Opening speeches

COP29 got underway in Baku on Monday morning with opening speeches from the UAE’s COP28 President Sultan Al-Jaber, the (now official) COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev of Azerbaijan, and the head of the UN’s climate arm Simon Stiell.

Al-Jaber boasted that 2024 saw record renewable energy growth, 55 companies have joined an oil and gas decarbonisation charter, and the UAE’s Alterra climate fund has allocated  $6.5 billion. He didn’t mention that some of that money has been invested in a gas pipeline.

After being formally elected as COP29 president, Babayev then warned “we are on a road to ruin”, adding “people are suffering in the shadows; they are dying in the dark”, so “we need much more from all of you”. 

He said negotiators had made progress on some aspects of the post-2025 climate finance goal due to be agreed at COP29 – including a ten-year time-frame, transparency and “access” features.

But there are differing views on how to achieve the trillions of dollars in climate finance developing countries need, Babayev said, adding that he has “heard that a realistic goal for what the public sector can directly provide and mobilise seems to be in the hundreds of billions”. In the Guardian, he writes that “the onus cannot fall entirely on government purses”.

Stiell added a personal touch, becoming emotional as he put up a picture of him with his neighbour Florence in front of her hurricane-destroyed house on their native Caribbean island of Carriacou (part of Grenada).

He defended the UN climate process as “the only place we have” to “credibly hold each other to account to act” on the climate crisis. He said the process is working because, without it, humanity would be heading towards 5C of global warming. 

The opening session was then suspended so that what would make it onto the summit agenda could be negotiated off camera.

Agenda fight resolved

By Monday evening, countries had agreed on the agenda for COP29 after resolving fraught issues in back-room talks.

Diplomats argued over how to follow up on the outcome of last year’s Global Stocktake – through which countries committed for the first time to “transitioning away from fossil fuels” in energy systems – and over whether trade measures should be formally discussed in Baku.

As the spectre of discussions stretching into the early hours for a second consecutive day loomed large, a breakthrough was found, announced by COP29 president Babayev in the restarted opening session at around 8pm local time.

The “UAE Dialogue” on implementing the outcomes of the Global Stocktake will find a home in the ‘finance’ track of the negotiations – where many developing countries wanted it to be.

But a footnote aimed at appeasing opposition from the EU and others leaves the door open to discussing additional matters in that forum, including – crucially – how to shift the world away from planet-heating fossil fuels.

Separately, the BASIC group of emerging economies – led by China – had earlier proposed an agenda item on “unilateral restrictive trade measures”. This would have targeted proposals like Europe’s carbon border tax and was therefore opposed by the EU.

On the first day of the conference, BASIC agreed to drop this agenda item when reassured it would be the subject of presidential consultations – a compromise similar to last year.

Carbon market coup?

As it geared up to host COP29, the Azerbaijan presidency repeatedly listed the elusive “full operationalisation” of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement among its top priorities for the summit.

On the opening day, Baku scored what it saw as an early goal by getting countries to rubber-stamp rules on some key building blocks of the UN’s new global carbon market under Article 6.4 that were adopted by the mechanism’s Supervisory Body last month.

The technical committee had taken matters into its own hands after diplomats failed at two successive COPs to agree on guidance for the development of carbon-credit methodologies and carbon removal activities. In a surprise move at its last meeting before the summit, the Supervisory Body approved these key documents as “standards” instead of sending them as recommendations to be fought over in Baku, as had previously been the norm.

UN approves carbon market safeguards to protect environment and human rights

The apparent coup left countries with one binary decision to make: approve or reject the whole approach. They went with the former option, supporting a decision that “takes note” of the Supervisory Body’s adoption of the documents but reiterating that the rule-making panel remains “fully accountable” to the COP and its work has not ended.

COP29 President Babayev celebrated the approval, saying the UN carbon market “will be a game-changing tool to direct resources to the developing world”.

“Following years of stalemate, the breakthroughs in Baku have now begun. But there is much more to deliver,” he added.

Some were unhappy with the swift adoption, however. A negotiator from Tuvalu took to the floor at the plenary to point out that the Pacific island nation had accepted the decision “with some reluctance”, adding that he was “very uncomfortable with this trend” of sidestepping proper scrutiny.

Many civil society groups have sharply criticised the move for the same reason, but also because they believe some of the approved measures risk undermining the integrity of the new carbon crediting mechanism.

Isa Mulder, a policy expert at Carbon Market Watch, said the decision “sets a poor precedent for transparency and proper governance”. “If these texts can be adopted in this way,” she added, “where do we draw the line?”

Erika Lennon, a senior attorney at CIEL, said the Supervisory Body’s efforts to complete the process “resulted in risky rules that will lead to human rights violations and environmental harm”. “This is hardly a win for the planet,” she added.

2024 set to be hottest year

In an update to its “State of the Climate 2024” report, released on Monday, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said 2024 is on track to be the warmest year on record.

In the period from January to September, the global mean surface air temperature was 1.54C above the pre-industrial average, with climate warming boosted by the El Niño weather pattern, the WMO said.

However, monthly or annual warming of 1.5C or more does not mean the world has breached the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial times, as that refers to long-term warming measured over decades, the WMO emphasised. 

The report said 2015-2024 would be the warmest ten years on record, adding that ocean warming rates show a particularly strong increase in the past two decades and the planet’s seas will continue to heat up irreversibly.

WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo warned that although the world has not yet broken the 1.5C limit, “it is essential to recognise that every fraction of a degree of warming matters. Whether it is at a level below or above 1.5C of warming, every additional increment of global warming increases climate extremes, impacts and risks.”

Climate Home has summarised the latest batch of international climate reports intended to inform and drive the negotiations at COP29.

US envoy strikes defiant tone

John Podesta, the US senior presidential advisor for international climate policy, said the country’s landmark climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), would continue to slash greenhouse gas emissions even after the incoming Trump administration returns to the White House. 

Speaking to the media at COP29 in Baku, the US head of delegation said the country is “facing new headwinds” that may “slow down” the energy transition. However, he added that i thanks primarily to initiatives led by the private sector and sub-national administrations.

“It is precisely because the IRA has staying power that I’m confident that the United States will continue to reduce emissions benefiting our own country and benefiting the world,” he said.

Podesta’s comments echoed the views of US climate experts and analysts, who described the shift to clean energy as “unstoppable” despite Donald Trump’s election victory last week.

The US envoy also noted China has a chance to lead global climate action, adding that, as the world’s largest emitting economy, China has “an obligation” to submit a 1.5C-aligned new climate plan that can send “a powerful signal to the world”.

“They have an important role to play and I hope that they play it,” he said.

On COP29, Podesta remained optimistic about achieving a new climate finance goal, saying “it needs to be realistic but we think we can get it done here [in Baku]”.

But he reiterated the developed countries’ determination to see contributors expanded to include wealthy developing countries like China. “An expanded donor base is long-warranted. This is not 1992,” Podesta added.

Late drop-outs

The COP29 organisers have published a new list of which world leaders will be speaking in Baku on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesda