COP29 begins today. On the table this year: global uncertainty and a looming Trump presidency

Uncertainty and corruption are already looming over this year’s climate negotiations, as delegates descend on oil-rich Baku to start talks Monday.

Azerbaijan, known as the land of fire for its oil-producing prowess, is the third petro-state in a row to host annual talks of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP29, that aim to keep warming to a liveable 2 C. Nearly 200 countries agreed to the threshold in 2015’s Paris Agreement.

“There’s a lot at stake for COP29,” says Catherine Abreu, director at the International Climate Politics Hub. “Whether we are able to leave Baku, Azerbaijan, with a successful outcome is going to rely a lot on countries showing leadership and operating in these conversations in good faith.”

The crowning achievement at last year’s COP28 in Dubai was a global consensus on the need to “transition away from fossil fuels.”

But already, BBC News has exposed senior members of the COP29 team using the conference to arrange potential deals for fossil fuel expansion. And the election of Donald Trump in the U.S. has created uncertainty among climate groups, familiar with the former president’s disdain for climate-related action.

“It’s something we [the U.S.] are going to have to deal with,” said Alden Meyer, of think-tank E3G. “It’s critical what the reaction from the rest of the world is when we arrive in Baku.”

Trump’s election concerns climate community

While the Biden administration still holds power at these talks, climate experts, activists and diplomats are acutely aware that the incoming U.S. president campaigned on one-liners like “drill, baby, drill” and “frack, frack, frack.” 

There are reports that Trump’s transition team is already preparing to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, as he did in his first term. But this time, climate advocates fear a bigger impact.

“The Trump administration is going to be very prepared, unlike last time, which means the impact on the global climate policy framework is going to be far more than the last time,” said Harjeet Singh, a director at the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, which advocates for a phase-out of planet-warming fuels.

Dozens of climate-focused NGOs and civil society groups have hosted press briefings to react to the former president’s re-election. Meyer called the U.S.’s vote a “political earthquake.”

All countries at COP formally hold equal power in the UN process, but there’s no question about the weight of the United States in multilateral negotiations, and also about the impact of its choices as one of the world’s biggest and richest polluters. 

“We will be watching very closely on how U.S. negotiators behave at COP29,” said Singh. “It looks like it’s going to be a lame-duck situation where they can’t take any major decision, they will be mostly silent.”

However, political events also don’t change the fact that action by the rest of the world is critical, Meyer said. 

“What’s not changed is the impacts,” he said. “Climate change is real — it’s not affected by political elections and trends. 

“The atmosphere doesn’t care about what politicians do or say. It respects one thing, which is emissions. It’s the laws of physics.” 

Door opened for China?

John Kerry, as the U.S.’s first special presidential envoy for climate, paved the way for co-operation between the U.S. and China at COP28.

Though those ties may now be lost, experts say China might come out on top when it comes to clean energy gains. It is currently the world’s biggest emitter as a country, but it falls 20th on per capita emissions and recorded a drop in emissions earlier this year.

“When the United States throws its toys out of the pram like this, China just goes like, ‘Well, too bad, I don’t want to play with you, anyway,'” Christiana Figures, a former Costa Rican diplomat, said Thursday on her climate podcast Outrage + Optimism.

Figures, a former UNFCCC executive secretary, played a central role in the establishment of the Paris Agreement.

“This opens up an incredible opportunity for China,” she said, elaborating that she believes China will claim any gap left by the U.S. in electric vehicle exports and clean energy advances on a global scale.

China’s emissions hit an all-time high in 2023, but they may have peaked that year, due to a large-scale deployment of wind and solar power and cutting construction industry emissions. And it’s promised to reach net-zero emissions by 2060 — though some say that plan is not enough, considering its role in global pollution.

Many experts believe the global energy transition is far enough along that any resistance from Trump could hurt the American economy. 

“Global support for addressing the climate crisis has grown significantly since Donald Trump first took office,” Dan Lashof, the U.S. director of the World Resources Institute wrote in an emailed statement following Trump’s election. 

“If Donald Trump pulls out of the Paris Agreement again, it would simply diminish the United States’ influence and give other countries a leg up in the booming clean energy economy.”

All comes down to money

This year’s talks have long been seen as the “finance COP,” picking up on 2009 commitments in Copenhagen to commit $100 billion US to climate action annually between 2020 and 2025. The countries didn’t start meeting that goal until 2022, and it’s now seen as far too small a figure to make viable global promises of energy transformation, climate justice and adaptation measures to arm against a turbulent climate. 

Negotiators will have several levers to pull — including private finance they can mobilize, as well as taxes and contributions from polluting industries. The amount they agree is viable will be called the New Collective Quantified Goal — bound to be this COP’s biggest catchphrase.

“When we calculate the needs for climate finance, that number is in the trillions,” said Abreu. “And so the question on the table for COP29 is: How close are countries going to be able to get in terms of their public finance commitments to meeting the level of need that’s out there for climate finance? And what are the other sources that we can take money from in order to satisfy this?”

“I think it’s really important for people to understand there’s two different components of this,” climate finance veteran Jennifer Morgan told CBC News earlier this fall. She serves as Germany’s state secretary and special envoy for international climate action.

“One is in the world’s economy, how do we need to shift the investments that are going into fossil fuels … into a clean economy? And that’s the big trillions number. Then there’s the conversation about, OK, what’s the core that countries and which countries commit to, to help catalyze to get to those trillions?”

Who gives? Who takes?

Who gives and who takes is expected to take up air in the negotiating rooms, as assignments of developed versus developing countries were given decades ago, before countries like China and Saudi Arabia became economic powerhouses. 

Climate finance aims to fund three primary buckets of needs.

The first is adaptation to climate threats — money to protect people from climate change that is already locked in — from storm damage to food shortages to extreme heat.

Second is what are called “loss and damage” payments, owed to countries in the Global South that are drowning and drying up, for irreversible damages not of their own cause.

Finally, the last is mitigation financing. This is money to try to meet the promise of the Paris Agreement — to limit warming to 2 C above pre-industrial levels. This includes the business opportunities of energy transition.

“It’s a very complex discussion, and it’s one where the climate change community and the finance community need to come together,” said Morgan. 

“But it’s fundamental because the poorest around the world are suffering the most from the climate crisis, and this is really about how to support them.”