Cop29 live updates: climate summit gets under way in Baku, Azerbaijan | Cop29

Ajit Niranjan

WHAT IS COP29 IN AZERBAIJAN AND DOES IT MATTER?

The 29th United Nations climate conference has begun, with diplomats descending on Baku, Azerbaijan, to thrash out arguments over planet-heating pollutants and the money needed to deal with them.

Like the 28 “conferences of the parties” that came before, Cop29 is not expected to stop the climate from changing – but delegates say that’s no reason to dismiss it as hot air. Cops are the key diplomatic arenas in which poor countries that have done little to heat the planet can put pressure on rich countries that hooked the world on fossil fuels. In turn, rich countries with the resources to transition quickly can encourage poor countries to clean up faster and sooner.

WHAT WILL BE THE OUTCOME OF COP29?

This year’s meeting will revolve around efforts to stump up the funds needed to cut pollution and adapt to more violent weather. Rich countries missed a goal to get poor countries $100 billion a year in climate finance from 2020, a target set in a previous Cop that experts deemed weak and patchy. Poor countries are now pushing for $1tr a year by 2030 – including cash to fix the destruction caused by extreme weather – but rich countries are reluctant to go higher unless the pool of contributors grows larger.

If diplomats reach a good deal on money this month, it could build trust and spark greater ambition when countries submit sorely-needed action plans to cut pollution at Cop30 in Brazil next year.

WILL COP29 SUCCEED?

More than 32,000 participants have registered for the conference but observers are not expecting them to deliver transformational change. Several prominent world leaders are skipping the summit and sending deputies instead – including the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, the US’s Joe Biden, China’s Xi Jinping and Germany’s Olaf Scholz. The US just elected Donald Trump as president, who took the country out of the Paris climate agreement when he last sat in the White House. Papua New Guinea has pulled its ministers out of this year’s Cop altogether in protest at the failure of rich countries to live up to their promises.

And beneath the high-level geopolitics, observers have also questioned whether the host is up to the task of shepherding overworked diplomats to find common ground. Azerbaijan, a middle-income country in central Asia that is rich in oil but poor in water, is well-poised to bridge the divide between the different interest groups. But a secret recording last week appeared to show the Cop29 CEO agreeing to facilitate fossil fuel deals.

The hope is that the conference can really bring countries together, and continue to push progress on reducing the world’s CO2 emissions.