COP29 starts today. On the table this year: global uncertainty and an impending Trump presidency

Insecurity and corruption are already looming at this year’s climate talks as delegates travel to oil-rich Baku on Monday to begin talks.

Azerbaijan, known as the Land of Fire for its oil-producing capabilities, is the third consecutive petrostate to host the annual UN Climate Change Conference talks, also known as COP29, aimed at limiting warming to tolerable levels. Nearly 200 countries agreed to the threshold in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

“There is a lot at stake at COP29,” says Catherine Abreu, director of the International Climate Politics Hub. “Whether we can leave Baku, Azerbaijan with a successful outcome will depend largely on countries showing leadership and conducting these discussions in good faith.”

The crowning achievement of last year’s COP28 in Dubai was a global consensus on the need to “divest from fossil fuels”.

But already, BBC News has revealed Senior members of the COP29 team used the conference to agree potential deals for fossil fuel expansion. And the election of Donald Trump in the United States has caused uncertainty among climate groups familiar with the former president’s disdain for climate-related action.

“We (the US) have to deal with this,” said Alden Meyer of the think tank E3G. “It is crucial what the reaction of the rest of the world is when we arrive in Baku.”

Trump’s election worries the climate community

While the Biden administration still holds power in these talks, climate experts, activists and diplomats are keenly aware that the new US president is campaigning with one-liners like “drill, baby, drill” and “frack, frack, frack.” has led.

There are reports that Trump’s transition team is already preparing for the US to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, as he did in his first term. But this time climate advocates fear bigger impacts.

“The Trump administration will be very well prepared unlike last time, meaning the impact on the global climate policy framework will be far greater than last time,” said Harjeet Singh, director of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative. which advocates for a phase-out of planet-warming fuels.

Dozens of climate-focused NGOs and civil society groups have held press conferences to respond to the former president’s re-election. Meyer called the vote in the USA a “political earthquake”.

Formally, all countries at the COP have equal power in the UN process, but there is no doubt about the weight of the United States in multilateral negotiations and also about the impact of its decisions as one of the world’s largest and richest polluters.

“We will be closely monitoring the behavior of US negotiators at COP29,” Singh said. “It looks like it’s going to be a lame-duck situation where they won’t be able to make an important decision and will stay mostly silent.”

However, political events do not change the fact that the actions of the rest of the world are crucial, said Meyer.

“What hasn’t changed is the impact,” he said. “Climate change is real – it is not influenced by political elections and trends.”

“The atmosphere doesn’t care what politicians do or say. It respects one thing, namely emissions. It’s the laws of physics.”

Door opened for China?

John Kerry paved the way for this as the US President’s first special envoy for climate US-China cooperation at COP28.

While those connections may now be lost, experts say China could be ahead in clean energy gains. As a country, it is currently the world’s largest emitter, but ranks 20th in per capita emissions recorded a decline in emissions at the beginning of the year.

“When the United States throws its toys out of the stroller like that, China just says, ‘Well, too bad, I don’t want to play with you anyway,'” Christiana Figures, a former Costa Rican diplomat, said Thursday on her climate podcast Outrage + optimism.

Figures, a former UNFCCC executive secretary, played a central role in drafting the Paris Agreement.

“This creates an incredible opportunity for China,” she said, noting that she believes China will fill any gap left by the U.S. in electric vehicle exports and clean energy advances on a global scale.

China’s Emissions reached an all-time high in 2023but they may have peaked this year due to widespread deployment of wind and solar power and reductions in emissions from the construction industry. And it promises to achieve net zero emissions by 2060 – although some say this plan is not enoughgiven its role in global pollution.

Many experts believe that the global energy transition is so advanced that any resistance from Trump could harm the American economy.

“Global support for addressing the climate crisis has increased significantly since Donald Trump took office,” Dan Lashof, the U.S. director of the World Resources Institute, wrote in an emailed statement after Trump’s election.

“If Donald Trump withdraws from the Paris Agreement again, it would only weaken the influence of the United States and give other countries a head start in the booming clean energy economy.”

Everything comes down to money

This year’s talks have long been seen as a “financial COP,” building on 2009 commitments in Copenhagen to commit $100 billion annually to climate action between 2020 and 2025. Countries only started to meet this target in 2022, and that is now seen as far too small a number to make viable global promises of energy transition, climate justice and adaptation measures to deal with a turbulent climate.

Negotiators will have multiple levers at their disposal – including private finance they can mobilize, as well as taxes and contributions from polluting industries. The amount they believe is achievable is called the “New Collective Quantified Target” – certainly the key slogan of this COP.

“When we calculate the need for climate finance, that number is in the trillions,” Abreu said. “So the question on the table at COP29 is: How close will countries be to meeting existing climate finance needs in terms of their public finance commitments? And what other sources do we use to take money to satisfy this?”

“I think it’s really important for people to understand that there are two different components,” climate finance veteran Jennifer Morgan told CBC News earlier this fall. She is German State Secretary and special envoy for international climate protection.

“One is the global economy: how do we need to transform the investments that go into fossil fuels into a clean economy? And that is the big trillion number. Then there’s the discussion of, ‘OK, what’s the core of these countries?’ And which countries are committed to helping reach those trillions?”

Who gives? Who takes?

It is expected that who gives and who takes takes up space in the negotiating rooms, because tasks were assigned between developed and developing countries decades ago, before countries like China and Saudi Arabia became economic powers.

The aim of climate finance is to finance three main areas of need.

The first is adaptation to climate threats – putting money toward protecting people from climate change that is already contained, from storm damage to food shortages to extreme heat.

Secondly, these are so-called “loss and damage” payments, which are owed to countries in the global south that are drowning and drying out for irreversible damage that they did not cause.

Finally, the last point is mitigation financing. This is money to try to fulfill the promise of the Paris Agreement – ​​to limit warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. This also includes the business opportunities of the energy transition.

“It’s a very complex discussion, and it’s a discussion that requires the climate change community and the financial community to come together,” Morgan said.

“But it is fundamental because the poorest people around the world are suffering the most from the climate crisis and this is really about how to support them.”