Air Date: Week of November 29, 2024

Antonio Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, speaks at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Photo: The Presidential Press and Information Office of Azerbaijan, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

The UN climate treaty summit known as COP29 teetered on the edge of collapse as less developed nations implored the rich countries of the global north to provide financial relief to help them cope with rising climate costs. Alden Meyer, senior consultant with E3G, was at the COP and joins Host Steve Curwood to explain the frustrations with the process and the compromise delegates eventually reached.

Transcript

O’NEILL: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, this is Living on Earth. I’m Aynsley O’Neill.

CURWOOD: And I’m Steve Curwood.

Teetering on the edge of collapse, the 29th Conference of the Parties or COP of the UN climate treaty recently concluded in Baku, Azerbaijan. With more and more massive storms, floods, heat waves and wildfires, the less developed and poor countries demanded 1.3 trillion dollars a year by 2035 to help them address the growing troubles from global warming. The rich countries of the Global North first refused to put any numbers on the table during the round the clock talks. Finally, to break the impasse, negotiators set the goal of 300 billion dollars a year by 2035, with commitments to be clarified at the next COP in Brazil. That’s up from the 100 billion a year pledged back in 2009, though critics said with inflation, that would not be much of an increase if at all.
The COP also failed to affirm a commitment to “transition away from fossil fuels” that was adopted at last year’s session in the UAE. Alden Meyer is a senior consultant with the group E3G who has been to all but one of the annual COPs of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. He stepped off his 20-hour plane ride back to Washington from Azerbaijan to join us. Welcome back to Living on Earth, Alden!

MEYER: Great to be with you again, Steve.

CURWOOD: Alden, how high were the passions? I mean, what was there in terms of a walkout or a threatened walkout during these negotiations? I've heard some say that the UNFCCC had a near death experience. How accurate is that?

MEYER: Well, it came very close to a crisis or a collapse. There were two groups of countries, the Least Developed Countries, and the Alliance of Small Island States, that did a walk out of some negotiations that were happening. They complained that they were not being listened to, that other delegations were being briefed when they weren't. They didn't feel respected. The developing countries were very adamant that the need was much greater than the $300 billion that was pledged at the end. They also said that this really did not represent the responsibility or the capacity of the developed countries to put funding on the table. Another factor that came up here was anger amongst the developing countries that the Europeans, US, UK, and others from the developed countries did not put an actual figure on the table until at the end of the second week of the negotiations. It did come very close, I think, to being a crisis where they would have either had to suspend the meeting and resume in Bonn, or adjourn the meeting with no decision and resume negotiations a year from now in Belem, Brazil. Neither of those options were particularly palatable, partly because everyone is quite aware of the change in US administrations two months from now, and also aware of some of the dynamics in other countries where there are elections, in places like Canada and Australia, which could also result in a change of position on some of the key countries. So there was an incentive to get this deal done now, and I think at the end of the day, that was the calculus that most of the developing countries made.

CURWOOD: Now, what about the process, though, Alden? I understood that India was trying to object at the very end, didn't feel that consensus had been reached, but the deal was just gaveled through anyway.

MEYER: That's correct. The Indians had serious concerns both about the overall number, the magnitude of the number being inadequate, and also because of some of the blurring of the lines in the agreement between developed and developing countries. It allows, for example, the developing countries' share of activities and financing by the World Bank and other multilateral development banks to be potentially counted towards that $300 billion. India didn't feel it was particularly equitable, and so they had let the President know that they planned to object to this, and he did go ahead and gavel it through before they were given the chance to take the floor. And they were quite angry about that. There were a couple of others that came in with similar concerns, Bolivia, and Nigeria as well, but the agreement was adopted. This, of course, has happened before over the nearly 30 years history of this process, but it certainly left a bitter taste in the mouth of India and some of the other developing countries.

CURWOOD: So talk to me about the things that the developing countries really don't like about this deal, aside from the overall money number, saying that it's not enough. How do they feel about the burden that they are going to bear under this agreement, and what was kind of decided in the back room, as opposed to out with full transparency?

