Having recently returned from the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in Baku, Azerbaijan, I want to offer my personal summary and assessment of the major takeaways from COP29, briefly summarize Harvard’s participation, and offer some thoughts about the path ahead to COP30.
Why Azerbaijan?
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the setting for this COP in the oil-rich, authoritarian state of Azerbaijan was not conducive to a productive let alone an enjoyable Conference of the Parties. Azerbaijan feels like exactly what it is – a former Soviet republic – the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic – from 1920 until 1991, when the Soviet Union was dissolved, and now an “independent” country that remains firmly within the Russian sphere of influence. So, why was it held in Azerbaijan? The reason is simple: Vladimir Putin said it could be held there. Let me explain.
The COPs rotate among five regional groups of United Nations member states to ensure geographical diversity and equity in hosting the conferences. These regions, in alphabetical order, are: (1) Africa; (2) Asia-Pacific; (3) Eastern Europe; (4) Latin America and the Caribbean; and (5) Western Europe and Others. This was the turn of Eastern Europe. The specific location of the COP within a given region depends on which country from the region volunteers, as long as no country from the region objects. Poland volunteered (they have held three remarkably successful COPs in the past), but Russia objected to any (Eastern European) country that supported Ukraine in the current war being the host. The result was Azerbaijan volunteering to host, and Russia approving. This was not an auspicious beginning to the process of Baku following Dubai.
Five Major Takeaways from COP29
I can identify five significant takeaways – important phenomena or negotiating outcomes – from the two-week Conference in Baku: (1) the counter-productive leadership of COP29 by Azerbaijan’s president; (2) the lame duck status of the U.S. delegation; (3) the outcome of negotiations on “finance;” (4) the evolution of language about the future role of fossil fuels; and (5) the completion of the “carbon-market article” in the Paris Agreement. I take these in turn.
- (1) COP29 Leadership by Azerbaijan
As the President of COP29, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev sought to position his country and his leadership at COP29 as a bridge-builder between the Global North and the Global South. In practice, it did not turn out that way. Indeed, I would say that geopolitical tensions at COP29 between rich and poor countries were greater than ever before.
Aliyev started things off with a defiant opening presentation at the beginning of COP29, in which he characterized his country’s oil and gas reserves as “a gift of God,” maintained that it is “not fair” to call his country a petrostate, and then accused Western countries of “double standards” and “political hypocrisy.” Then, the next day, he attacked France and the Netherlands for their overseas territories, which he described as “colonies” which don’t have seats in the climate negotiations. In addition, the Azerbaijani government and its state company, SOCAR (the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, the national oil and gas company), finalized several natural gas deals at COP29 to increase natural gas exports to Europe.
This perspective on fossil fuel use from an autocratic ruler made it challenging, to say the least, for Azerbaijan to preside over the talks and find compromise on some very delicate climate topics. I cannot say exactly how Aliyev’s leadership resulted in the COP29 outcomes, but in the hallways, delegates from a diverse set of countries complained vociferously about the host country’s leadership of the Conference.
- (2) The Lame Duck Status of the United States
Donald Trump’s election as the next U.S. president pervaded everyone’s thinking, at least during the first week in Baku. In particular, expectations that Trump will follow through on his promise to pull the USA out of the Paris Climate Agreement, as he did in 2017 during his first term in office, fueled concern that this would have profound, negative impacts on multilateral climate action. (See my previous blog essay, Looking Back, Looking Forward: Implications of Trump 2.0.)
The chief U.S. climate envoy, John Podesta, tried in vain to reassure his various audiences – other countries’ negotiators, climate activists, and the press – that the U.S. remains on track at the U.N. climate talks. I will note that there is merit to his claim that the global energy-transition trend will not be stopped by a change in U.S. administration, because much of it, in my view, is driven by markets and exogenous technological change. After a few days, the significance of the U.S. election may have faded somewhat in the negotiators’ minds, but it remained the starting point for discussion in every meeting in which I engaged – with a diverse set of people from governments, NGOs, industry, and the press.
The key question, of course, is whether Trump’s election and the anticipated withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement – or more broadly, the election results and the promise of Trump 2.0 – has on other countries’ climate stances, pledges, and policies. It was clear that the U.S. delegation was more muted than usual, and that there would be no effective pressure from the USA (as there was during the Obama years) for China to become more ambitious in its pledges.
It was striking that during the first week of COP29, right-wing populist leader Javier Milei threatened to withdraw Argentina from the talks altogether, which led some delegates to fear that Trump’s win might precipitate a global chain reaction of far-right governments withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. But the Argentinian government subsequently clarified that it was not leaving Paris Agreement, and those fears dissipated.
It may be that Trump’s election need not derail global climate action, but it is too soon to make firm predictions. For one thing, it does appear that Trump’s victory emboldened Saudi Arabia to be much more strident in its defense of fossil fuels at COP29, even more aggressive than it has been in previous COPs.
- (3) The Center-Stage Outcome: Finance
COP29 was labeled the “Finance COP,” because it was intended that the focus would be on augmenting developed countries’ commitment made in 2009 (at COP15 in Copenhagen) to mobilize $100 billion per year by 2020 to support developing countries in addressing climate change, both for mitigation and for adaptation (that target appears to have been met about two years late).
