Climate summit fails to launch as countries battle over agenda

The climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan got off to a less-than-auspicious start – COP29 delegates needed eight hours of deliberations to even agree an agenda for the meeting.
Behind closed doors, countries debated how to carry forward COP28’s pledge to transition away from fossil fuels, the appropriateness of carbon border tariffs and the process by which new carbon trading rules have been approved. Negotiations ahead of the start of the summit ran until 3am Monday, but there was still no agreement reached, leading to the impasse later on Monday.
It was an awkward start for Mukhtar Babayev, the Azerbaijani Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources and head of the COP. Babayev had hoped to use the new carbon trading standards to declare a success on day one, following the precedent set last year by the United Arab Emirates when it unveiled an agreement on climate reparations at the start of the Dubai COP.
Instead, he found himself presiding over stalled negotiations over what should actually be negotiated at the COP. A resumption of the public plenary scheduled for 3pm local time was pushed back to 4pm, then 5pm, 6pm, 6:30pm and 7:30pm. Finally, around 8pm, delegates returned to the room and confirmed an agenda.
This sort of delay isn’t unusual in the closing hours of a COP, when major agreements are being fine-tuned and haggled over by ministers, but it’s far less common at the start of a summit.
Babayev will be glad to have secured agreement on day one, even if though it came late in the evening local time. The alternative was that negotiations over what to negotiate resumed on Tuesday, when world leaders converge on the summit for a “family photo” and aspiring speeches which set the tone of the COP. Diplomats squabbling in the background isn’t part of the image the COP President wanted to convey to the world.
The agenda fight came after an ambitious start to the conference. Outgoing COP President Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber touted the successes at Dubai, including the breakthrough on climate reparations and the unanimous support for the fossil fuel transition.
Babayev then delivered his own address, telling delegates, “we need much more from all of you”.
“We must be totally honest. The UN Environmental Programme shows our current policies are leading us to 3 degrees of warming. These temperatures would be catastrophic for billions. They would threaten the existence of communities represented in this room. Colleagues, we are on the road to ruin,” he said.
The COP President laid out the importance of climate finance and acknowledged the current divides between developing and developed nations. Exactly how to broker a deal that meets needs but is still achievable is one of the central aims of the talks, as Newsroom’s deep dive on climate finance explains.
“To enable action, the COP29 Presidency’s top priority is to agree a fair and ambitious new collective quantified goal on climate finance. This must be effective and adequate to the scale and urgency of the problem,” Babayev said.
“We know that the needs are in the trillions, but there are different views on how to achieve that. We have also heard that the realistic goal for what the public sector can provide and mobilise seems to be in the hundreds of billions. The COP29 Presidency has made every effort to bring the parties close together but we still have much to do and just 12 days to land a deal.”
Dragging out the agenda fight left eight fewer hours for this substantive mission. The three issues which stalled the summit have each emerged from different catalysts and drawn a range of battle lines, rather than the usual developed versus developing country stare-down. It’s unclear whether all three issues were sticking points or just one or two.
First, disagreement has been brewing for a year over the scope of the “UAE Dialogue”. As part of the global stocktake on climate progress last year, nations agreed an ongoing dialogue to implement the findings of that review. Developed nations and those most exposed to climate impacts like the Pacific say this dialogue should include the implementation of the agreement to transition away from fossil fuels, while other developing countries say it should be limited just to climate finance.
The UAE dialogue was always going to be on the agenda, but whether it was included under the global stocktake or the climate finance heading would determine its scope – hence the importance of the agenda-setting negotiation. In the end, diplomats kicked this debate down the road, leaving it under the finance heading but adding a footnote saying that this did not limit its scope.
During the late evening plenary session where the agenda was finally adopted, a European Union representative made clear they opposed this approach and that it shouldn’t be seen as a consensus decision. Other representatives, including from Samoa (representing the Alliance of Small Island States) and Australia (representing the Umbrella Group which includes New Zealand), made similar comments urging the COP to confirm a wide scope for the UAE dialogue.