MEYER: Well, other aspects of it they don't particularly like are that it allows a variety of funding sources to be counted, not just the bilateral funding from developed country treasuries, but also the multilateral development bank funding. It also allows leveraged private finance to count towards the goal, and of course, it doesn't promise that a much more significant share of finance will be coming in the form of grants or concessional low-interest rate loans. They were making the argument that giving us commercial loans and making us pile on more debt when many of us are facing insolvency and debt crises, is not acceptable. So that was one of their concerns. Another one was this blurring of the lines, as you said, between developed and developing countries. The way that was framed in the end was it was left entirely voluntary for developing countries to step up and say that they would provide finance towards this. And of course, it wasn't clear that that had to be on top of the $300 billion commitment. And therefore there was some concern that some of those voluntary funding commitments by developing countries could be used to actually water down further the commitment of developed countries, which most of the developing countries felt was already grossly inadequate. So those were two of the big concerns we heard, and then just the whole way the negotiations were conducted, the incompetence of the presidency, the fact that not all groups had been consulted, the fact that some countries had more access than others. In the second week, it came out that the Saudis had been allowed to edit a draft decision put out by the presidency on the just transition work program. That's kind of unprecedented. So there were a number of concerns that developing countries had, but I would say, when it comes to the behavior and sort of strategy of the presidency, that was something that united almost everyone, developed and developing countries, a lot of anger towards the end of the two weeks about how the process had gone.

CURWOOD: So what does that say about the risk of having a petro-state, I think Azerbaijan gets what, most of its foreign exchange from fossil fuels, huge part of their local economy, their export economy? They have a vested interest in staying in the fossil fuel business.

MEYER: Well, that's true. That was also true for the United Arab Emirates, which hosted last year's COP, but in contrast with the Azerbaijanis, they were quite skillful in their management of the negotiations and diplomacy. They have been engaged in these negotiations in an intense way for much longer. They were up to speed on the issues. They have, I would say, a more sophisticated diplomatic corps and service. And of course, they were able to engineer the language calling for the transition away from fossil fuels in the energy sector, against the vigorous opposition of the Saudis, which was quite a feat, actually, because you've got to think about it, the Saudis had succeeded for 28 years in blocking any mention of the need to transition away from fossil fuels in a COP decision, even though everyone knows that fossil fuels are responsible for about 70% of the emissions driving the climate emergency. So both are petro-states, but one was seen as more sophisticated and skillful in the way it conducted the negotiations than the other.

CURWOOD: So Alden, this COP did not have language saying that we're phasing out fossil fuels.

MEYER: It did not, and of course, neither did last year's COP. That was the original proposal that many countries put on the table, phasing out or phasing down fossil fuels. They were not able to get that. What they did get was a statement of the need to transition away from fossil fuels in the energy sector, and even that, there's kind of a collective amnesia about that having happened at this point.

CURWOOD: Now, there was another outcome of COP29 that did work for the Global North and the folks who make a lot of money and move a lot of money, and that was an agreement on some of the rules for the carbon trading market. Can you walk us through what was decided there and why it benefits the rich part of the world?

MEYER: Well, this is a topic that got into the Paris Agreement. It's called Article Six of the Paris Agreement, and there's two major components of it. One is setting up a new sort of international body to allow trading of so called offsets or credits, where a country that has a hard time meeting the commitments it's made in our their own country might make investments in another country where reductions would be considerably cheaper, and they could count those reductions against their own commitments, even though they weren't happening in their own territories. And so this has been kind of a hanging issue for I guess six years now, they finally did reach agreement on the rules for these two kinds of trading mechanisms. The one, as I said, is sort of an international mechanism. The second is to regulate country to country trading. The concern that many environmental advocates have is that the rules may not fully make sure that you have environmental integrity in the system, that the tons that are being traded really represent additional activities that wouldn't have happened otherwise, that there's not full consultation with civil society, with indigenous peoples, about the impacts of some of these investments, particularly in developing countries.

[MUSIC: Vulfpeck, “Smile Meditation” on Thrill of the Arts, Vulf Records]

CURWOOD: We’ll be back in a moment with more from Alden Meyer on the latest UN climate summit. Stay tuned to Living on Earth.

[MUSIC: Vulfpeck, “Smile Meditation” on Thrill of the Arts, Vulf Records]

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[CUTAWAY MUSIC: Vulfpeck, “Smile Meditation” on Thrill of the Arts, Vulf Records]

O’NEILL: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Aynsley O’Neill.

CURWOOD: And I’m Steve Curwood.

We’re back now with Alden Meyer, a veteran of the UN climate summits who’s been filling us in on the carbon credit deal reached at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

CURWOOD: And why does carbon trading, why do these offsets benefit richer countries?

