○In Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, Ir cannot escape. Its aroma welcomes visitors upon arrival, and tankers are forever visible from the shores of the Caspian Sea on which the city stands. Flares from an oil refinery near the center illuminate the night sky. You don't have to go far to see a field of Nodding Donkeys, small piston-pump oil wells about 6 meters (20 feet) high. Its bright red color gives it a festive feel. And green coloring.
It will be an interesting setting for the gathering of the 29th United Nations Conference of the Parties on Climate Change, which will be held at the Olympic Stadium in November.
Azerbaijan's environment minister, Mukhtar Babaev, who chairs the two-week Kop Climate Summit, likes to position the country as being at a global crossroads. He says it can serve as a bridge between the rich global north and the poor global south. As a former Soviet Union country, it lies between East and West. and between the country's oil and gas producing countries and the consuming countries that provide export markets.
Azerbaijan is where the world's first oil well was drilled in the 1840s, more than a decade before the United States drilled its first oil well in Pennsylvania. It is one of the most fossil fuel-dependent countries, with oil and gas accounting for 90% of exports and funding 60% of the government budget.
This brought wealth. According to the International Energy Agency, “oil and, more recently, gas have been largely responsible for the remarkable improvement in living standards in Azerbaijan since the late 1990s.”
However, the country is moving towards renewable energy, with major expansions of wind and solar energy planned. An interconnector line is planned to carry this low-carbon electricity through Eastern Europe and under the Black Sea to Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania.
“Azerbaijan wants to share our experience,” Babayev said in an interview in Baku. “We want to call on all countries, especially fossil fuel producing countries, to cooperate in this process, because we understand our responsibility. We want to do more. I think we can do it together.”
At the Cop28 summit held in Dubai in December, countries agreed to “transition” away from fossil fuels. For many, it fell far short of the complete phase-out sought by more than 80 countries. However, it was the first time in 30 years of global climate talks that fossil fuels as the cause of the climate crisis were identified and targeted. This is evidence of the enormous power that fossil fuel producers wield over the rest of the world. In the words of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, they “have humanity.”
At the Baku conference, the focus will shift from excessive fossil fuels to what proponents of action are seriously lacking: money. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, make the world's existing infrastructure more resilient to extreme weather events, and bring about the “green transition” needed to keep global temperatures within 1.5 degrees of pre-industrial levels, It requires a huge investment.
The report, led by economists Lord Stern and Vera Songwe, says developing countries, excluding China, will need around $2.4 trillion (£1.9 trillion) each year by 2030 to bring about the necessary changes. ) is required.
“We need to provide financial availability, accessibility and affordability,” Babaev said. “Donors from developed countries need to listen carefully to the position of developing countries.”
The main purpose of COP29 is to set “new collective quantitative targets” for such financing. Mohamed Addou, director of the Power Shift Africa think tank, believes the funding has the potential to transform the fight for a more livable climate.
“Tackling the climate crisis requires two things: political will and financial investment. There is political will in many parts of the Global South, but what is missing is investment,” he said. Ta. “Achieving long-term funding targets is essential to delivering the global energy transition needed to reduce emissions.”
For countries like Zambia, which is facing severe hunger due to the driest agricultural season in more than 40 years, the money won't come soon enough. Environment Minister Collins Nzobu said: “Africa contributes little to climate change.2 Emissions are almost negligible. However, the impact on Africa is very severe. ”
However, it is nearly impossible for such countries to obtain loans because lenders believe that poor countries are too risky and therefore deny them loans or charge high interest rates or unfavorable terms. . Nzobu said: “The perceived risk they pose to Africa is very high. The first is that it costs a lot of money to raise money, which is a big problem. The second is the lack of access. The third is The conditions offered for Africa to access that funding are nearly impossible.”
Investment is also desperately needed in the Maldives, where rising sea levels and storm surges threaten the survival of islanders. But Economy Minister Mohamed Said said the archipelago nation, like other vulnerable countries, was responding mainly with excuses rather than aid. “When we knock on the door of banks, private capital companies, financial institutions asking for climate investments, they say, this is too big, this is too small, this is too risky to invest in, we need to do more research, we need to do more research. , it's more soul searching,'' he said.
