COP29 Climate Summit Day 2 Highlights: UN Chief calls 2024 a ‘masterclass in climate destruction’

Ahmed Abdullah Afif Didi, Vice President of Seychelles, has urged wealthy countries to move beyond mere pledges and establish concrete mechanisms to release funds promised at previous climate summits, reports Ajit Niranjan, Europe environment correspondent.

Highlighting Seychelles’ vulnerability, Didi described the island nation’s struggle to manage rising sea levels, despite its efforts to combat climate change. “Everything is being threatened,” he noted. “We have to relocate our houses.” With a land area comparable to the German city of Munich but a marine territory as vast as France and Turkey combined, Seychelles is “punching above its weight” yet bearing heavy costs.

He questioned how Seychelles could fund these urgent needs and, referring to an automated buzzer that marked the end of his speaking time, remarked, “If every time it made a boom we released a million dollars, Seychelles would have all the money it needed to restore much of its damaged environment.”

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev used a keynote speech at the COP29 climate summit to lash out at Western critics of his country’s oil and gas industry, saying it had been the victim of a “well-orchestrated campaign of slander and blackmail”.Read the full report here

Gujarat Minister of Finance, Energy and Petrochemicals Kanu bhai Desai along with ACS S J Haider and Jai Prakash Shivahare, MD GUVNL are going to represent the state government at COP 29 from November 11 to 14 in Baku, Azerbaijan, according to Gujarat government press release. Read the full report here

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told world leaders at the COP29 summit on Tuesday to “pay up” to prevent climate-led humanitarian disasters, and said time was running out to limit a destructive rise in global temperatures.

Nearly 200 nations have gathered at the annual U.N. climate summit in Baku, focused this year on raising hundreds of billions of dollars to fund a global transition to cleaner energy sources and limit the climate damage caused by carbon emissions.Read the full report here

Read EXPLAINER-COP29: What is the latest science on climate change?

COP29 adopts establishment of global carbon market under Paris Agreement’s Article 6

Climate change worsening ‘already hellish refugee situation’, says UN, according to an AFP report.

Azerbaijan accused of ramping up repression of critics ahead of UN climate summit, says AP report

Indonesia to build 75 GW of renewable energy in the next 15 years, COP29 envoy says

Indonesia plans to offer to international investors opportunities to build 75 gigawatts (GW) of renewable power in the country in the next 15 years, its climate envoy said on the sidelines of the COP29 summit.

The plan is a commitment by Prabowo Subianto, who took office last month as the president of Indonesia, said Hashim Djojohadikusumo, Prabowo’s brother and Indonesia’s envoy to the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Indonesia, one the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, has pledged to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, including by phasing out coal-fired power plants and replacing them with renewables. - Reuters

US will stay in global climate fight despite Trump: John Podesta - Bloomberg

Yet John Podesta, senior adviser to the president for international climate policy, also struck an apologetic tone at the start of the United Nations COP29 summit in Azerbaijan. The expected pullback by the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter, he acknowledged, comes even “as the dangers we face grow ever-more catastrophic.”

Activist Greta Thunberg protests against Azerbaijan hosting climate summit - PTI

UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan today hosted a special dinner in Baku in honour of Crown Prince Al Hussein bin Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Alexander Lukashenko, President of the Republic of Belarus, and Edi Rama, Prime Minister of the Republic of Albania.

The event took place on the sidelines of a working visit to Azerbaijan, where he is attending the COP29 climate conference. -- ANI

Developing countries, including China and India, sparred with rich nations over including “unilateral trade measures”, such as the European Union’s carbon border tax, in the agenda of the UN climate talks, delaying the formal start of the conference on Monday.

Agenda disputes are common at UN climate conferences but this one is especially significant as countries have limited time to agree on a new climate finance goal to help developing countries adapt to and fight climate change, the central issue this year. - PTI

Countries at the two-week COP29 climate summit gave the go-ahead on Monday to carbon credit quality standards which are critical to launching a U.N.-backed global carbon market that would fund projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The green light was an early deal on day one of the U.N. conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. Governments are also meant to hammer out a climate finance agreement, although expectations have been muted by Donald Trump’s U.S. election win.

