Countries clash over emissions cuts at COP29

A week of late nights, tense exchanges and dozens of pages of draft negotiating texts have failed to make significant progress on the big issues up for discussion at COP29.
On key agenda items – finance, carbon trading and how to implement last year’s commitment to transition away from fossil fuels, among others – negotiations are still largely where they started after the first day of the summit.
In fact, there was a sense of déjà vu in the plenary hall of the Baku Olympic Stadium in Azerbaijan on Saturday night, as the scheduled closing session was postponed for five hours while diplomats tried to find agreement on the way forward. It mirrored the delayed start of the summit, where negotiators spent the better part of the day seeking consensus on the agenda for the COP.
Some thorny issues have now been punted to future rounds of talks, while the remainder will be picked up by ministers beginning on Monday. Although it’s not unusual for the big political questions to be left to the ministers in the second week of the COP, diplomats have been frustrated by the inability to make progress even on some of the technical questions relating to the most controversial issues, like finance.
The 25-page final draft negotiating text on the new global finance goal, released late on Friday, is longer than the nine pages which came into the COP but shorter than the 34 pages which at one stage circulated the venue. There were, however, many more sections of text which were marked by brackets, the UN drafting style for signalling an area of disagreement. The latest text contains a whopping 415 brackets, more than double the 173 brackets which it had at the start of the COP.
The new text was formed after the developing country bloc G77 + China rejected the nine-page draft on day two of the summit. The co-chairs of the finance negotiation were asked to bring back a text which contained all the parties’ potential preferences, which was when the 34-page draft landed on Wednesday. Asked to slim it down, the co-chairs returned with 33 pages later that evening.
The final 25-page draft came after further work on removing redundant passages and streamlining the text while still preserving everyone’s preferred options.
On the key questions – the actual quantum of the goal, who should contribute, who should be eligible to receive the funding, whether it should be public finance only or also include private investment, whether it should be entirely grant-based and whether it should include loss and damage or have other sub-goals – there has been no progress.
Environmentalists are pleased, however, that the new draft text raises the possibility of excluding finance for fossil fuels from the definition of climate finance. Whether that survives the coming ministerial talks, however, is an open question.
Fossil fuels have been at the centre of one of the other big disputes of the conference as well. Last year in Dubai, countries agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels. Countries also agreed to an ongoing “UAE dialogue” on implementing all of the goals of the Dubai summit.
Many developing nations have argued this COP that the dialogue should focus solely on finance, while developed countries and vulnerable island states have said it needs to include the transition away from fossil fuels as well.
No draft negotiating text was produced out of the talks on this issue. Instead, an “informal note” lays out a range of options without committing to anything in particular. Ministers will pick this one up next week.
At the closing session of the week, the Samoan representative Anne Rasmussen, speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), criticised the rate of progress on the dialogue.
“For [Small Island Developing States], we cannot consider this COP a success if there is no opportunity to advance on what we have agreed last year in the [global stocktake]. Efforts [on] this have been blocked across agenda items. We are being invited to engage in a collective amnesia when what we need at this time is to strengthen individual and collective action,” she said.
These remarks foreshadowed the much more fiery dispute which was to come in the next section of the closing plenary. This was on another set of negotiations on emissions reductions, which arose out of the Glasgow summit in 2021. The Mitigation Work Programme, which seeks “to urgently scale up mitigation ambition and implementation in this critical decade”, won’t even go to ministers and will instead be kicked down the road to the next COP.
The split between developed and vulnerable nations on the one hand and the majority of developing countries on the other burst into the open as the closing plenary addressed the Mitigation Work Programme.
Developed countries, including New Zealand, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, the European Union and others, as well as the most vulnerable developing nations, pushed for this to go to ministers next week, backing a UK proposal. Many accused a subset of developing countries of “blocking” progress on the negotiations for years.
“We think this is an unacceptable outcome. In 2021 we collectively agreed to a work programme on mitigation, ambition and implementation, and at every meeting since then, it’s been blocked. And today it’s down to a new low. With a proposed [postponing to the next COP], we’ve got a group of parties who won’t even permit a procedural acknowledgement that a discussion has taken place,” Sally Box, the Australian representative, said.
“It’s reasonable for countries to express different views on issues as according to their national circumstances, but this isn’t reasonable. It’s entirely unreasonable.”
Negotiators representing the African countries and the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) bloc said they were concerned the mitigation work programme would dictate emissions reduction targets, plans and policies to developing nations in a top-down fashion rather than allowing them to determine their own pathways as guaranteed by the Paris Agreement.
“We are deeply disappointed that we have been termed blockers in the mitigation room. This is deeply disrespectful and true and not in good faith,” said Diego Balanza, the Bolivian representative and chair of the LMDC bloc.
