COP29 begins: Key topics on the agenda and notable absences

For 11 days from 11 November, the spotlight will be on Azerbaijan’s capital city of Baku, when an expected 40,000 global delegates will attend the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) to agree on climate action.

After record numbers of attendees last year in Dubai, Baku promises to be a more muted affair. One of the most notable absences on the much smaller guest list will be that of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who has already declined her invitation to concentrate on Commission duties.

COP29 President Mukhtar Bahadur (who, like last year’s president, has long-standing and high-profile links to the oil industry) has set out his vision for a summit that will “enhance ambition and enable action”. A key priority in achieving this vision, he says, will be to prioritize climate finance.

Leaders of the most prominent banks are set to skip the ‘finance summit'

But with bosses of Bank of America, BlackRock, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and other prominent financiers also reportedly set to skip the summit, how will the so-called ‘finance COP’ help to achieve the purposes, goals, and principles of the Paris Agreement and keep the 1.5°C climate target within reach?

“Our work on climate finance should represent progression beyond previous efforts, delivering multiples, adequate to the scale and urgency of the problem,” President Bahadur wrote in his letter to parties and constituencies in July. “Transparency and accessibility will also be key facilitating conditions that will require effort from multiple stakeholders.”

Trump is back

One of the world’s most prominent stakeholders in climate action is the US president. But Donald Trump, newly elected for a second term in office, has already promised to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement (again) and extract fossil fuels without limit. As Politico puts it, for the climate diplomats and activists about to descend on Baku, “Their worst nightmare is now a burning reality.”

Even before Trump’s victory, the focus on finance — or to give it its official title, the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance — was causing issues. At the June UN Climate Meetings in Bonn, the NCQG target of a minimum USD100 billion per year to aid developing countries in the fight against the climate crisis was divisive, to say the least.

Nations have disagreed on almost every aspect of the finance target

In his closing speech, UN climate change executive secretary Simon Stiell admitted: “Too many issues were left unresolved. Too many items are still on the table.” He added: “We have left ourselves with a vast amount to do between now and the end of the COP. I urge you: don’t leave the hardest work to the eleventh hour.  Business-as-usual is a recipe for failure, on climate finance, and on many other fronts, in humanity’s climate fight.”

The climate news website Carbon Brief was a little less diplomatic in its reporting. “Nations have disagreed on almost every aspect of the new [NCQG] target, including the amount of money that should be provided, who should provide it, who should receive it and what kind of funds should be included,” it wrote.

Setting functional carbon markets

Another financial hurdle the COP29 delegates face is the implementation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which sets out the principles for carbon markets and emissions trading. But this is yet another area in which world leaders have consistently failed to reach agreement.

“A fully operationalized Article 6 would provide the basis for better quality carbon markets through reviewable bilateral agreements and a centralized multilateral marketplace,” Laia Barbarà and Ameya Hadap from the World Economic Forum explained in June. “Two successive COPs have failed to get Article 6 up and running, with countries and other entities striking some agreements in the meantime, but no real scale being achieved.”

Will it be third time lucky at COP29? Or will the absence of an agreement on Article 6 join the missing NCQG billions and the lack of prominent leaders and financiers to make this year’s summit more about what isn’t there, than what is?