After the G20, the COP29 negotiations enter a difficult phase

(Baku) The leaders of the 20 world powers launched from Rio more or less precise slogans to the negotiators of the nearly 200 countries of the UN climate conference in Baku, suspended from an expected draft agreement Wednesday.

Three days before the end of COP29, the hardest part remains to be done to set the UN stone in stone on how to release 1,000 billion dollars in annual aid or more for developing countries.

From early morning in Azerbaijan, participants dissected the 22-page final declaration of the G20 published overnight.

Some found satisfaction there, because developing countries are mentioned several times.

The leaders call in particular to “increase public and private climate financing and investment in developing countries”, and several paragraphs mention the need to boost private and multilateral financing to the developing world.

The signal requested by the UN from the 20 world powers therefore came from Rio, according to some.

“The G20 delegations now have their marching orders here in Baku, where we urgently need all countries to stop posturing and quickly converge on common ground,” reacted Tuesday the head of the UN Climate, Simon Stiell.

The Azerbaijani coordinator of the negotiations, Ialtchine Rafiev, also welcomed Tuesday that the G20 “has renewed its commitment […] in favor of multilateralism in climate matters.

“Not materialized”

But the Baku discussions are much more complex.

“We were waiting for an impulse, our expectations were perhaps too high,” a grimacing European negotiator told AFP.

“The leadership that some hoped for from the G20 has not really materialized,” regretted Tuesday Michai Robertson, the chief negotiator of the small island states, very listened to at the UN for being on the front line of climate disasters.

The G20 “has once again handed the hot potato over to the COP”, deplores Friederike Röder, of the NGO Global Citizen. “Brazil played the game hard; the G20 was unable to follow.”

Especially since on another blocking subject here, the reduction of oil, coal and gas, the G20 has rather backed down.

The press release is in fact silent on the gradual abandonment of fossil fuels, a formulation taken from the COP28 in Dubai, but which was not explicitly taken up in Rio, which irritated the NGOs.

From Rio, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose country will host COP30 next year in Belém in the Amazon, called on Tuesday the members of the G20 to “not postpone” to 2025 the “task” of the current negotiations in Baku.

Key outstanding points

Economists commissioned by the UN estimate the need for external climate aid in developing countries at 1,000 billion per year by 2030, and 1,300 billion by 2035.

The G20 highlights “the need to increase climate finance” to bring it “from billions to trillions from all sources”, which is a good thing for vulnerable countries.

But the text eludes the real questions that divide Europeans, Americans, Chinese and developing countries:

• How much should come from public funds from developed countries, historical contributors to climate change?
• How much of the aid should take the form of donations or loans?
• And how can we invite the Chinese giant and other new powers to also contribute, when they have no obligations to support developing countries in UN texts?

Silence on fossils

It is on these questions that COP29 will succeed or fail. But the G20 is content to write: “We expect success for the new quantified collective objective (NCQG in English, Editor’s note) in Baku”.

“The G20 leaders have not sent the necessary political signals from Rio to Baku,” said Rebecca Thissen, of the huge network of NGOs Climate Action Network. She denounces, among these major polluting powers, “silence” on climate finance, and “mutism” on the gradual abandonment of fossil fuels responsible for global warming.