Second, a few weeks ago a technical panel working on carbon trading rules under the Paris Agreement adopted new standards for what kinds of actions could generate carbon credits. Indigenous activists say this move went beyond the panel’s remit – it was only meant to develop recommendations which would then be adopted by the COP.
On Monday morning, Babayev released a draft decision which would “take note of the adoption” of the standards by the technical panel. This would allow him to claim a victory on carbon trading rules before the summit even starts in earnest, but it would also signal the COP’s approval for what climate policy expert Sébastien Duyck called an “institutional mutiny”.
Catching wind of the move, Tuvalu cried foul on Sunday night. While many countries are happy to accept the standards and move on, a smaller number like Tuvalu are concerned it could lead to “hot air” carbon trading which fails to stop emissions – and temperatures and sea levels – from rising. Environmental NGOs say the standards will lead to further deforestation and attacks on indigenous peoples.
Babayev did get his victory on this one, with Tuvalu’s representative Ian Fry saying it had reluctantly agreed to support the standards but is “extremely uncomfortable” with the process.
Finally, less than a week before the COP started, China submitted a proposal for a new agenda item, backed by South Africa, India and Brazil (called the BASIC bloc). The item would have discussed “concerns with climate change related, trade-restrictive unilateral measures, and identifying ways to promote international cooperation with the outcome of the first global stocktake” and was clearly aimed at the European Union’s proposed carbon tariffs.
A similar effort to raise the carbon border adjustment mechanism on the COP agenda failed last year. Li Shuo, director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told Reuters that China is throwing its weight around more in the aftermath of the US election and may think it has a better shot of getting its way in the new power vacuum.
Diplomats finally agreed trade will be left off the formal agenda but will be discussed informally at the summit.
The only other official speech we’ve heard thus far, besides those from Al-Jaber and Babayev, was the address by UN climate chief Simon Stiell. The Grenadian former environment minister presented a photo of a destroyed house and two people hugging. One was Stiell, the other his neighbour Florence. The photo was taken after Hurricane Beryl in July.
“At 85, Florence has become one of the millions of victims of runaway climate change this year alone.  She was focused on one thing: Being strong for her family and for her community.  There are people like Florence in every country on Earth. Knocked down, and getting back up again,” Stiell said.
A new investigation released on the first day of the COP by Global Witness reveals Azerbaijan has signed US$8 billion worth of oil and gas deals in the past 12 months – a tripling of its usual pace. Civil society is concerned the petrostate may be using the COP host position to greenwash its image while expanding its fossil fuel output. It comes after a top COP29 official was recorded attempting to broker a gas deal with a supposed Hong Kong oil investor, who was in fact a Global Witness activist.
The 1.5C warming limit is the central goal of global climate policy. The findings of the World Meteorological Organisation don’t quite up-end that – the 1.5C target refers to average temperatures over a period of decades, not a single year – but they highlight the rapid increase in extreme weather and intense heat in recent months. Fresh off the back of the Spanish floods last month, it’s a sobering way to start COP but a reminder as to why everyone is here.
Even if the election of Donald Trump as US President leads to some backtracking on climate pledges and ambition, the issue will still be a critical economic and geopolitical one without America’s active involvement. Jockeying for a new leader on climate has already begun, with UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband saying, “the UK will step up and lead – to protect our people, and play our part in securing a future for our planet”. Expect big words too from the European Union and China, though neither of them is sending their leaders.
In fact, the UK’s Keir Starmer may well be the most influential head of government to attend the leader’s summit which begins on Tuesday. Most other global leaders will skip this year’s event. Some, like Joe Biden and Xi Jinping had flagged this well in advance. Others pulled out in recent days for a variety of reasons – German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz’s government collapsed on Thursday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says she’s too busy with political transition at home and the Brazilian President (and host of next year’s COP) Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has suffered a minor brain haemorrhage. One surprise attendee? The Taliban, attending their first COP since seizing power in Afghanistan in 2021.