President-elect Trump has said he would again pull the U.S. out of the global Paris climate agreement, which lays the groundwork for the planned U.N.-backed carbon market. - Reuters

Climate activist Greta Thunberg on Monday attended a rally in Georgia to protest against Azerbaijan hosting the annual United Nations climate talks.

Thunberg and scores of other activists who rallied in Tbilisi, the capital of the South Caucasus nation, argued that Azerbaijan doesn’t deserve to host the climate talks because of its repressive policies.

UN climate talks, called COP29, opened Monday in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, a major oil producer where the world’s first oil well was drilled. -AP-PTI

“For those of us dedicated to climate action, the election was bitterly disappointing, particularly because of the unprecedented resource that Biden and Harris brought to the fight,” John Podesta, the US climate envoy, says in this press conference, according to a Reuters report.

He talks about President Joe Biden re-joining the Paris agreement, after Trump left when he was last president.

The election is “more difficult to tolerate as the dangers we face become more catastrophic”, he says.

“His relationship to climate change is captured by the words hoax,” he says about Trump, but adds that “none of this is a hoax, it is real”.

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• Record temperatures expected: 2024 could become the hottest year ever recorded, with world leaders gathering in Baku to address the escalating climate crisis.
• Focus on 1.5°C target: Nearly 200 nations will discuss strategies to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C.
• Vital threshold not breached yet: While average temperatures have hit 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the UN clarifies this does not yet signify a breach of the Paris goal.
• Rapid environmental changes: Melting sea ice and glaciers, rising ocean levels, and increasing ocean temperatures reveal the accelerating impacts of global warming.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg said she will not be attending COP29 because the event is “greenwashing”.

Host nation Azerbaijan “has no ambition to take climate action”, she said.

Writing in today’s Guardian newspaper, Thunberg argued that Azerbaijan is “planning to expand fossil fuel production” - with state petrochemicals company Socar’s oil and gas accounting for nearly 90% of the country’s exports.

This is “completely incompatible with the 1.5C limit and the goals of the Paris agreement on climate change,” she said.

• Oceans are heating up more quickly. In 2023, the oceans stored more heat than any time on record
• Glacier melt is increasing. The amount of ice lost by the world’s glaciers in 2023 was the highest since measurements began in 1953
• Sea level rise is accelerating. From 2014-2023, global average sea levels rose by 4.77mm (0.19in) per year - double the rate between 1993 and 2002
• Sea ice is shrinking. In 2024, the yearly minimum sea-ice extent in Antarctica and the Arctic was respectively the second lowest and seventh lowest since we’ve been able to monitor this with satellites.

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The UN warns that the Paris Agreement’s goals are in peril as 2024 could be the hottest year on record, marking the warmest decade from 2015-2024. 

Rising greenhouse gases, ocean heat, and extreme weather are devastating communities globally, with vulnerable populations hardest hit. UN leaders call this worsening climate crisis our “new reality.”

The January – September 2024 global mean surface air temperature was 1.54 °C, says a State of the Climate, 2024 report released today by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), at COP29 in Baku today. WMO, while pointing out that this does not mean that the target of 1.5 degrees C has already been breached, because the target is a decadal average and not temporal anomalies, has issued a “red alert” against global warming. It notes that 2015-24 “will be the warmest ten years on record”.

Read more here.

The climate crisis is pushing the Global South deeper and deeper into debt. The developing countries’ need for climate action runs into trillions of dollars. Yet the Global North, which have been polluting the atmosphere for hundreds of years are not providing finance. In 2022, the developed countries provided between $28 bn -35 bn in grants, which is half of what the world spent on ice creams that year, said Teresa Anderson, Global Climate Justice Lead, Action Aid, an NGO.

UNFCCC Chief Stiell’s address at COP29 highlighted that despite incremental progress, COP remains the sole forum for addressing the escalating climate crisis globally.Read the full report here.

Globally, the expansion of renewable electricity will facilitate the transition away from fossil fuels in the power sector. Fossil fuels will significantly shrink from a dominant share of 61% in the global power generation mix today, to 24% by 2030 and further to 4% by 2050, says the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in a press release issued today.

Investments in renewable power, grids and flexibility, energy efficiency and conservation must increase dramatically to meet the renewable energy and efficiency goals, totalling $31.5 trillion from 2024-2030, says the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), in a press release issued today.

