‘Road to Ruin’: Nations Clash over Multi-Trillion Climate Bill as COP29 Opens
COP29 11/11/2024 • &
The 29th UN climate summit in Baku is the second consecutive COP to be hosted by a petrostate.

As 40,000 delegates’ flights streamed into Baku’s Heydar Aliyev airport over the weekend, battle lines were drawn on the opening day of COP29 in the Azerbaijani capital as developing countries demanded wealthy nations commit trillions of dollars to combat the climate crisis.

The high-stakes climate mega-conference launched on Monday, just weeks after its less prominent sibling, the UN biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia, collapsed in disarray over the same fundamental question: who should pay to save the planet, how much, and by when.

Negotiators must now agree on a new global climate finance target by 2025 – a deadline set under the Paris Agreement – to replace the current $100bn annual pledge that wealthy nations promised in 2009 but have met just once. This new framework – known as the New Collective Quantified Goal – sits at the heart of talks, earning Baku the moniker “finance COP”.

With climate disasters wreaking trillions in damages worldwide, COP29 is the final opportunity for nations to align on this crucial financing ahead of the end-of-year deadline, yet countries remain deadlocked on nearly every detail of how to deliver it.

“We must be totally honest – current policies are leading us to three degrees of warming, temperatures that would be catastrophic for billions,” COP29 president and Azerbaijan’s minister of ecology Mukhtar Babayev told delegates as proceedings opened in Baku, citing recent findings from the UN Environment Programme pointing to a 3.1°C rise by century’s end.

“We are on the road to ruin,” he said. “Whether you see them or not, people are suffering in the shadows. They need more than prayers and paperwork.”

Last year’s Dubai summit managed what seemed impossible through three decades of climate talks: getting nations to name the “transition away” from fossil fuels, the root of the climate crisis, as necessary to avert the worst impacts of a warming planet.

In Baku, that bare-minimum breakthrough faces its first stress test. Yet hopes raised by the opening ceremony of seizing a historic moment to keep warming within 1.5C quickly gave way to a familiar deadlock – wording disputes delaying the opening plenary by six hours.

“We must do today what yesterday we thought was impossible,” Babayev said. “We are setting these expectations because we believe they are absolutely necessary – this is a race for our lives.”

‘Red alert’

Babayev’s stark warning came as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) issued a “red alert” confirming 2024 is on track to be the hottest year ever recorded. Temperatures in the first nine months reached 1.54°C above pre-industrial levels, while Earth’s oceans absorbed record heat and glaciers melted at their fastest rate since measurements began in 1953, the UN weather agency found.

“This is unfortunately our new reality and a foretaste of our future,” said WMO chief Celeste Saulo.

Meanwhile, health experts at the talks are pushing to build on last year’s breakthrough health declaration at COP28, arguing investments in healthcare deserve equal status alongside established climate finance pillars of adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damages – warning that rising temperatures pose an unprecedented threat to global public health.

“Wealthy countries must commit to climate finance in the order of trillions to enable the delivery of climate action commensurate with the health risks faced by the world’s eight billion people,” Jess Beagley, policy lead at the Global Climate and Health Alliance, told Health Policy Watch.

“This must be based on grants, not loans, to avoid fuelling cycles of debt, poverty and ill-health. Failure to deliver adequate climate finance is a death sentence for the most vulnerable today, and our children tomorrow.”

Despite a year marked by record-breaking floods, deadly heatwaves, devastating hurricanes and raging wildfires, UN findings published last month found that no country globally implemented any policies with “significant implications” for reducing emissions in 2023 – marking a full year of climate inaction since the previous COP.

“Climate catastrophe is hammering health, widening inequalities, harming sustainable development, and rocking the foundations of peace,” UN secretary-general António Guterres said as talks opened in Baku.

“Those desperate to delay and deny the inevitable demise of the fossil fuel age … will lose.”

The finance fight

Developing nations, led by African and Arab states, are demanding at least one trillion dollars annually in public funds from wealthy countries. But nations including Canada, Japan and EU members argue such sums can only be achieved through private finance and “global investment flows” – the same fundamental disagreement that derailed this month’s biodiversity talks.

