Greenwashing and more oil deals: COP29 already under fire
52,894 people are at the UN’s annual climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, this month. A big reduction on numbers at last year’s two week gathering, one day into the conference critics are brandishing knives.
Donald Trump’s victory in the US 2024 Presidential Election last week has overshadowed the event’s opening, with the inbound leader already having promised to exit the Paris Agreement for a second time, slash funding for renewables and electric vehicle transition.
For many, this already throws COP29 into a state of disarray, with the world’s most powerful nation in economic and political terms, and one of the largest polluters of the planet, effectively hamstrung due to the imminent change of administration. Any agreements the US enters into during the summit may be reversed under a new government.
Greta Thunberg has already labelled the conference as a ‘greenwashing event’, which follows successive years of disappointing and lukewarm outcomes, and recent editions being hosted by petrostates such as the United Arab Emirates, and countries with particularly poor environmental and human rights records, for example Egypt and the UK.
The decision to hold COP29 in Azerbaijan has been particularly controversial, with one advocacy group secretly recording national deputy energy minister Elnur Soltanov offering to support talks to broker new fossil fuel deals just days before the event opened. Meanwhile, last year’s ‘historic’ central pledge to agree on a phase out of fossil fuels, notable due tot he absence of any clear roadmap or details, does not appear on the agenda this time.
No official reason for this has been publicised, although some commentators have referred to the fact that the government in Baku rely on oil and gas for 90% of exports. Although a deal was technically brokered 12 months ago, COP28 will perhaps be remembered more for the rise in attendance of fossil fuel industry representatives than the promise to stop using oil, coal, and gas on a global scale.
Criticisms aside, the focus in Azerbaijan is very much on climate finance, and in particular increasing funding from rich countries to support lower income nations in mitigation and transition. According to a UN-backed report, emerging countries, including China, need more than $2trillion in assistance by 2030 to give the world a chance to halt global warming.
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Image: Orkhan Farmanli