The debates on this continued for the entire two weeks of COP29 (and then some), ranging from heated discussions to acrimonious arguments, with developed countries on one side, and, on the other side, developing countries plus China, which insists it is a “developing country” under UN rules from 1990. China’s position remains that it supports developing country demands for very high levels of financial transfers, but as a developing country itself, it will not contribute, despite the fact that it has been the world’s largest emitter since 2006, and is now second only to the United States as a contributor to the stock of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs).
The developing countries at COP29 insisted on $1.3 trillion/year as the new level of commitment, but the rich countries offered a new goal to deliver to poor countries $300 billion/year by 2035, with developed countries taking the lead and some developing countries (that is, China) encouraged to contribute on a voluntary basis. The developing world wanted all of the funds to come from public sources (that is, foreign aid), but the final deal allows some money to come from private sources, such as foreign direct investment, which (in my opinion) makes abundant sense.
Although the new $300 billion/year target is three times the size of the previous target (see above), it is less than 25% of the $1.3 trillion/year sought by developing countries. So, not surprisingly, developing countries were not happy, with the complaints led vocally by India’s lead negotiator, Chandni Raina, who called it “a paltry sum” and a “travesty of justice.”
- (4) The Future of Fossil Fuels
One year earlier, at the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai, the closing statement (officially the “Decision of the First Global Stocktake”) endorsed “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner …”. That statement received more attention than any other outcome of COP28, although I wrote at the time that it was not of great significance (What Really Happened at COP28 in Dubai). However, many governments, NGOs, and the press hailed that compromise statement as making COP28 a success.
So, when it came to the conclusion of COP29 in Baku, all eyes were turned to the question of whether COP29 would endorse, indeed strengthen that language about transitioning away from fossil fuels. The result, largely due to Saudi Arabia fighting aggressively and effectively against any negative comments about fossil fuels in the final text, was that the COP29 text simply references the Dubai outcome, but does not repeat the call for a transition away from fossil fuels, let alone offer something stronger. The European Union (EU) and the U.S. negotiators wanted something to be included about actions to achieve any goal, but that was likewise rejected.
- (5) What About Article 6 of the Paris Agreement?
As some of you may know, I’ve worked on and written about Article 6 (more specifically, Article 6.2) of the Paris Agreement, which deals with “international cooperation,” since long before the Paris Agreement and Article 6 were even developed, via my extensive work on international linkage of heterogeneous policy instruments (Jaffe and Stavins 2008; Ranson and Stavins 2013; Ranson and Stavins 2015). And once the Paris Agreement began to take shape, I turned to examining how international policy linkage could be facilitated by its Article 6.2 (Bodansky, Hoedl, Metcalf, and Stavins 2015; Mehling, Metcalf, and Stavins 2019), as well as numerous essays at this blog.
So, what happened in this regard at COP29? Remarkably, despite the very contentious debates on finance and the future of fossil fuels, there was finally (eight years after the Paris Agreement came into force) agreement on the adoption of Article 6, which can facilitate international GHG trading. Unfortunately, as I will write about in some future essay at this blog, the ways in which countries are interpreting Article 6.2 and exploiting it do not bode well for it living up to its great promise.
So, that’s my summary and assessment of five meaningful takeaways – significant phenomena and negotiating outcomes – from the two-week Conference in Baku. I leave it to readers to decide whether this indicates that COP29 was a success or not.
I now turn to a very brief summary of the work our Harvard delegation was doing at COP-29, and then conclude with some thoughts about the path ahead to COP30.
Harvard Participation
Once again, I led our Harvard delegation, which was severely limited in size at COP29 due to the low allocation of badges we were awarded by the host country. Nevertheless, we held a couple of dozen meetings over three days with governments, industry representatives, NGOs, and the press, largely focused on the work of the Harvard Salata Initiative on Reducing Global Methane Emissions, which I’m directing.
In addition, we hosted two official side events. The first was on New Horizons in Methane-Emissions Abatement, co-sponsored by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements and the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD), on Tuesday, November 12, 2024.
Speakers included: Zerin Osho, Director, India Program, Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD); Sarah Smith, Program Director – Energy, Global Methane Hub; Ole Sander, Senior Scientist for Climate Change, International Rice Research Institute; and myself, as moderator and presenter.
Our second side event was on Industrial Policy, Trade, and the Political Economy of Decarbonization, co-sponsored by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, the Enel Foundation, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Foundation Environment – Law Society, on Thursday, November 14, 2024.
This second panel, which I moderated, featured: Daniele Agostini, Head of Energy and Climate Policies, Enel Group; Chantal Line Carpentier, Head of the Trade, Environment, Climate Change, and Sustainable Development Branch at UNCTAD; Michael Mehling, Deputy Director, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, MIT; and Joyashree Roy, Distinguished Professor and Director SMARTS Center, Asian Institute of Technology. A background paper, “Good Spillover, Bad Spillover? Industrial Policy, Trade, and the Political Economy of Decarbonization,” and its 2-page summary can be downloaded here.
The Path Ahead
There is some consistency between COP28 (Dubai), COP29 (Baku), and next year’s COP30 in Brazil, as that country is Latin America’s largest oil producer (Petrobras now surpasses the production of Mexico and Venezuela). But expectations are very high for COP-30, which will take place November 10-21, 2025, in Belém do Pará in the Amazon region of Brazil, because that is where countries’ updated targets under the Paris Agreement are scheduled to be finalized. Those revised Nationally Determined Contributions are due to be submitted by February 2025. Stay tuned.
Whether I will maintain my streak next year in Brazil of annual COP participation is, as always, an open question, particularly after having spent several days this year in Baku, Azerbaijan.