The debate is further complicated by questions over which nations should pay. The UN’s definition of “developed countries” dates back three decades, before China and India’s economic rise and corresponding emissions growth.

Recent assessments suggest developing nations require multiple trillions annually to address climate impacts, with some estimates reaching five to six trillion dollars.

While China now matches the EU in historic greenhouse gas emissions, Beijing is expected to remain staunchly opposed to being classified among nations required to provide climate finance, despite its position as both the world’s largest emitter and dominant clean energy manufacturer.

Major carbon polluters themselves face massive climate costs at home. A recent study of 4,000 extreme weather events shows direct damages alone cost two trillion over the past decade, with the US, China and India bearing the greatest losses. The $451bn bill from the past two years does not account for cascading impacts on health and economic activity.

“Let’s dispense with the idea that climate finance is charity,” UN climate chief Simon Stiell said in his opening remarks in Baku. “An ambitious new climate finance goal is entirely in the self-interest of every single nation, including the largest and wealthiest.”

COP29 president Babayev urged nations to see beyond the immediate costs.

“These numbers may sound big, but they are nothing compared to the cost of inaction,” he said. “This investment will pay off. A clear goal sends a strong signal to financial markets, provides certainty for long-term planning, and builds trust for collective action. We must invest today to save tomorrow.”

Health hits home 

As finance dominates the agenda, health experts warn the human cost of inaction is already mounting. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates climate change and air pollution are driving almost seven million premature deaths annually, while people faced a record 50 days of health-threatening heat in 2023.

The WHO and over a hundred health organisations are pushing to embed health considerations in countries’ climate plans, due for submission ahead of COP30 in Brazil next year.

“Health workers are seeing the impacts of climate change firsthand, in the suffering of patients and communities they serve,” said Jeni Miller, executive director of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. “It is time for all governments to demonstrate readiness to protect people’s lives by getting serious about bold climate action … and spell out how and when they will achieve the fossil fuel phase-out promised at COP28.”

The global health coalition’s joint report demands any agreement on loss and damage compensation address the health impacts on climate-vulnerable communities. Global health advocates are also pressing for stronger protections for curbing industry influence in climate talks, citing concerns industries that harm global health in climate policymaking.

Conflict of interest concerns from the health community are particularly acute in Baku. Last year’s COP28 Dubai summit, led by oil executive Sultan Al-Jaber, saw more fossil fuel industry representatives than health sector delegates, with a record 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists attending – nearly four times the number at the previous COP.

Transparency International warned ahead of the Azerbaijan summit that talks in Baku face similar risks of industry influence, prompting WHO to call for restrictions on fossil fuel industry participation in climate negotiations.

WHO: Climate Action Would Save Two Million Lives A Year

The human toll of climate change was brought home by the UN climate chief, as he stood beneath a photo of himself comforting an elderly neighbour in his Caribbean homeland of Grenada after her house was destroyed by a hurricane.

“At 85, Florence has become one of the millions of victims of runaway climate change this year alone,” Stiell said. “There are people like Florence in every country on Earth. Knocked down, and getting back up again.”

WHO estimates nearly 2.5 billion workers are now exposed to dangerous heat levels annually, while extreme weather events are driving increases in trauma and mental health problems.

Ahead of the summit, the UN health agency estimated urgent climate action could save two million lives each year through five key interventions, including heat warning systems and clean energy transitions.

“Health is the argument we need to catalyse urgent and large-scale action in this critical moment,” said Dr Maria Neira, WHO’s health and climate lead. “We’re putting forward this very strong health argument to ensure no one can leave COP29 claiming they didn’t know climate change is affecting health.”

Climate crisis in the hands of a petrostate – again

Mukhtar Babayev, who spent 26 years at Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company Socar, takes over the presidency of UN climate negotiations from Sultan Al-Jaber, CEO of the UAE’s national oil giant ADNOC.

The UN climate process faces a deepening credibility crisis as Azerbaijan becomes the second consecutive petrostate to host the talks, with fresh revelations about fossil fuel dealings casting a shadow over proceedings in Baku.