Even as temperatures rise, the implementation of our agreements must call them back, says UNFCCC Simon Stiell

Clean Energy and infrastructure investments will reach $2 trillion in 2024, says Simon Stiell. 

UNFCCC Climate chief Simon Stiell says “Let’s dispense with any idea that climate finance is charity.”

World must work harder to reform global financial system, he urges.

We must get international carbon markets up and running, says Simon Stiell

Climate change affecting every single person in the world one way or the other, says Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary, UNFCCC

Adaptation getting lesser attention than mitigation, this must change, says Mukhtar Babayev. He called for “timely submission” of National adaptation plans by 2025.

Numbers may look big but they are nothing compared with the cost of inaction, he said, in his opening statement.

Mukhtar Babayev calls for “fair and ambitious” New Collective Quantified Goal for finance.

Mukhtar Babayev of Azerbaijan formally elected as President of COP29, a position he will hold for one year, before passing on the baton to Brazil

Loss & Damage Fund has garnered pledges for $853 million, says Sultan Al Jaber, President of COP28, at his speech at COP29, just before he passed on the baton of COP presidency to Mukhtar Babayev of Azerbaijan.

The annual U.N. climate summit kicked off Monday with countries readying for tough talks on finance and trade, following a year of weather disasters that have emboldened developing countries in their demands for climate cash.

Here’s what the summit leaders had to say at the opening ceremony:

COP29 President-elect Mukhtar Babayev

“Colleagues, we are on a road to ruin. But these are not future problems. Climate change is already here.

“Whether you see them or not, people are suffering in the shadows. They are dying in the dark and they need more than compassion, more than prayers and paperwork. They are crying out for leadership and action. COP29 is the unmissable moment to chart a new path forward for everyone.

“We need much more from all of you.

“COP29 is a moment of truth for the Paris Agreement. It will test our commitment to the multilateral climate system. We must now demonstrate that we are prepared to meet the goals we have set ourselves.”Read more here.

With U.N. climate talks tackling complex topics from energy policy to global financial aid, the annual summit has developed its own ever-growing lexicon. Here’s a lowdown on some of the more popular ones.

About 77% of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere now comes from the G20 rich nations, many of whom are now cutting back on their pollution, something that is not happening in most poor nations or ChinaRead more here

Delegates gathering in Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku are hoping to resolve the summit’s top agenda item – a deal for up to $1 trillion in annual climate finance for developing countries.

The summit’s negotiating priorities, however, are competing for governments’ resources and attention against economic concerns, wars in Ukraine and Gaza and last week’s U.S. re-election of Donald Trump, a climate-change denier, as president of the world’s biggest economy.Read more ​here​

ADB increases climate finance after US, Japan give world’s first sovereign guarantees

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not attend the conference, and Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav may also be absent, with Union Minister of State for Environment, Forest, and Climate Change Kirti Vardhan Singh leading the 19-member delegation instead.

The Muslim Council of Elders is organising the second Faith Pavilion in the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP29), held in Baku, Azerbaijan. - ANI

Gujarat Minister of Finance, Energy and Petrochemicals Kanu bhai Desai along with ACS S J Haider and Jai Prakash Shivahare, MD GUVNL are going to represent the State government at COP29. - ANI

Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof will not be attending the COP29 climate summit that starts Monday as he handles the aftermath of violent clashes between football fans in Amsterdam.

Joe Biden is not expected to attend COP29, nor will his successor Donald Trump, Reuters reported. 

During his last presidency, Trump withdrew the US from the Paris agreement, and he is likely to do so again. 

However, the delegation for the US at COP29 will be from the Biden White House, as Trump will not take office until January. 

The “lame duck” delegation can still participate in the negotiations, and though they will not be able to bind the US government to clear future financial commitments, they are unlikely to stand in the way of agreement by other countries, meaning that the core decisions expected to made at COP29 on finance can still go ahead.

• Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijani President
• Mukhtar Babayev, COP29 President-Designate
• Sultan Al Jaber, COP29 President
• Marina Silva, Brazil Environment Minister
• António Guterres, UN Secretary General
• Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
• Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados
• Ajay Banga, World Bank President
• Wopke Hoekstra, EU Climate Commissioner
• Liu Zhenmin, China’s Climate Spokesperson
• Ed Miliband, UK secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Sero
• Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of the UK

• CHINA

China produces the most energy from climate-warming fossil fuels and also from renewable energy sources. It accounts for about 30% of the world’s annual carbon emissions, making China the biggest greenhouse gas polluter, according to a Reuters report.

