Can COP29 enhance ambition and enable action?

It has been only a few months since the conclusion of COP28, which is supposedly one of the most momentous climate negotiations in history. Proponents would point to it as the ‘beginning of the end’ of the fossil fuel era or highlight the creation of what is now known as the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (L&D Fund).

Yet its outcomes are only as impactful as how they are built on at the next COP. And the next one is fast approaching.

Last April, the COP29 Presidency presented its vision for what the next climate negotiations should achieve. The Baku climate summit would be built on the pillars of enhancing ambition and enabling action.

If the Bonn climate conference (SB60) and recent months have been any indication, the outcomes in Dubai are not going to be as momentous as promoted.

Enhancing ambition

The first pillar would be built on three specific themes, including enhancing the means of implementation (MOI) for developing the next set of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). With the world on pace for global warming way past the goal of the Paris Agreement, the next few months are critical to setting higher targets for reducing emissions, especially for the highest-polluting countries.

The COP28 pledge to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency worldwide by 2030, and how to finance and support this, must be reflected in these NDCs. Any mitigation strategy would fail without a strong commitment to move away from fossil fuels, which in turn would make it difficult for developing nations to adapt or avoid L&D. 

However, negotiators at SB60 failed to even produce a meaningful outcome on any mitigation-related workstream, let alone make any progress on MOI. One of the landmark decisions from Dubai seemed like a distant dream less than a year later.

A similar trend is seen regarding the National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), another critical theme under the first pillar. In Bonn, there was no emphasis on the need for financing or other MOI for NAPs, as Parties opted for this issue to be discussed in Baku instead.

The lack of sufficient NAPs would adversely affect the progress in other workstream on adaptation. For example, it would hinder the approach of developing needs-based and country and locally-driven adaptation indicators and targets, which has been one of the most emphasized calls for the global goal on adaptation. 

Only 58 nations have submitted their NAPs to the UNFCCC, as of August. Many developing countries are already facing difficulties in formulating it by the 2025 deadline, with the support for its implementation not even factored in yet. 

The COP29 Presidency has to provide strong leadership in steering the adaptation negotiations in the direction it needs to go. After all, when Parties are struggling for years to negotiate doubling adaptation finance to USD40 billion when the needs of the developing world are now at least ten times that amount, it is obvious that the direction of the negotiations need to drastically change.

The last of the first pillar’s themes, the submission of Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs) by the end of this year, is essential to tracking progress of each country. It is more than just a transparency tool; its information on the progress made on mitigation and adaptation can be used as input for the formulation of the next NDC. Yet similar to NAPs, some developing nations are also facing challenges on securing the needed support for the formulation of the BTR.

Enabling action

The second pillar, enabling action, largely revolves around the negotiations on climate finance. While the COP29 Presidency wants to emphasize that the Baku summit must not be looked at as defined by a single issue, many would assess the success of the entire COP29 on the agreements made on this issue.

This is evidenced by the developed and developing nations disagreeing on finance that hindered the discussions on almost every major workstream at SB60. Arguably the finance-related issue that saw the most progress in recent months involve the setting up of the L&D Fund and its Board, but current pledges to it remains way below the needs of the most vulnerable countries and communities.

There is no issue that would define COP29 more than the new collective quantified goal on climate finance (NCQG). It is intended as the successor to the USD100 billion goal, which has yet to be achieved despite being set for delivery by 2020. It is expected that the next goal would learn from the failures and delays that hindered the last one. 

Instead, SB60 reminded the world about how difficult the finance negotiations have been. Parties left Bonn with a 35-page input paper to work on for the next few months, with many of the existing divisions on defining climate finance remaining. None of the quantum, scope, structure, or flows associated with the NCQG is close to being agreed on, including on how exactly to involve the private sector or financing institutions that do not end up passing the burden to the most vulnerable.

While the COP29 Presidency promised to promote a more inclusive process, recent developments would pose a challenge to them. The UNFCCC, which is significantly underfunded, has already cancelled this year’s Regional Climate Weeks and opted not to host a virtual platform for participation at SB60. 

Only a few months after the Dubai conference saw an all-time high in attendance, inclusivity is likely to experience a significant decline for the next few months. The COP29 Presidency has to figure out how to mitigate this problem, which could include reestablishing a virtual mode of participation and encouraging Parties to better involve non-government stakeholders in terms of position-building and policymaking at the national level.

Whatever the successes were of the previous climate negotiations do not make the goal of the next one any easier to achieve. With emissions continuing to increase, so does the urgency of addressing the climate crisis. In this regard, COP29 will have the highest stakes in history.