“Actions speak louder than words,” Sultan Al-Jaber, the outgoing COP28 president, declared at the opening ceremony. Yet his home country, the UAE – the first nation to submit its third-generation climate pledge – is planning a 34% expansion in fossil fuel production by 2035.

Al-Jaber’s address also hailed COP28’s Oil & Gas Decarbonization Charter as “the most meaningful and comprehensive private sector partnership on decarbonisation to date.” But the voluntary agreement, largely written by the fossil fuel companies that signed it, appears toothless.

Analysis by Global Witness found signatory companies – from ExxonMobil and BP to national oil companies like UAE’s Adnoc – are set to collectively emit over 150 billion tonnes of CO2 by 2050, more than 60% of the planet’s remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5C.

The charter “only commits signatories to ‘net-zero operations’ by 2050,” the analysis found, covering just production, not the burning of fossil fuels. “This means that up to 90 percent of these companies’ true carbon footprints aren’t covered by the pact.”

Azerbaijan’s climate credentials appear equally conflicted. State oil company SOCAR, which accounts for 90% of national exports, struck deals potentially worth more than $8bn while preparing to host COP29.

“The findings appear to confirm a pattern of petrostates using UN climate talks – which are designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – as an opportunity to clinch oil and gas deals,” Global Witness said, noting similar $100bn dealings by the UAE’s ADNOC in the run-up to its COP presidency.

The summit’s leadership has also raised eyebrows. COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev, a former oil executive who spent 26 years at SOCAR, faced fresh controversy after a senior COP29 official was caught on camera appearing to utilize the summit’s platform to make oil deals – echoing a near-identical incident involving Al-Jaber last year.

Leadership vacuum

Donald Trump’s promise to “drill baby, drill” amid record oil production is estimated by experts to be the final nail in the coffin for the 1.5C target.

The talks face additional headwinds as world leaders representing over half of global emissions stay away.

US president Joe Biden, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, China’s Xi Jinping, and India’s Narendra Modi are all absent, while only two G7 leaders – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – plan to attend.

Donald Trump’s election victory has also cast a dark shadow over COP29. The incoming president, who dismisses climate change as a hoax, withdrew from the Paris Agreement in his previous term.

His promised expansion of US fossil fuel production – already at record highs – could add more than 4 billion tonnes to US emissions by 2030, effectively ending hopes of meeting the 1.5C target, experts say.

“It is clear the next administration will take a u-turn,” John Podesta, Biden’s climate policy advisor, told reporters in Baku. Yet he insisted the fight transcends US politics, pointing to the Inflation Reduction Act – America’s largest ever green investment – as proof of lasting progress.

“The fight is bigger than one election cycle in one country,” Podesta said. “This is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet.”

Trump isn’t alone

Estimated embodied emissions in upcoming licensing rounds in the next six months (top ten countries), according to IISD.

But the global emissions challenge extends beyond American politics: Major economies across the globe are undermining global climate goals by scaling up fossil fuel production.

An analysis published last month by the International Institute for Sustainable Development shows the US, Norway, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Russia, India and China among the top issuers of new drilling permits in the past year. All have more fossil fuel permits planned – potentially locking in expanded oil production for decades.

Some nations are already giving up on the process. Justin Tkatchenko, Papua New Guinea’s foreign minister, called COP29 a “total waste of time” that stands to produce “no tangible results for small island states.”

Stiell, the UN climate chief, whose own Caribbean island home faces rising seas, pushed back.

“This UNFCCC process is the only place we have to address the rampant climate crisis, and to credibly hold each other to account to act on it,” Stiell said. “We know this process is working. Without it, humanity would be headed towards five degrees of global warming.”

Climate activist Greta Thunberg, voicing the frustration of young people around the world with the UN climate process, didn’t mince words.

“Another authoritarian petrostate with no respect for human rights is hosting COP29,” she said, explaining her decision not to attend this year’s summit. “COP meetings have proven to be greenwashing conferences that legitimise countries’ failures to ensure a livable world.”

Image Credits: Gage Skidmore.

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