“Stopping climate change saves lives.” The Plaza de España in Madrid woke up this Monday with a giant poster that hung Greenpeace before the start of the twenty-ninth world summit for the climate change, COP29and with my heart still heavy because of the DANA that has devastated the southeast of the peninsula and that has left hundreds dead. The countries will meet these two weeks in Baku (Azerbaijan) with financing as a major issue to be addressed and without an agreement on the amount, although social agents and experts insist that this must go from billions to millions of millions (from billions to trillions).
“The climate crisis has shaken us extremely hard in Valencia, and if we do not act firmly, it will do so again. This DANA, which we will never forget, has to represent a before and after and mark the turning point in understanding society climate emergency that science has been warning for years,” he declared in a statement Pedro Zorrillarepresentative of Greenpeace Spain at COP29.
“We are on the path to ruin,” warned the president of COP29 and minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan, Mukhtar Babayevduring the opening ceremony. He was referring to the growing danger of the planet’s temperature rising 3ºC above pre-industrial levels, thus doubling the limit agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreementby which all countries committed to keeping this warming below 1.5ºC.
A ‘petrostate’ once again hosts the summit
The words of the senior Azeri official contrast with the strong influence of fossil fuels in the country. Oil and gas make up 90% of its exports and both industries accounted for two-thirds of its GDP in 2023. This puts it in the top ten petrostateseven “ahead of United Arab Emiratesprevious host of COP28″, according to a report by Ecologistas en Acción to which Public has had access.
Also the Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg has demonstrated from Tbilisi, capital of Georgia, denouncing that the host of the COP is an authoritarian state. “I’m protesting against the climate summit in Azerbaijan because they have a repressive regime there,” she stressed to the press. According to Thunberg, Baku does not have no intention to adopt climate measures and only plans to expand fossil fuel production, which is incompatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement to fight the environmental crisis.
“In the case of Azerbaijan, the think tank Carbon Tracker has indicated that this country’s current goal and policies are far from consistent with the 1.5°C temperature limit established in the Paris Agreement and plans to increase total greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 20% by 2030,” he tells this medium Ana Barreiradirector of the International Institute of Law and Environment, present in Baku.
According to Francisco del Pozo, head of Greenpeace’s anti-fossil fuel campaign, the fact that COP29 takes place in an oil state “is a problem,” he told this newspaper. “The host state has the capacity to exert some influenceso it is not good news that these countries are the ones managing the agenda and coordinating the development of the summit,” he adds.
However, Barreira points out that “hosting a COP can have a positive effect on raising awareness in a country.” In the same line it is expressed Alicia Pérez-Porroresponsible for policy and institutional relations at the Center for Ecological Research and Forest Applications (CREAF), who will attend the summit in person next week: “We are not going to achieve progress by talking only with people who are already involved in the cause. We also have to talk to those people and those states that are uncomfortable for us and convince them.”
“It will be necessary to see if this effect has occurred when Azerbaijan presents its new commitments in February 2025; if it includes ambitious objectives and measures,” Barreira assesses. Specifically, the commitments that all parties must present that month are the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCfor its acronym in English). These are the core of the Paris Agreement and the achievement of its long-term objectives, as they embody the efforts of each country to reduce national emissions and adapt to the effects of the climate emergency.
In this sense, Javier Andaluzhead of Climate and Energy at Ecologists in Action and who will travel to Baku this Wednesday, regrets in statements to Public that “the Azeris have not presented an NDC that represents even an improvement to face this summit or the climate emergency.” In fact, the independent evaluator Climate Action Tracker determines that Azerbaijan has weakened its climate goalin contradiction to Article 4 of the Paris Agreement, which requires each NDC to be more ambitious than the previous one.
For his part, Pérez-Porro tries to see the nuances of this situation. “The country’s entire economy is based on oil and gas because it is the resource they have and, like all countries, they live off what they have, so the situation is difficult“. Andaluz also wants to avoid focusing the focus on the host country: “The powers of the COP presidency are relatively limited and we cannot forget that this is an international summit, Azerbaijan presents itself as an easy scapegoat to divert attention from the fact that it is all countries that must move forward.
The race for a million billion to combat the crisis
Specifically, financing is the great objective in which the more than 200 countries must advance during these two weeks. Although the United Nations They have a complex financial architecture to deal with the climate crisisthe Paris Agreement establishes a Green Climate Fund (GCF). This is a credit system planned for the period from 2020 to 2025, so this summit must define a new investment goal, known as New Quantified Collective Objective (NCQG).
The main obstacle is that the summit has started without having any figures on the table under which to negotiate. Several groups of experts have stressed that NCQG must reach US$1 trillion (in Spanish, the billion or million million dollars). Among them, the Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Climate Change (IPCC), the Energy Transitions Commission (ETC) or the Independent High Level Expert Group on Climate Finance.
Furthermore, social agents are skeptical about the ambition of the global north to contribute to this new fund under the premise of “who pollutes pays“, as defended by Greenpeace or Ecologistas en Acción. The GCF set a bad precedent in this sense, since it had planned a financing of 100,000 million dollars annually (100 trillion in Anglo-Saxon terms), a figure that was not reached until 2023.
After the first interventions, “we see a global north whose good words do not correspond with certain facts of increasing and providing this financing,” criticizes Andaluz. “Also, those who would have to put money on the table they continue without mentioning the amount that must be achieved and we fear that this will continue during the next negotiations.
Ecologists in Action considers that the figures and data must be clarified during the first week and then be able to “discuss politics” in the second. “We urge countries, especially the global northto provide that minimum public financing of one trillion dollars starting in 2025, and then we can talk about other financing instruments or the inclusion of other states on a voluntary basis,” he emphasizes.
From the field, Pedro Zorrilla has indicated to this newspaper that the atmosphere in Baku is “irregular and distrustful”, with the countries of the global south “on guard.” The representative of Greenpeace Spain at the summit emphasizes that “there are still many discrepancies and points on which to reach an agreement.”
It remains to be seen how the different panels and dialogue tables that will take place over these two weeks develop, but Zorrilla’s conclusion leaves little room for hope in the commitment of world leaders: “The need is greater than ever, but the ambition is not yet set in motion“.
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