The large query is whether or not nations can agree on an quantity for the brand new collective quantified purpose (NCQG), and how the Philippines will steer the dialog across the loss and harm fund board as its host on the local weather talks. The NCQG is anticipated to displace the present US$100 billion pledge made by rich nations, which is because of expire in 2025.
There may be additionally scepticism over how one other petrostate like Azerbaijan can efficiently unite the world to sort out local weather change.
There have been comparable issues over Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) internet hosting earlier talks. However the uncertainty runs deeper for Azerbaijan.
Aside from internet hosting Method 1 motor racing occasions, the previous Soviet republic is understood to the world as a significant oil and fuel provider. Fossil fuels make up about 90 per cent of its export revenues, and the federal government is brazenly working to extend fuel manufacturing.
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We can not blame naysayers for underestimating the upcoming talks, however ought to be aware that comparable issues had been stated about Egypt’s COP27. However because it seems, it was in COP27 the place the loss and harm fund was lastly agreed upon.
The authoritarian state is infamous for curbing media and civic freedoms, with at the very least 25 cases of the arrest or sentencing of journalists and activists up to now yr, virtually all of whom stay in custody.
It doesn’t have a protracted observe file of diplomacy on the United Nations, which is required to affect the worldwide neighborhood in direction of local weather motion.
It was chosen final minute in December amid geopolitical tensions, which implies it was not current on the Troika conferences, composed of the outgoing host, incoming host for the next yr, and the host for 2026. These conferences permit the presidency sufficient time to work with events in agreeing on negotiation outcomes.
Some local weather summit watchers are dismissing COP29 as a “consolidation COP” the place it’s going to merely course of the choices made in earlier rounds of negotiations.
Some are proposing that this COP ought to be bypassed, and the main target ought to be on COP30, which will likely be held in Brazil.
In any case, Brazil appears to be a extra becoming local weather chief, as it’s residence to greater than half of the world’s Amazon rainforest and has been lively in worldwide negotiations. The Earth Summit, which was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, gave rise to the United Nations Framework Conference on Local weather Change (UNFCCC), ensuing within the Paris Local weather Settlement in 2015.
The Latin American nation has a protracted historical past of sturdy social and environmental actions, even efficiently holding its former president accountable for legal acts.
That is in stark distinction to Azerbaijan whose president, Ilham Aliyev, has not confronted any critical political opposition since he assumed energy in 2003, after his management was handed over by his father who dominated for 3 many years.
Azerbaijan has additionally simply emerged from a warfare with neighbouring Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh area, which ended with 100,000 folks being displaced from their houses and the federal government accused of seizing political prisoners who’re in captivity to at the present time.
We can not blame naysayers for underestimating the upcoming talks, however ought to be aware that comparable issues had been stated about Egypt’s COP27.
The north African nation was the host after COP26 in Glasgow, which was tipped to be the place breakthrough local weather offers had been made. COP26 was the primary in-person local weather summit after the pandemic, and was infused with optimism. However like so many COPs, little got here came out of it in the long run.
COP27, led by an unlikely host, was additionally considered a “consolidation COP”.
Like Azerbaijan, Egypt was rising from a turbulent interval in its historical past after the Arab Spring within the early 2010s till the current day the place authoritarian rule is alleged to be chargeable for perpetuating the nation’s poor human rights file.
However because it seems, it was the local weather convention within the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el Shiek the place the loss and harm fund was lastly agreed upon, 30 years after Vanuatu first raised the query of who ought to pay for local weather disaster.
This was adopted by the fund’s operationalisation at COP29 within the UAE.
The identical breakthroughs can occur in Azerbaijan.
The implementation of Article 6, a piece within the Paris Settlement which lays out the principles for nations to commerce carbon credit to fulfill their nationwide local weather targets, is seeing key developments lower than a month away from the convention.
For the primary time and beneath immense presure, the UN’s new carbon market can have a obligatory mechanism that goals to forestall the builders of carbon credit score initiatives from breaching human rights or inflicting environmental harm by their actions.
Builders of initiatives beneath the UN’s new Article 6.4 carbon crediting system will likely be required to determine and handle potential unfavorable environmental and social impacts as a part of an in depth threat evaluation beneath new guidelines adopted by technical specialists in Azerbaijan in October.
The lengthy overdue requirements agreed upon are seen as important to creating Article 6 absolutely operational.
As we be careful for that within the November convention, the COP29 presidency can nonetheless accomplish that rather more to hike up ambition and show these stated it will a “non-COP” incorrect.
Mukhtar Babayev, COP29 president and an oil business veteran, detailed in one among his letters how he would prioritise a voluntary fund that ought to see fossil gasoline producers contributing to it.
Power storage and grids, in addition to methane discount had been among the many precedence objects he listed within the motion agenda. Nonetheless, point out of the gradual finish of fossil gasoline use in vitality programs – a part of an settlement to final yr’s landmark pact in Dubai – was conspicuously lacking.
Babayev has proven good religion in different points. He ensured the appointment of Amercan Senegalese finance specialist Ibrahima Cheikh Diong because the loss and harm fund’s government director on the board’s final assembly in Baku. This appointment might imply that the pledges made at COP28 will translate into the first tranche of economic support to be disbursed in 2025, which can brush apart fears that the loss and harm fund is in danger.
He organised a pre-COP29 media journey in April to present journalists a sneak peek on the venue and normal panorama of the convention to indicate that they aren’t as media-averse as their human rights information counsel they’re. He even added some ladies and younger folks to his organisational committee within the spirit of inclusion, he stated, after the backlash he obtained for the unique all-male membership.
Because the local weather convention nears, the world will be watching as he makes an attempt to present the door to fossil fuels , and persuade everybody why COP29 shouldn’t be ignored.