MEYER: Well, they benefit richer countries because, as I said, they can often be less expensive than making the investments in your own backyard. And so that's another concern that some developing countries have had about this. They say, basically, you're taking the benefits of the low hanging fruit in our countries when it comes to emission reductions and using it to avoid cracking down on polluters in your own country. So there's quite a bit of concern about the equity and fairness about this. The other thing is that now that we're committed to trying to achieve the Paris temperature limitation goals, which require us to get to net zero global emissions by mid-century, and actually net negative emissions in the second half of the century, the whole concept of offsets or credits may not make as much sense. If everyone has to get to zero, trading among yourselves so you do less and shift some of the burden to someone else, doesn't really work. The counter argument that those favoring it use is that you can get more bang for the buck in terms of investment of limited resources. So if you have a billion dollars to invest, and you would get twice the emission reductions by doing it in a developing country rather than your own country, these advocates say, you're actually getting more ambition for the same amount of money. So this has been a long debate. They finally did resolve it in Baku, and now we'll move into implementation and watch how it actually works.

CURWOOD: Alden, at the end of the day, how selfish is the Global North being here? Some would say that Global North is being penny wise but pound foolish. They are creating a disaster for the whole planet, and ultimately won't make the kind of money that they think they can make. What's going on?

MEYER: Well, I think there's a lot of truth to that. If you look at the financing of these responses, you can make a very strong case that it is in our self-interest to be more generous in supporting these activities, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation. On mitigation, the developing country is now responsible for a majority of emissions, and that will continue to grow as their economies grow and they lift more people out of poverty. It matters tremendously to our ability to limit temperature increases and devastating impacts from climate change if we help them pursue that development model in a different way than we did, if we help them leapfrog over fossil fuels to clean energy technology. And also, of course, that can create markets for exports of technologies and creation of jobs at home in some of these sectors to help developing countries do that. On the impact side, on adaptation, it's obviously in our self-interest to avoid the kind of impacts, the food and the water crises and other things that drive instability, drive mass migration, create failed states and havens for terrorism, you know. And for example, it's pretty well understood now that the drought in Syria was a contributing factor to the instability there in the Civil War, which led to mass migration into Europe, which then destabilized a number of governments and led to the success of right-wing populist candidates. So these are issues that I think there needs to be more awareness of in the Global North. This is not charity. It's a matter of justice, and it's a matter of our own environmental security and economic self interest.

CURWOOD: And perhaps survival as well.

MEYER: Yeah, there's that, if you've got to be serious about it. We are currently experiencing devastating impacts of climate change at around 1.2 or 1.3 degrees Celsius, and right now, the latest predictions are that we're on route to either 2.5 to three degrees Celsius, and those would be truly terrifying impacts. And of course, what keeps a lot of scientists up at night is not knowing when we would cross thresholds, so called tipping points, that would lead to irreversible changes in the climate system and kind of accelerate those impacts. So there's a lot at play here, and certainly the world that we're leaving to our children and our grandchildren is something we ought to be thinking pretty deeply about.

CURWOOD: Alden, these meetings, these conferences of the party of the UNFCCC, it's a grueling process. What keeps you going? How do you keep having hope?

MEYER: Well, I'm kind of a congenital optimist, I guess you would say. Others would call me a serial masochist for repeating the same thing and hoping for a different result. We do make incremental progress over the years, step by step. If we didn't have the Paris Agreement and the actions that countries have taken over the last decade, some of the predictions are we might be heading for four or five degrees Celsius. So, you can't say it's totally ineffective or doesn't matter. It does. The problem is, as we've discussed before, we're not moving at the pace and scale that the science requires. We are responding, but it's too incremental, it's too slow, and it's hard to get countries and leaders to focus on this when they're facing crises and conflicts in the Middle East or Ukraine, instability in their own countries because of inflation and poverty and inequality. This seems like something that's far off and far away, but of course, it's not, and it's happening now. It's being experienced all over the world, and it's compounding some of the political and economic crises that that leaders are facing. That is starting to sink in, and I'm hoping we can build on that and build more political will in Brazil and in future years to come, to come to grips with this crisis. But you would have to say, so far, there's been a lot of putting short term self-interests ahead of the global public good and what the citizens of the world expect and deserve and need.

CURWOOD: Alden Meyer is a Senior Associate at the climate think tank, E3G. Alden, thanks so much for taking the time with us today.

MEYER: Thanks, Steve. It was good to talk to you again.

 

Links

Inside Climate News | “Overtime Deal at COP29 Falls Short of Global Climate Finance Needs”

The Guardian | “Saudi Arabia Accused of Modifying Official COP29 Negotiating Text”

The Guardian | “COP29’s New Carbon Market Rules Offer Hope After Scandal and Deadlock”

Watch: Indian delegate slams COP29 finance deal