What is COP29 and why is it important?

The COP29 summit will see negotiators try to agree how to finance the climate action the world urgently needs.

Explainer Updated 30 October 2024 7 minute READ

COP29, the 29th UN annual conference on climate change, takes place in Baku, Azerbaijan from 11–22 November 2024.

Every COP conference is an important opportunity for international collaboration on climate change. COP29 will have a particular focus on how to make finance available to developing countries for climate action.

COP29 is already contentious, because Azerbaijan’s economy is highly dependent on fossil fuels, the main cause of climate change. That means that Azerbaijan’s government, which will preside over the summit, has a strong incentive to avoid rapid multilateral progress towards phasing out fossil fuels. 

It’s urgent that progress is made at COP29. Climate action lags far behind both what has been promised by countries, and what scientists agree is needed. The impacts of climate change are also rapidly escalating, while backlash against government policies to reduce fossil fuel use is being seen in many places around the world. 

What is a ‘COP’?

The ‘Conference of the Parties’ or ‘COP’ is an annual event that brings together the governments which have signed up to environmental action under the United Nations (UN)

Governments or ‘parties’ attend the climate change COP if they are part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or the international environmental treaties the Kyoto Protocol (1997) or the landmark and legally binding Paris Agreement (2015).

World leaders, ministers, and negotiators convene at the COP to negotiate and rubber stamp plans to jointly address climate change and its impacts. 

Civil society, businesses, international organizations and the media normally ‘observe’ proceedings to bring transparency, accountability and wider perspectives to the process.

‘Mission 1.5°C’ 

COP28, the 2023 climate conference held in Dubai, was the first of three consecutive COP summits intended to ‘reset’ global climate action – what the UN calls the ‘Roadmap to Mission 1.5°C’ – the ambition to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. 

To support continuity and progress across the three COPs, the UAE (COP28), Azerbaijan (COP29) and Brazil (COP30) have formed a COP presidential ‘Troika’ or group of three.

COP29 will be the third consecutive COP held in an authoritarian state, and the second consecutive COP hosted by a petro-state. 

In 2023 the first ‘global stocktake’ of international action to address climate change indicated that the world was far off track for targets set by the Paris Agreement. The ‘UAE Consensus’ agreement, which formed the main output of COP28, set out how parties should respond. 

COP29, the second of the three COPs, is intended to get the finance in place to enable this response. COP30, to be held in Brazil in 2025, will then try to agree how a new round of nationally determined climate plans or ‘contributions’ to global climate efforts (NDCs) should be put into action.

COP29 will be the third consecutive COP held in an authoritarian state, and the second consecutive COP hosted by a petro-state. Taken together, the ‘Troika’ hosts make up the world’s 4th largest oil producer, after the United States, Russia and Saudi Arabia. 

This presents both an opportunity and a risk: the countries are well placed to understand and tackle the core issue of fossil fuel extraction and use. But they also have strong incentives to stall, distract and deflect the negotiations away from phasing out fossil fuels.

Key issues at COP29

Finance – money on the table, and a New Collective Quantified Goal

COP29 has a remit to secure funding for a ‘course correction’ on global climate action. Countries’ revised climate plans (NDCs) are due in February 2025. For developing countries to deliver new ambitious NDCs, however, COP29 must first make clear what finance will be available to help them.

The previous climate finance goal of $100 billion per year…was symbolic (being a fraction of the sum actually needed) and contentious.

Climate finance is one of the thorniest issues in the negotiations. The previous climate finance goal, of $100 billion per year from developed to developing countries between 2020-25, was symbolic (being a fraction of the sum actually needed) and contentious (developed countries did not meet the target until 2022, and then only with accusations of double-counting). 

A New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQGs), to be agreed at COP29, will need to reflect developing countries’ needs and priorities. Estimates vary, but it is accepted that the scale will be trillions, not billions. To bridge this enormous gap, private finance will need to be mobilized and broader reforms made to global financial architecture. Issues such as subsidies, fossil fuel profits and ‘solidarity levies’ will also need to be on the table. 

Little progress has been made in the run-up to COP29. Parties disagree on who should pay, how much should be paid, what forms the funding should take (loans or grants) and how the funds should be accessed. 

Also up for debate is how funds should be directed – towards mitigating the impacts of climate change (preventing climate change becoming worse), adapting to its effects, or supporting countries to manage loss and damage (climate impacts that have already happened or cannot be avoided).  

In discussions of the NCQG to date, developed countries have consistently called for higher income developing countries, such as China and India, to contribute. 

Such countries have pushed back forcefully against this. For a new goal to be agreed, such divisions will need to be resolved.

Enhanced transparency?

COPs act as showcases for international agreement, but many processes rumble on behind the scenes. COP29 will be an important moment for transparency under the Paris Agreement, as the Parties’ first Biennial Enhanced Transparency Reports (BTRs) are due in December 2024. 

BTRs are an important tool in the Paris Agreement, requiring countries to provide a snapshot of their progress in cutting emissions, setting climate policies, and providing resources for national and international climate action. 

BTRs are meant to build the evidence base for strong NDCs, build trust and promote ambitious climate action. They are also meant to help developing countries showcase achievements and attract climate finance. 

Azerbaijan…ranks highly on indexes of corruption and has repeatedly restricted space for NGOs and wider civil society actors.

The COP29 presidency has launched the Baku Global Climate Transparency Platform to encourage participation, and support countries in finalising their BTRs. The Platform is meant to provide space for collaboration between government, NGO and private sector stakeholders. 

