Un of the main challenges of COP29, which is being held in Baku, Azerbaijan, from November 11 to 22, is to update the objective set in 2009 at COP15 in Copenhagen (Denmark), when developed countries committed, on a proposal from Barack Obama, to mobilize 100 billion dollars (around 94 billion euros) per year by 2020 to help developing countries mitigate the effects of climate change and adapt to it – a promise which they only managed to hold in 2022.
In Baku, it will be a matter of renewing these commitments and developing “new quantified collective objectives for climate finance”according to official terminology. It will be complicated, the debates will be bitter, and the results will obviously be unsatisfactory. But a recent intervention by China in the preparation of the negotiations could well disrupt the agenda a little more.
For the first time during a COP, we will indeed have to talk about border protection measures and therefore economic competition between the great powers. On November 5, China, on behalf of the Basic group (Brazil, South Africa, India China), which coordinates large emerging economies in climate negotiations, requested that questions relating to trade barriers be brought to the fore. ‘diary : “Unilateral trade restrictive measures adopted by developed countries, under the pretext of climate objectives, constitute a systemic concern, with disproportionate negative consequences for developing countries. »
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China thus hopes to block the road to the substantial customs duties implemented by the United States, as well as to the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) of the European Union. Two measures whose objective is to limit low-cost imports from China, in particular for electric vehicles. These imports in fact today constitute an existential danger for American and European industries.
A strong argument
The European Union has always maintained that trade issues should be dealt with by the competent bodies of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and not within climate negotiations in the United Nations forums. The Chinese request can, however, be based on a solid argument.
It is even one of the foundations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. [CCNUCC, ou UNFCCC en anglais] adopted in 1992 (one of its five major “principles”): “Measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral measures, must be prevented from constituting a means of imposing arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination in international trade, or disguised obstacles to this trade. »
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