“We heard of targets and outlandish proposals when really there has been no progress on finance. There is still only a zero in the [global finance goal] discussions, no number, no ambition. Let us remember that this is a finance COP and we expect developed countries to deliver.
“There is a huge mitigation gap, and it is indeed a critical decade. The reason this decade has become critical is largely because of the inadequate action and unfulfilled promises by developed countries. Mitigation action by developed countries has not been forthcoming even though the [UN Climate] Convention and its Paris Agreement make it clear that the developed countries must take the lead on mitigation.”
On carbon trading, major issues remain unresolved, though agreement was found on Article 6.8 of the Paris Agreement on non-market approaches to assist with emissions reductions, through things like technology transfers and capacity building. The negotiations on Article 6.8 were stewarded in part by Jacqui Ruesga from the New Zealand Ministry for the Environment.
At the close of the session, well after midnight, Nabeel Munir, the chair of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (one of two entities which oversaw the negotiations this week), issued a plea to delegates.
“As we enter the second week of COP29, my request to you as the outgoing chair of SBI is, talk to each other. Work together. Make that compromise. Cross that arbitrary red line. Find common ground,” he said.
“Only through the spirit of collaboration and trust can we chart the course for a cooler, safer future. This is our commitment and this is our moment to act in solidarity – for ourselves, for our future generations and for our planet.”
As negotiations stalled on climate finance in Baku, UN climate chief Simon Stiell made a plea to the G20, who are meeting next week in Rio de Janeiro. In an open letter, Stiell called on the global leaders to make progress on climate finance issues among themselves. In the weeks leading up to the summit, there had been expectations of a big climate focus, though that looks less likely in the aftermath of the US election.
“Climate impacts are already ripping shreds out of every G20 economy, wrecking lives, pummeling supply chains and food prices, and fanning inflation. Bolder climate action is basic self-preservation for every G20 economy,” Stiell wrote.
“Next week’s Summit must send crystal clear global signals. That more grant and concessional finance will be available. That further reform of multilateral development banks is a top priority, and G20 governments – as their shareholders and taskmasters – will keep pushing for more reforms. That debt relief is a crucial part of the solution, so that vulnerable countries are not hamstrung by debt servicing costs that make bolder climate actions all-but impossible – the G20 forum should make progress on this.”
Continuing in yesterday’s vein, activists combing through the list of attendees at COP29 have found nearly 500 lobbyists for the carbon capture industry are wandering the halls in Baku. Often regarded as a potential climate solution, including by the New Zealand Government, no carbon capture project has ever consistently captured more than 80 percent of its carbon.
According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, “not one single CCS project has ever reached its target CO2 capture rate”.
The Center for International Environmental Law’s Rachel Kennerley said: “We are witnessing fossil fuel greenwashing by those attempting to delay the inevitable fossil fuels phaseout. This large presence of lobbyists is a confirmation that the carbon capture industry is working hard to promote the misguided CCS technology.”
Democratic US Senators Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island came to Baku on Saturday to lay out why the United States isn’t out of the climate fight, even with Donald Trump as President.
“We share a sense of optimism despite the lateness of the hour to meet climate targets,” Whitehouse said. “The United States has suffered a climate setback with the recent election. It is unfortunate to lose the executive branch of the federal government as an ally in the fight against climate change…. But the underlying facts are that an enormous amount of the climate work that’s being done in the United States is being done at the state and municipal level.”
Markey said Trump’s presidency would be a footnote in history and that COP stands for “Climate Outlasts Presidents”.
“The climate targets established through updated Nationally Determined Contributions are going to outlive Donald Trump. The new climate finance goals can outlast a climate denier. By coming here to show our support for ambitious action, we can hammer in the nails for the signposts that we will hopefully use in the not-too-distant future to find our way back to the negotiating table,” Markey said.
One win the COP29 presidency can count? On Friday, Baku announced a new global energy storage goal, alongside other energy pledges. The commitment is to boost global storage capacity of electricity to 1600 GW by 2030, a 600 percent increase from current levels. While it represents just a 50 percent increase on where storage will end up in a business-as-usual scenario, it’s still an ambitious call and has been well-received across the spectrum.
“Today’s pledge to update and expand grids and storage capabilities is welcome, and crucial to anchor and fast-track the energy transition,” Andreas Sieber, a vocal climate activist at 350.org, said.
Bruce Douglas, the CEO of the Global Renewables Alliance, agreed: “Countries committing to global energy storage and grid targets today at COP29 send a strong market signal. It raises awareness and focuses attention on the need for extra flexibility in the power system.