This is one of the areas in which COP29 host, Azerbaijan, runs into criticism. The country ranks highly on indexes of corruption, and has repeatedly restricted space for NGOs and wider civil society actors through a series of escalating government crackdowns, including imprisonment of environmental activists, in the run-up to the conference.

Article 2nd half

Fixing carbon markets under Article 6

Carbon trading, in principle, could raise climate finance and thereby enable climate action. Yet getting carbon markets up and running has been difficult. After nearly a decade of talks, COP29 could be the moment at which carbon markets finally get the go ahead. 

With 90 per cent of the world’s economies covered by net zero targets, and emissions cuts far off track…carbon markets have sizeable potential. 

In carbon markets, buyer countries can purchase others’ emissions cuts as carbon ‘credits’, and put these credits towards their own climate mitigation commitments. Vendor countries, by contrast, could put the funds they raise towards adapting to climate change. 

With 90 per cent of the world’s economies covered by net zero targets, and emissions cuts far off track across the world, carbon markets have sizeable potential. 

Yet they are also controversial. A lack of standardization and enforcement means they may simply displace rather than remove emissions, create opportunities for corruption, and enable ‘greenwashing’. 

Another issue is the equivalence of carbon credits representing different types of carbon: trees which may burn in a wildfire are not, for instance, equivalent to fossil carbon deposits in the ground. 

Standards for carbon credit project creation and assessment, and for greenhouse gas removal activities…must be negotiated and potentially agreed at COP29.

High-quality carbon markets will require a centralized world marketplace, and monitorable deals between individual countries. 

Parties therefore need to agree how carbon credits are defined, how projects can be approved and reviewed, what information about deals can be kept confidential and what needs to be transparent. 

At a meeting in Baku in October, the UN body responsible for carbon market creation adopted standards for carbon credit project creation and assessment, and for greenhouse gas removal activities. These must be negotiated and, potentially, agreed at COP29.

Pushing for new NDCs

A new round of NDCs is due by February 2025, ahead of COP30. The ‘Troika’ of COP have promised to ‘advocate strongly for early submission’. They have also said they will demonstrate their commitment by submitting ‘1.5°C-aligned NDCs, guided by the UAE Consensus’. 

As countries heavily reliant on fossil fuel use, this is likely to be a challenge. That is particularly the case for Azerbaijan, which backtracked on climate ambition with its last NDC revision, and has recently been rated ‘critically insufficient’ in its climate action by Climate Action Tracker.

While the revision of NDCs is seen as the responsibility of the COP30 President, Brazil, COP29 will play an important role in creating momentum.

Loss and damage at scale

The UAE, hosts of COP28, kicked off last year’s conference with a swift and comprehensive win, by operationalizing a fund for developing countries suffering loss and damage from climate impacts (the ‘FRLD’). 

The Philippines will host the Fund, and an Executive Director, Ibrahima Cheikh Diong, has been appointed. But so far, only $661 million has been pledged

Considering that hurricanes Helene and Milton caused an estimated $55 billion of damage in the US alone, FRLD funding is clearly very far from where it needs to be.  

The COP29 presidency has promised to ‘continue to seek further pledges to the fund’ at the conference. 

Loss and damage will also be raised under the NCQG negotiations. Civil society organizations and conference parties, including the Least Developed Countries Coalition are lobbying to dedicate a portion of the NCQG to addressing impacts of this kind. 

Adaptation steps out of mitigation’s shadow

As climate impacts escalate, adaptation to their effects has been climbing slowly up the multilateral agenda. One of the reasons for the lack of limelight on adaptation has been the absence of a concrete goal like the often cited 1.5°C temperature threshold target. 

A global goal for adaptation (GGA) is mandated under the Paris Agreement, but eight years of negotiations delivered little progress on defining what this should be. 

At COP28, countries finally committed to an overarching framework for the goal. But the framework lacks specific, quantifiable targets by which progress can be measured. And finance and technology transfer are not considered within it, meaning it is not clear how adaptation action can be implemented.

Negotiators are working to enhance the skeletal framework by 2025, and discussions will continue at COP29. But vulnerable countries’ adaptation needs cannot wait, and they are keen to see the goal fully operationalized as soon as possible

Adaptation finance is core to the remit of the NCQG. It is not contested in the way loss and damage is, but it will still be challenging for negotiators to agree finance that addresses the scale of need. Around $360 billion is thought to be needed annually for adaptation, compared to about $18 billion that was available in 2019.

For fossil fuel producer nations such as Azerbaijan, adaptation also offers a safe space away from the demands of mitigation, which means phasing out fossil fuels. Azerbaijan and its Troika partners may, for this reason, be keen to put adaptation funding centre stage. 

Keeping a focus on fossil fuels 

COP28 made groundbreaking progress, including an agreement to ‘transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems’ for the first time in 28 years of negotiations. 

Parties must…keep to the heart of the matter: how to quickly, efficiently and fairly phase out fossil fuel use. 

Yet the COP28 agreement was vastly insufficient to meet the climate challenge. At COP29, avoiding backsliding on existing commitments will be vital, and progress on new measures will be difficult to achieve. 

Parties must enable money to do the talking and agree a solid, wide-ranging, and sufficient NCQG on climate finance. They must also avoid common COP distractions, such as announcing new initiatives under the presidency ‘Action Agenda’  – and keep to the heart of the matter: how to quickly, efficiently and fairly phase out fossil fuel use. 

Diligent attention must be paid to the Paris Agreement structures, goals and requirements. It is this that will best serve the needs of a warming, and increasingly conflicted world.