The Baku climate conference, somewhat incongruously called COP 29, concluded in turbulence. The verdict nevertheless is out. The rich countries will not assume fiscal responsibility for their legacy CO2 emissions. The poor countries did the only thing they could do, namely, walk out of the meeting in protest but were dragged back; they have now been handed crumbs and left largely to their own devices. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry can rejoice that the slogan “drill, baby, drill” could well have been the leitmotiv for COP 29 in Baku. After all, the President of Azerbaijan reportedly said “oil and gas”was a gift from God!
How did it all come to this? Well, climate change negotiations have always been less about climate and more about geopolitics. The struggle of the developing and least developed countries has centred around two objectives: first, to get the rich countries to drastically reduce their CO2 emissions and if possible, vacate the carbon space they have unfairly occupied; two, to get them to transfer both monetary resources and technology to poor countries so as to enable the latter to follow a low-carbon pathway to development. After 29 iterations of the COP (Conference of Parties, for the uninitiated!) it can be said without fear of contradiction that the negotiating process has spectacularly failed in meeting either of the above objectives. To put it bluntly, the rich countries have not been able to summon the political will necessary to keep their side of the bargain. And the poor countries have not been able to muster the unity and clout necessary to force the former to deliver on their promises.
The Baku conference was dubbed the “climate finance COP” and was to agree on a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), yet another ludicrous UN acronym. In the event, it was only able to come up with a irrationally modest sum of $ 300 billion for annual transfer to developing and least developed countries from the developed countries by 2035. A number of climate activists and scientists described this as a cruel joke and deemed it grossly insufficient. To put it in context, in 2009 it was agreed that $ 100 billion would be transferred by the rich countries to poor countries. That did not happen till 2020 and that only after a fudge by the OECD! The $ 300 billion agreed now was against the demand of at least $ 1.2 trillion by the poor countries. Besides, the devil also lay in the details. Out of this $ 1.2 trillion demanded, half of this was asked for in grants and concessional loans from Governments. Instead, what has been decided is a much smaller amount and details are notoriously fuzzy about what is from Governments and what is from private funding and multilateral development banks. Indeed, the reputed publication “Down to Earth” asked: Is this $ 300 billion, public or private finance? Public finance refers usually to grants and concessional loans while private & others refer to finance with market rates of interest. There is also a discrepancy in the statement made by UNFCCC and what is in the NCQG text. The former talks of $ 300 billion as “public finance” while the latter text talks of ” $ 300 billion from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources”. No prizes for guessing which version will ultimately prevail. One big concern by activists is the accumulation of climate debt by poor countries. And all this, even before Trump has assumed office. So, it is anyone’s guess what happens after January 2025 to the US, which is the world’s second largest emitter (China is number one), in terms of its position on climate finance in general and Paris agreement in particular. Conventional wisdom is that like the last time around, Trump will pull the US out of the Paris accords and will formulate policies which generally favour the fossil fuel industry.
The US was largely on the sidelines in this COP meeting. The reasons are not far to seek. With the impending arrival of Trump in the White
House, Biden’s climate envoy John Podesta had no credibility to negotiate and no one took him seriously. Indeed, he became the object of public ire when some activists asked him to go back home. This probably suited the lameduck US delegation anyway. It was not as if the Biden Admisnistration was terribly willing to transfer generous amounts of money to poorer countries as climate finance.
China’s role in this COP 29 has been curious and will no doubt be analysed in some detail. At the time of writing, it seemed as if China was torn between two things: one, to keep its “developing country” status intact so that it would not be obliged to transfer money to poorer countries, which it was willing to do in limited amounts but only voluntarily; and two, assume a leadership role in climate negotiations in the discernible absence of the US! China also skilfully rode two camps. One, it continued to belong to G-77 plus China which demanded something like $ 600 billion in public finance from the rich countries. Two, it coordinated its position with the EU and reportedly tried to persuade the poorer countries to agree to the lower figure. Full details of how China played its cards will emerge over the next few days.
India was predictably indignant at the final outcome. The Indian delegate wished to speak before the final decision was gavelled. This request was not granted and India objected vehemently to both the Azerbaijani presidency and the UNFCCC Secretariat. I was in Paris when the climate accords were gavelled and there too, it was done over the head of the Nicaraguan delegate. The COP appears to be making a habit of this. More substantively, the Indian delegate called the $ 300 billion a “paltry sum” and described the deal as “nothing more than an optical illusion”. Crucially, India said the agreement does not conform to CBDR-RC (common but differentiated responsibilties and respective capabilities) and the principle of equity.
In an article I wrote recently talking of the megatrends that would define this century and the next, I had predicted that the world had all but lost the battle against climate change. I do not take pleasure in saying “I told you so”, but such is the dystopian world we are staring at.
Diplomacy and Geopolitics 