• UNITED STATES

The world’s second largest emitter, and largest historic emitter, comes to COP29 following an election that will put Donald Trump back in power in 2025.

• EUROPEAN UNION

The 27-country EU has not yet offered its position on some of the most divisive issues for COP29.

• UNITED KINGDOM

Britain’s Labour Party government, elected in July, plans to emphasise its climate commitment at COP29, after Energy Minister Ed Miliband described Britain as being “back in the business of climate leadership”.

• THE TROIKA

Calling themselves “the troika,” the host countries of COP28, COP29 and COP30, last year said they were collaborating to ensure continuity in organising the annual U.N. climate talks.

• ‘BASIC’ COUNTRIES

As fast-developing and populous nations, Brazil, South Africa, India and China can have an outsized impact on the world’s ability to tackle climate change.

• AFRICAN GROUP OF NEGOTIATORS

African countries will be pushing at COP29 for more climate finance and getting the Paris Agreement’s Article 6 on carbon market rules into force by early next year.

• ALLIANCE OF SMALL ISLAND STATES

A powerful group of countries disproportionately affected by climate impacts, notably sea level rise, the AOSIS bloc is focused on securing trillions of dollars in climate financing and advancing global efforts to phase out fossil fuel use.

Frances Colan, Senior Director for International Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress, highlighted the conference’s importance following the re-election of Donald Trump in the U.S., who is anticipated to adopt policies favouring oil and gas expansion, PTI reported.

Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s Climate Change Envoy, reinforced the urgency for a “Finance COP” that prioritises financing without deepening debt burdens for nations already struggling to adapt to climate impacts, according to PTI.

“For Africa, it is important that the final goal agreed in Baku should not worsen our debt situation,” Mr. Mohamed said. “The Framework on Global Climate Resilience needs to translate into real actions that support agriculture, water, health, biodiversity, infrastructure, and human settlements.”

Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), emphasised that COP29 must go beyond promises, pushing developed nations to accelerate their paths to net zero and meet their financial commitments.

“The climate COPs are about raising ambition, enabling action, and, most importantly, holding everyone accountable. While COP28 resulted in many promises, it let developed countries off the hook. COP29 must be about accountability,” said Dr. Ghosh.

“The largest historical emitters must move faster and raise their ambition. Climate finance should be consistent, convenient, catalytic, and credible, and COP29 must ensure it delivers real resources and capacity to protect the most vulnerable,” he said.

India’s key priorities at the COP29 conference are likely to focus on ensuring accountability of developed nations on climate finance, strengthening resilience for vulnerable communities, and achieving an equitable energy transition, experts anticipate, PTI reported.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not attend the conference, and Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav may also be absent, with Union Minister of State for Environment, Forest, and Climate Change Kirti Vardhan Singh leading the 19-member delegation instead, reported PTI.

As world leaders and climate negotiators converge on Baku for COP29, beginning Monday (November 11, 2024), India is set to bring renewed focus to the urgent need for climate finance, accountability, and protection for vulnerable communities, according to a PTI report.

Afghan Taliban officials will attend a major United Nations climate conference that starts next week, the Afghan Foreign Ministry said on Sunday, the first time they have attended since the former insurgents took power in 2021.

The COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku will be among the highest-profile multilateral events attended by Taliban administration officials since they took control in Kabul after 20 years of fighting NATO-backed forces.

Read more here.

The UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2024 highlights a dire need for annual emission reductions of 5.5% and 9% until 2030 to keep warming below 2°C and 1.5°C, respectively. 

However, with emissions rising and promises unfulfilled, achieving these targets seems unlikely. Developed nations, particularly the U.S. under Donald Trump, may continue to sideline their climate obligations, raising concerns as the upcoming COP29 focuses on a new financing goal to replace the unmet $100 billion target. 

Meanwhile, current national climate pledges (NDCs) are set to lead the world toward a disastrous 2.5-2.9°C rise by 2100, further diminishing hope of escaping the global emissions crisis.

Read more here.