COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, devoted to climate finance, began its second week of negotiations on Monday 18 November without any major breakthroughs, as the European Commissioner for Climate Action, Wopke Hoekstra, pointed out at a press conference.
“Let’s tackle the elephant in the room straight away: yes, if you look at the geopolitical context that is on everyone’s mind, through these negotiations, the context is indeed difficult”, he conceded.
Undoubtedly referring to the current conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as the results of the American elections, which do not suggest that climate action will remain one of the top priorities on the international stage, Mr Hoekstra nevertheless asserted that it was possible and necessary to achieve a good result “by the end of the week”.
Azerbaijani Presidency. In order to redouble efforts to maintain the Paris Agreement’s target of 1.5 degrees of warming, the Commissioner called for a focus on political negotiations, reducing “the background noise”, undoubtedly targeting the numerous criticisms levelled at the Azerbaijani Presidency of the COP (see EUROPE 13525/7).
However, he called on Azerbaijan to get moving and start bringing the parties together around more concrete texts as soon as possible this week. “We need a Presidency to direct and guide us to a safe landing”, he stressed.
Public financing. Regarding the “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG) for the most vulnerable countries (see EUROPE 13522/10), he reaffirmed that public financing should remain at the heart of the negotiations, saying that everyone had a responsibility to contribute according to their emissions and economic growth, referring to China.
Calling for more resources to be put forward, he nevertheless acknowledged “that there will never be enough public money, whatever the source. (...) We are here to design a system that reflects the realities of our world. Economic and emissions-related realities”.
With regard to the work on Article 6 of the Paris Agreement on carbon pricing and carbon markets, he predicted that it could have “a considerable impact” this week, without giving any further details.
Simon Stiell, the UN Executive Secretary for Climate Change, welcomed the significant progress made on this point (see EUROPE 13522/10), but said that, generally speaking, a great deal of work remained on the negotiating table.
National contributions. On the subject of climate change mitigation, Commissioner Hoekstra welcomed the announcements by Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom on their ‘nationally determined contributions’ (NDCs) and indicated that the EU was also planning an ambitious NDC in line with the 1.5°C target (see EUROPE 13430/4).
Agreeing with the statements made by Mr Hoekstra and Mr Stiell, the President of COP29, Moukhtar Babaïev, expressed his concern at the slow pace of negotiations and called on the leaders of the G20 summit in Brazil, which is currently underway, to “give clear mandates to be followed at COP29” in order to achieve a result by the end of the conference on 22 November. (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)