Political landscape shifts climate negotiations at COP29

A week after former president Donald Trump again won office in the USA, the world’s countries are gathering to talk climate change.

The 2024 UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) began in Baku, Azerbaijan, yesterday, and will run until 22 November.

It’s the 29th annual meeting of the 198 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty.

A major theme of this year’s conference is climate financing: funding emissions reduction, and adaptations to climate change.

But the recent re-election of Trump – who pulled the USA out of the Paris Agreement last time he was president – is going to change the tenor of the conference.

“Even the prospect of Trump coming in had already had a chilling effect on the pre-negotiations for this meeting,” says Professor Jacqueline Peel, an expert in climate change law at the University of Melbourne, who is attending COP29.

“It’s early days, but we do know that the Trump platform in the campaign was that he would again exit the US from the Paris Agreement, which can be done fairly readily with a bit of time.

“The more nuclear option, so to speak, is that they might actually exit the underlying treaty to the Paris Agreement, which is the UNFCCC.”

This means, according to Peel, that the USA would still be present as an observer – but it wouldn’t participate in negotiations at future COPs.

Professor Mark Howden, a climatologist at the Australian National University, says that while the current Biden administration will be at the conference, and in power for another 2 months, “it’s probably a fair comment to make that the negotiating position of Biden and his colleagues is weakened by the result which has just occurred.”

“The anticipated stepping out of the UNFCCC, and the IPCC, and associated bodies by the US will have very significant impacts, just as it did last time around,” says Howden.

“The US is a major donor, and would be looked to, to be helping set the ceiling of the finance target,” says Peel.

“Without their likely participation , other countries will need to step up into that space if they were going to reach the trillions level that is being talked about in terms of finance.”

Howden says the US’ political shift will have a complicated effect on negotiations.

“Some countries may see this as an opportunity to step up, both for environmental reasons, but also for geopolitical power reasons. Some other countries may see this as a rationale for taking the foot off their own accelerator,” he says.

“A lot of people are talking about the role that China might seek to play and take on a mantle of climate leadership in the absence of the US,” says Peel, adding that private investors are also interested in supplementing state financing.

Howden believes the change in US government should not be used as an excuse by other negotiators.

“The science is pretty clear now: we only have a handful of years before we run out of our carbon budget that’s consistent with 1.5°C, and at current rates of change, we’re likely to exceed 1.5°C on a trend basis by the end of this decade, and possibly sooner,” he says.

“Any sort of arguments which hide behind ‘we can wait out an administration, wait out 4 years before we get back on track’, are not actually supported by science. We haven’t got 4 years to waste.”

The next COP, COP30, will take place in Brazil in November 2025.

Australia has made a bid to co-host COP31 in 2026, in partnership with Pacific nations. There are 2 remaining bids – the other comes from Turkey – and a decision on the host is expected towards the end of the conference.

“Australia is considered a promising host, particularly in conjunction with the Pacific, because of the opportunity that might provide for enhanced climate leadership on a range of issues including finance,” says Peel.

“Obviously, for Australia, one of the key issues that we always are navigating at COPs is the fact that we have major economic reliance on fossil fuels, and particularly fossil fuel exports. So we’re a major emitting economy, in that sense, and that’s also a bone of contention with our Pacific partners.”

Peel says that the partnership with the Pacific may be a good opportunity for domestic climate action.

“Pacific countries are on board with Australia putting forward this bid, but I think there’s an understanding that if the bid was successful, Pacific countries would be wanting to push Australia on the way that it was going to approach emissions reduction, particularly from our fossil fuel exports.

“That may well open up some new kinds of possibilities in the domestic scene.”