Commentary: Are COP climate talks still relevant? That’s the wrong question
The United Nations’ annual climate talks were once the engine of planetary progress. Today, they are struggling to prove they still matter, says CNA’s Jack Board.
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BANGKOK: It was probably when the president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev stood up and called oil and gas a “gift from God” that it felt like something was truly broken in climate diplomacy.
Mr Aliyev was welcoming leaders and delegates to COP29, the annual United Nations climate conference that his country hosted in November last year. Azerbaijan was meant to shepherd global progress on decarbonisation and green finance for adaptation to a fast-heating planet. Instead, the president seized the moment to promote his country’s own resources.
It set the tone for a summit marked by political posturing and widening rifts between the developed and developing worlds.
It also seemed to be a moment that marked the decline of a golden period of climate cooperation that had stood since 2015, when 196 parties signed the Paris Agreement. The landmark multilateral deal has set the direction of climate action ever since.
What has emerged is a diplomatic landscape defined by division, self-interest and geopolitical turbulence – a world the COP process seems ill-equipped to manage.
With the political difficulties of COP29 in Azerbaijan still fresh, and Brazil now facing challenges in Belem for the ongoing COP30, there are existential questions about whether the format of talks can still deliver meaningful progress for the planet.
After years covering climate negotiations on the ground in Glasgow, Sharm el-Sheikh, Dubai and Baku, I’ve seen these talks blend diplomacy, spectacle and frustration. It’s easier to be cynical than hopeful, but there are many signs of a process that is becoming more unwieldy year on year.
ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT OF AN ENVIRONMENT SUMMIT
For one, there is an unfortunate irony in the environmental footprint of a conference devoted to saving the planet.
Brazil, now the stewards of global climate action for the next year, wanted to bring decision-makers to the front lines of the planetary crisis. Doing this has been a logistical nightmare.
The moving roadshow of climate negotiations – these days featuring tens of thousands of financiers, lobbyists, think tank representatives and activists – has descended upon the Amazon rainforest. There are real concerns about difficult travel plans and exorbitant expenses for attendees.
Many delegations have cut their numbers to fit the limited accommodation, with cruise ships and even “love hotels” pressed into service. Some rental prices were reported to have inflated by nearly 10,000 per cent over the summit period. The Associated Press found an apartment for eight people in an upscale neighbourhood of Belem that cost US$446,595 for a two-week stay.
Again, the voices of the poorest and most desperately affected by climate change are blocked from access due to the high costs.
At the same time, it is charged with urgent climate leadership, Brazil is also constructing a major highway through protected parts of the Amazon and advocating for the exploration for oil near the mouth of the Amazon River.
It is evidence of prevailing attitudes about climate policy that are full of inconsistencies.
NO-SHOWS IN BRAZIL
This could perhaps have been justified if offset by the COPs reconverting ambition into tangible action. None of what is pledged or decided at these summits is set in stone.
The climate accords are not enforceable and countries have endlessly shrugged their figurative shoulders at calls for greater commitments or faster action. Most countries in the world missed the deadline for submitting their climate goals for the next decade, one of the key requirements ahead of COP30.
The COP summits also no longer attract the leaders of the world’s most powerful and polluting countries. The leaders of China, India, Russia and Japan are no-shows in Brazil.
The United States has gone even further, declaring its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement itself, to join only Iran, Libya and Yemen as non-signatories when that process finalises next year. President Donald Trump has not just been outwardly hostile to climate action, but is also actively undermining the actions of others: In October, his administration successfully pressured the International Maritime Organization not to proceed with the first global carbon tax on the shipping industry.
That stance has fuelled fears of a spreading climate-denial contagion, further eroding consensus, which is a requirement for COP declarations.
CALLS FOR REFORM, NOT REMOVAL
There have been increasing calls to streamline or dramatically alter the process, given what is at stake.
The world is on track for a temperature rise of 2.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Even though that would be a far better outcome than under a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario, it still leaves humanity horribly exposed to far worse climate-charged disasters than we are already experiencing.
Former UN chief Ban Ki-moon was one of many luminaries who co-signed a letter to call for an overhaul of climate negotiations last year.
“Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity,” the letter stated.
It called for the exclusion of nations unwilling to act in good faith and stricter implementation goals instead of new distant targets that were easy to procrastinate on. And it called for more frequent and scaled-back COPs instead of the huge annual gathering.
It was not a rejection of COP but an impetus for reform.
STILL THE BEST PLATFORM FOR CLIMATE VOICES
If COP is to prove its worth this time around, it surely must serve the parties who continue to place so much trust in it.
Think of the small island nations, for example, that hold less weight on the international stage, who utilise COP as a place to amplify their voice. Going forward, Southeast Asian nations too will be heavily reliant on climate finance negotiated for COP to achieve its climate goals.
For those nations most under threat, more opportunities to tell their story and be heard by those with the means to help could not be a bad thing, under the big COP circus tent or otherwise.
I have stood on the shrinking coastline in Tuvalu, a tiny Pacific island nation forecast to be the first country to disappear because of climate change.
For communities on the brink, these climate negotiations absolutely must work. Otherwise, the future for them is unimaginable.
Collective negotiation has already changed the world. Trillions of dollars are now flowing into clean technologies. Governments have rolled out extensive national climate policy frameworks, while net-zero pledges have rapidly multiplied across the global corporate sector.
Whether this would have happened at such a scale and pace without the UN’s guiding pathway is unlikely.
Perhaps, as Rueanna Haynes, head of diplomacy at Climate Analytics, told me, the expectation for these summits needs to be of incremental change, rather than something transformational.
Whether that is an outcome the world can afford is another matter.
Jack Board is a senior correspondent at CNA.
