not about future problems. Climate change is already here,” underlined Mr. Babaev, also Minister of Ecology of Azerbaijan, a major oil and gas power. “We must now demonstrate that we are ready to achieve the objectives we have set for ourselves. It’s not an easy thing. »
“Everyone knows that these negotiations will not be simple,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
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Major absentees
Only a handful of G20 leaders will attend.
The Brazilian Lula, host of COP30 next year, is also absent.
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.
This money, the vast majority of which is loans, makes it possible to build solar power plants, improve irrigation, build dikes or help farmers deal with droughts.
“We must (…) abandon the idea that financing climate action is a work of charity. An ambitious new target for climate finance is in the interests of every nation, including the largest 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.
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Show the money
15 years ago, during the Copenhagen COP fiasco, developed countries saved the day by promising $100 billion in annual aid by 2020 for developing countries.
This money, the vast majority of which is loans, makes it possible to build solar power plants, improve irrigation, build dikes or help farmers deal with droughts.
The time has come to increase this North-South aid, but by how much?
“Put money on the table to show your leadership,” said to AFP, addressing the Europeans in particular, the negotiator for the 45 least developed countries, Evans Njewa, from Malawi.
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.
Sensitive to the reluctance of Westerners, the head of the UN Climate, Simon Stiell, emphasizes that it is in their interest to pay more to save the climate: “No economy, not even those of the G20, will survive unbridled global warming. , and no household will escape the severe inflation that will result.”
