Good COP, Bad COP: Reflections from Baku

Halfway through COP29, more questions than answers remain about how the conference will stand up to the task of uniting the world in the fight against climate change.

Observers in an overflow room watching delegates in session at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan

I’ve made my way to Baku, Azerbaijan from Taipei to attend COP29 with the goal of observing the negotiations (in addition to my nuclear activism). For better or for worse, this is the mechanism we’ve come up with as a planet to collectively battle climate change. I wanted to know how the sausage got made.

The negotiations have their own rhythmic dynamic and patois. The acronyms fly thick and fast. There is a world of “divergence” between “significant” and “substantial.” Alongside countries we all know there are groups like “AOSIS” (Alliance of Small Island States) and CfRN (the Coalition of Rainforest Nations). The key issue was the transition from the $100 billion annual pledge in climate financing to the NCQG (New Collective Quantified Goal), a far more ambitious drive that would potentially see up to $1.3 trillion funneled annually to fight climate change.

This was supposed to be the COP where the parties get down to brass tacks. Unfortunately, what I saw was simmering frustration, lack of forward motion and a sense that too many key stakeholders have sat this one out.

The sausage isn’t getting made

After observing the negotiations I’ve mentally separated the parties into three different categories: the indignant (mostly developing nations), the complacent (mostly developing countries) and the pragmatic (mostly countries in the middle.) Unfortunately, there are not enough of the pragmatics and the polarization of interests between the developed countries who want everybody to pitch in for the NCQG and the developing countries who think it is still the developed countries who historically emitted the carbon that has got to pay is severe.

“We have to recognize the success,” said a delegate from the United States at one point. But high-fiving each other about meeting the $100 billion annual pledge — never mind the fact that it was late and was completed with questionable integrity — doesn’t get us closer to consensus about the NCQG more than ten times the size. Neither does righteous rants about how developed nations got rich from burning the carbon first and have a moral responsibility to help developing countries cope (I’m looking at you, Gambia.) The delegate from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) impressed me by focusing on the nuts and bolts: How do we establish a common standard for financing? Unfortunately the pragmatics were few and far between.

That was the first day of negotiations I observed and I hoped that the parties could move past their talking points and onto more fruitful discussions. Little did I know that was the most meaningful session I would observe all week.

The least transparent COP

What followed was an entire morning of negotiations that essentially boiled down to the leaders of the negotiations saying they can’t add more content to the draft and delegates complaining about it. I wish there was a button delegates can press on their desks to say “we’re not entirely happy about this” so the negotiations can move faster.

The unproductiveness of the procedures are not lost on the delegates. Unfortunately, their solution to this is to move into smaller side huddles that are not available to the observers.

“The problem is not just about the content itself, it’s about the procedure,” said a veteran observer who have been to COP for a decade, “it’s the least transparent COP I’ve ever seen.”

The real conversation was getting shunted from the negotiations to the informal to the “informal informals.” With each step delegates take retreating into their small groups observers lose visibility. But productivity was not gained: the delegate return from the huddles unwilling to say much more than “yay” or “nay,” further reducing the possibility of finding common ground.

“They are not just disagreeing on the text, they are disagreeing on how to come to an agreement on the text.”

At some point every single meeting I attended was significantly delayed to start, only to be adjourned for hours later because there was lack of agreement on the text.

The Placeholder COP?

Chatting with delegates between meetings, it seems some are already resigned to impasse.

“This is supposed to be the climate financing COP but it’s becoming increasingly clear we are not going to coming to any firm conclusions. In the negotiations, delegates are already starting to talk about the next COP.”

Would the next COP be better? Rio de Janeiro 2025 will almost certainly be a better-attended COP for geopolitical reasons. And they would have had more time to prepare. We can expect a stronger presidency.

And yet I can’t help but feel that the conflict is baked in the cake. It is true — to use COP speak — that the parties have divergent interests. And the proliferation of new acronyms and archane mechanisms isn’t going to help get the convergence converging.

THE ELEMENTAL TAKE

Many world leaders have decided to not attend COP29 in Baku, citing Azerbaijan’s petrostate status and “spotty human rights record.” But given that they all just went to COP28 in the UAE the year before, the decision is hypocritical and in my mind have sapped the momentum of what was achieved in Dubai.

It could well be that the world will pick up again in COP30 in Rio De Janeiro. But with the geopolitical temperature rising even faster than the actual temperature and the wild card of Donald Trump’s upcoming presidency of the United State, it’s also possible everyone will be too distracted and climate will become deprioritized.

I hope I’m wrong: there is still a week left after all and these negotiations usually go down to the wire. Despite the widespread cynicism that is fashionable to cast towards the process, I still think it is admirable that we are trying to come together as a world to collectively solve the problem of climate change and I’m a believer in process and consensus.

For nuclear, it’s been a good COP so far. Six more countries endorsed the Triple Nuclear by 2050 pledge first announced at COP28: El Salvador, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Nigeria and Türkiye. With plenty of side events focused on the development of nuclear, New York Times even declared the technology once shunned at COPs a “rising star.”

I’m struck with what Executive Director of the International Energy Agency Fatih Birol said in Baku: that more and more countries are taking nuclear seriously, but it is not only for decarbonization, but for energy security. It takes a high-trust world to fight climate change. A low-trust world fight wars.