From new goals to climate reparations, 5 things to watch at COP29

It’s possible there has never been a worse time for the United Nations to hold negotiations on climate change. Post-pandemic inflation has upended countries around the world, straining public budgets and distracting governments from climate action. Conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to rage, scrambling the priorities of powerful countries like Russia, Iran, and those of the European Union. To top it all off, the United States just elected Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax” and removed the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate agreement during his first term in office.  Nevertheless, in a few days thousands of negotiators and activists will convene in Baku, Azerbaijan, to try to make progress on the global climate fight. This year’s conference, known as COP29, is widely acknowledged as a transitional affair without the marquee significance of the 2015 Paris talks—or even last year’s summit in Dubai, which saw the world’s nations finally agree to move away from fossil fuels. Still, next week negotiators plan to hash out key issues that could determine both how the world mitigates carbon emissions and also how it addresses the mounting toll of climate disasters in developing countries. Here’s what to look out for: A new goal for international climate aid The topline agenda item at COP29 is the so-called “new collective quantified goal,” a target stipulating how much climate aid money wealthy countries should send to poorer countries. This funding is supposed to help developing nations transition to renewable energy and adapt to climate effects like droughts and sea-level rise. Negotiations will be tense, because wealthy countries have reneged on past commitments, and much of the money they have sent has been in the form of costly loans, or else has been of questionable value for the climate fight. All this is all on top of the fact that developing countries and many experts contend that current aid commitments are insufficiently low. A U.N. report released earlier this week found that adaptation efforts in particular are underfunded to the tune of between $180 and $360 billion per year. “It’s not just about the volume of money,” said Emilie Beauchamp, an advocate with the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a climate-focused think tank. “It is about whether the finance actually reaches the ones who need it the most.” Negotiators aim to settle on a new goal by the end of COP. Vulnerable nations are pushing for an annual commitment that totals in the trillions of dollars. But there are still key questions about who should have to pitch in money, and who should receive it. The United States and Europe have called for massive economies like China and wealthy petrostates like Saudi Arabia to contribute funds even though they were considered “developing” nations when the UN first began to negotiate over climate change. These countries have resisted these calls, pointing to the fact that the United States and Europe are responsible for more total emissions historically. This geopolitical deadlock has held up progress on the negotiations for months, and it’s key to an overall global agreement on climate aid. Picking up slack from the U.S. The first few days of every COP feature a parade of announcements from world leaders and their senior ministers, who take the stage to tout—and quantify—their country’s commitment to the climate fight. This year’s round of announcements will feature an elephant in the room: The United States, which is the world’s largest economy and its largest historic emitter, is likely to formally pull out of the international climate fight as soon as Trump takes office next year. Current President Joe Biden isn’t attending COP, and even if his senior administration officials make new pledges, they may be hard for other countries to take seriously. The question is whether other big emitters, in particular China and the European Union, step up their ambition in an effort to bridge the gap that Trump will likely create. Ministers from these countries have likely already been preparing for a Trump victory. But because both Europe and China have been struggling through economic malaise in recent years, it’s unclear how much other governments will be willing to promise when it comes to clean energy and adaptation investment. Coordinating the global energy transition The big news out of last year’s COP28 was the “U.A.E. consensus” document, an agreement in which all the world’s major economies, including the United States and petrostates like Saudi Arabia, pledged to move away from fossil fuels. Language calling for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner,” was painstakingly crafted, but now it has to be put into practice. The summit in Baku is unlikely to see another agreement of this scale, but individual countries will be detailing more specific commitments they plan