The very vulnerabilities of such countries are used against them. “The question they ask is: Can your country survive?”
The problem for Azerbaijan and the UN is that although Cop29 is responsible for achieving a financial settlement, the levers of power lie elsewhere. The World Bank is the world's largest development finance institution, but in the eyes of many poor countries it has failed in recent years on climate finance.
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley will lead developing countries in calling for reform of the World Bank, making it more flexible as a donor and leveraging its resources to give developing countries access to private sector financing at lower interest rates. Shows enthusiasm. .
Motley is working with Kenya's President William Ruto and France's Emmanuel Macron to explore new potential sources of funding, including taxes on frequent flyers, carbon taxes on international transport and windfall taxes on fossil fuels. is at the forefront of producers, and even global wealth taxes.
But who should be the main source of climate finance? The definition of which countries are developing countries has remained unchanged since 1992, but since then many emerging countries have is growing rapidly. If a climate change treaty were written today, it would leave Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, South Korea, and other countries with high per capita incomes (much of it thanks to their oil wealth) with: It would seem foolish to classify it alongside countries. Chad, Burkina Faso, Bangladesh.
Wopke Hoekstra, the EU's climate change commissioner, argues that the scope of donor countries needs to be expanded. “We can no longer hide behind the logic of developing and developing,” he said. “We need to move to a paradigm of responsibility.”
He cited the Gulf states, Singapore and China as examples. “With abundance, with abundance comes responsibility. We need to move to a situation where those who are able to pay actually pay.”
Hoekstra's claims point to broader geopolitical tensions. China has been accused of deliberately overexpanding its manufacturing capacity for key products and components such as solar panels and electric cars in order to overwhelm its U.S. and European competitors and drive them out of the market. The uproar threatens to sour relations between some countries that play key roles in climate change negotiations.
John Kerry, the US presidential special envoy for climate change, and his counterpart, China's top climate official Xie Zhenhua, shared a warm and close personal relationship. Their successors have shown signs of trying to emulate that close cooperation, but broader political currents may be working against them.
Last week, when China's new climate envoy, Liu Zhenmin, visited Washington, D.C. for the first time, he was invited to his home for a private dinner by Kerry's successor, John Podesta, in what was by all accounts a hilarious event. It happened. Days later, Joe Biden imposed punitive tariffs on $18 billion worth of Chinese imports, including electric cars and solar panels.
More than half of the world's population has voted or plans to vote this year. Hoekstra's harsh remarks on China should be seen in the context of the EU's concerns that economic concerns could spark a backlash against right-wing green policies in June's parliamentary elections. Meanwhile, in the United States, the return of Donald Trump could pose an even bigger threat to climate action. During his last term, Trump began the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.
The war in Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza will also cast a long shadow. Azerbaijan won the Cop29 presidency only late in Cop28 after candidates from Eastern Europe, including Romania and Bulgaria, were blocked by Vladimir Putin. Azerbaijan was only allowed to play that role if Putin and Armenia agreed.
Ethnic tensions have been simmering for 30 years, mainly in the disputed border area, but tensions have continued in the region since last year's deadly conflict with neighboring Armenia. Hostilities ceased and peace was signed in December, but only after 100,000 Armenians were forced to flee the disputed Karabakh region, which remains heavily mined. .
It would be an extraordinary achievement for Azerbaijan to bring in a successful police force that will solve the critical problem of climate finance and bring trillions of dollars to developing countries to achieve the necessary green transition. That remains unlikely, as there is little agreement on where or how the investment will come from, and the amounts being talked about are still not large enough.
However, it is certainly possible that Cop29 will bring about important progress, perhaps providing a path towards global financial reconciliation and reassuring developing countries that their needs are recognized.
Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said: “Quite frankly, we are doing our best for each officer.'' They are never enough. Certainly they are by no means perfect. But we will do the best we can. ”
