Patrick was at the plenary session in Baku yesterday, where dozens of countries expressed their anger at the draft text that is supposed to be finalised ahead of an attempt at consensus agreement, theoretically by 6pm local time today. “It was pretty negative,” he said. “The biggest thing was the lack of a headline figure for climate finance. Developing countries say that they need a specific number to work with in negotiations. Meanwhile, the EU and other wealthier nations in that bloc are angry that there’s not enough emphasis on emissions cuts, which they say creates the risk of backsliding from what was agreed last year.”
“This kind of thing has happened before,” he added. “Cop presidencies [the role is currently held by this year’s host, Azerbaijan] sometimes see value in putting out a text that pisses everyone off to heighten the appetite for compromise.”
But it’s a high stakes game. Here’s what you need to know.
What are the big issues on the table?
The headline goal of the summit in Azerbaijan is a deal on climate finance – specifically the “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG) mandated by the 2015 Paris agreement, whichis now meant to be set in stone. (Read more about that in Nimo’s First Edition from the start of the summit.) The current goal of $100bn a year for poor countries is viewed even in rich countries as inadequate, but the ask of about $1.3tn a year by 2030 is still subject to negotiation – in terms of the headline figure, how it is paid and which countries qualify as recipients.
“There has been no concrete counterproposal from the developed nations on a figure yet,” Patrick said. And even when a number materialises, there will be scrutiny of how much of the money comes in direct financial assistance and how much is in the form of private sector investment or money from fossil fuel taxes.
“Then there is the debate over who is still a developing country, and whether India, China and others qualify – even Saudi Arabia is included in a bloc of developing countries. When you talk to negotiators from African countries, a lot of them are frustrated that the investment often goes to places that already have it, like Egypt, Morocco and Vietnam, as well as India and China – and they are not in position to attract a significant slice.”
Meanwhile, there is a battle over “mitigation” – the term for commitments to curbing greenhouse gas emissions. In Baku last week, Saudi Arabia and its allies sought to unpick commitments made at Cop28 to “transition away from fossil fuels”, and the key question is whether that pledge will be reiterated in this year’s agreement. “That is what most countries say they want,” Patrick said. “But the group led by the Saudis is resisting that approach behind the scenes.” At the moment, the phrase “transition away from fossil fuels” is absent from the section of the draft dealing with mitigation.
How have talks gone so far?
Even with a good faith approach from every country involved, this is very difficult stuff. “There has never been a finance target like this negotiated before,” Patrick said. And while $1.3tn is in one sense a lot cheaper than the accumulating cost of the climate crisis, “it’s also equivalent to the combined military budgets of the US and China – so it’s a really serious amount of money. We shouldn’t expect it to be easy. It’s a personal view, but when you view the talks up close, it doesn’t feel as hopeless as it maybe does when you’re not here.”
Even so, “there’s not a lot of trust on display,” Patrick added. One key area of frustration is the leadership of Azerbaijan, which has been accused of using the summit to boost its fossil fuel industry. Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s president, recently called oil and gas a “gift from god” and said that countries should not be blamed for “bringing these resources to the market”. And Azerbaijan is on track for a major expansion in fossil gas production over the next decade.
“This is the third Cop in a row at a major fossil fuel producing state,” Patrick said. “The Emiratis dealt with that tension pretty well last time, and they had an impressive diplomatic operation – but Azerbaijan doesn’t really have that in place. Now they have gone to the British and the Brazilians, as lead representatives of the developed and developing world who have either hosted a Cop summit recently or will do soon, to help them put together a new draft of the text.”
But regardless of who Azerbaijan brings into the drafting process, many delegates suspect that they are simply too committed to fossil fuel production to be a fair broker for the difficult day ahead. Meanwhile, the shadow of a second Donald Trump presidency, and the sense that the US will once again abdicate its responsibilities on the climate crisis, only heightens the pressure on the process.
How will the process work today?
In 2022, Fiona Harvey gave us a fascinating rundown of the negotiation process ahead of Cop27, explaining how the first week is made up of negotiations between officials, followed by ministerial appearances in the second week, and then the final plenary session at which consensus must be reached for a deal to be locked in. In short, Fiona said then: “It’s awful and inadequate and frustrating, but it’s still essential.”
The final stage of the process follows a logic of its own. Ahead of the final plenary session, delegations from different countries and blocs will hold private consultations with the presidency on what they feel needs to change in the text for them to agree to it. Once a text has been hammered out, agreement must be by unanimous decision, and if no consensus can be reached there is no option of a majority vote as a last resort.
Some argue that this mechanism enforces the “will of the laggards” who always have the option of junking the whole deal; others say that it forces those working to sabotage agreement behind the scenes to show their hand, and that sometimes they can be shamed into acquiescence.
Either way, the process is notorious for running over. “My flight home’s at 7am on Sunday, and I don’t expect it to be done by then,” Patrick said. “But we’ll see.”
How important is this year’s Cop likely to prove?
That really depends on what the final agreement says. A deal that locks in a big increase in climate finance from the developed world to the developing world would be a major milestone, and it would be a victory for climate realists to repeat the Cop28 language about fossil fuels. Backsliding from the Cop28 commitments would be a real setback, and developing countries’ limited faith in the process would be further damaged if the finance commitments are underwhelming.
Whatever happens, there is always next year. And, on the other hand, there is also the reality that keeping global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels already appears to be a very remote prospect. “A large majority of scientists think that 1.5 is already dead and buried,” Patrick said. “That is massively consequential. But it doesn’t mean that efforts to limit warming shouldn’t continue” – both because it is a commitment that governments have signed up to, and because this is not a binary: every fraction of a degree of additional warming will have profound consequences.
Even if an encouraging deal is struck today or over the weekend, and the Cop bandwagon stays on the road, that should not be mistaken for a concrete result. “The process doesn’t need countries to leave it, or to ‘fail’, for warming to go well beyond 2C,” Patrick said. “Whatever happens in Baku, it’s ultimately only important if it leads to action.”
