Four reasons next week’s COP29 might be meh

The 29th edition of the UN’s climate talks (the Conference of Parties, or COP) kicks off in Baku, Azerbaijan this Monday and we wouldn’t judge if you had no idea. 

That’s mostly because we’re not the judging type — listen to all the ABBA you want. But also because the US presidential election has been jamming the airwaves, though even that’s not quite the whole story.

So here are four reasons why this year’s COP29 is shaping up to be low-key: 

1. A slim attendee list

If there’s one thing world leaders love, it’s hanging out with world leaders. Their teams quietly compare calendars throughout the year: the more leaders commit to an event, the more valuable it is for other leaders to attend, and the more costly it is to miss it.

But many key world leaders are skipping this year’s summit: Joe Biden is preparing to hand the Oval Office keys back to Donald Trump, Ursula von der Leyen is still trying to get her new team approved back in Brussels, and Lula da Silva is still recovering from a nasty fall. Meanwhile, Xi Jinping is focused on reviving his sputtering economy, Putin is focused on invading his neighbour, and Scholz is focused on his own political survival. Even the largest Pacific Island nation and home to the world’s third-largest rainforest, Papua New Guinea, is skipping this summit, calling it “a total waste of time”.

That’s a lot of missing clout, which leaves little real chance the COP’s 197 member nations will make any significant new progress in Baku. Yes, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy — why attend a summit that’ll get little done (in part due to your absence). Either way, it all erodes COP’s effectiveness, which in turn erodes its legitimacy. 

Oh, and Emmanuel Macron is also widely expected to skip this summit because of… 

2. Some geopolitical drama 

This year’s COP host is Azerbaijan, which launched a major military offensive to seize the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh last year, sending the enclave’s ethnic Armenian population fleeing their homes.

While the turf was widely recognised as Azerbaijan’s, the sudden and unilateral move was still widely condemned, including by France, home to Europe’s largest Armenian population. So Macron and his Azerbaijani counterpart (Aliyev) have been bickering since, with Paris accusing Baku of fanning unrest in the French territory of New Caledonia.

And as interesting as this melodrama may be, it has real implications: the world’s core climate commitment is enshrined in the 2016 Paris Agreement – it’s seen as a triumph of French diplomacy, which is one of the reasons Macron has long been one of its more vocal and influential champions. But this year, championing that French legacy would also mean Macron schlepping over to Baku and helping a rival (Azerbaijan). Not gonna happen.

So now, as a sign of goodwill (but also to mess with Macron) Azerbaijan has offered to foot the bill for Pacific Island nations (including French ones) to attend this COP. So it’ll use the summit to throw more shade Macron’s way and boost its own standing, which Baku really needs because…

3. Azerbaijan’s vibes

Azerbaijan is known for many things like its never-extinguishing natural fire, but not its civil liberties. And local authorities have cracked down on any off-script voices lately, to prevent them from reaching a global audience during Baku’s big summit.

Still, to the extent international outlets have talked about this year’s climate conference, it’s been to highlight (for example) Azerbaijan’s initial all-male line-up, or its plans to massively ramp-up gas output (which already makes up 90% of the country’s exports and a third of its GDP). Oh, and in breaking news, a senior COP29 official has just been secretly filmed using his role to advance oil and gas deals.

And that’s not the kind of photo opps many leaders want. Speaking of which…

4. Shifting politics back home

Last year, the world held its breath to see whether countries would commit to an unprecedented ‘phase-out’ of fossil fuels. We got a weaker ‘transition away’ instead, which was itself still a big deal, but also a straw in the wind: this stuff is getting harder. 

Voters have been punishing governments everywhere lately, fuming at high inflation, cost of living pressures, plus housing affordability, all while wars rage or threaten to rage.

So, even as the Copernicus Institute now says 2024 will be the year our world breaches the Paris Agreement pledge not to go 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and even as researchers say that’s increasing the likelihood of a snow-free Mount Fuji or freak deadly floods in Spain or more damaging hurricanes off Florida (just this past month alone), governments are struggling to prioritise any longer-term response.

Which is again why you might not’ve heard much about this year’s COP29.

INTRIGUE’S TAKE

It doesn’t take long for an election like America’s to ripple around the world. It barely took a few hours for Germany’s teetering coalition government to crumble, and barely days for China to nudge harder on its stimulus efforts. Then next week, it’ll ripple across the COP, APEC, and G20 leader summits.

And the particular issues at stake may be different, but the overarching question is fundamentally the same: as the US flags an intention to potentially pull back in some areas (eg, Ukraine, climate talks, trade), will the rest of the world lean right back in? When it comes to climate talks, next week’s answer is shaping up as a “not right now”.

Also worth noting: 

• Brazil will host next year’s COP summit. In anticipation of a possible US withdrawal under Donald Trump, President Lula da Silva has urged Trump to “think as an inhabitant of the planet Earth. There is no other place to live.”