A JOKE, INDEED

A CONFERENCE OF IRRESPONSIBLE PARTIES THAT CREATED AN OPTICAL ILLUSION TO THE REALITY OF A NEW CLIMATE

- AVANTIKA GOSWAMI, ROHINI KRISHNAMURTHY, TRISHANT DEV, SEHR RAHEJA AND AKSHIT SANGOMLA REPORT FROM BAKU, WITH UPAMANYU DAS AND RUDRATH AVINASHI IN DELHI

IS COP29 dead after the Trump win?" asked some members of the media a few days before the 29th Conference of the Parties to the UN climate summit (COP29) started on the shores of the Caspian Sea in Baku, Azerbaijan on November 11. News of former reality TV show host Donald Trump sweeping the polls to win a second, non-consecutive term as President of the US, seemed to be added as one more factor that prejudged this summit to be a particularly inconsequential one. Other reasons cited for this imminent failure were the large shoes that the UAE Presidency had left to fill with their public relation-bonanza of 2023, Azerbaijan's lack of climate credibility as a fossil fuel producer and the general turmoil of world geopolitics. But climate experts and observers commented that this was the most important cop since the signing of Paris Agreement in 2015. Labelled "finance cop", its top agenda required developed countries to open their wallets and pay for their historical greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by helping to fund climate transition in the developing world.

In 2015, within the paragraphs of the Paris Agreement, it was decided that a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance would be decided before 2025, as a successor to the $100 billion target agreed upon in 2009. Between 2022 and 2024, no fewer than 11 Technical Expert Dialogues, two High Level Ministerials and three negotiations under an ad hoc work programme were held to deliberate on what can go into NCQG. Hundreds of hours of analysis and discussion, preparation and estimations of needs and sources of finance built up to the summit in Baku.