Talks cannot fail, says UK climate minister
Adam Morton
The UK secretary of state for energy security and net zero, Ed Miliband, spoke in the plenary today and focused on the risk of a backward step on mitigation in the draft text released this morning. He said:
“I’m afraid the text doesn’t yet meet the moment and the demands of this Cop. On mitigation, we see, as other colleagues have said, increasing disasters all around us. So in this context, standing still is retreat and the world will rightly judge us very harshly if this is the outcome. I’ve heard it said that our focus can be elsewhere on this Cop than mitigation, but that cannot possibly be the case when we see the evidence of the climate crisis in all of our countries. In particular, we know we have this task over the next year to set ambitious NDCs consistent with 1.5C and I’m afraid the text does in no way adequately reflect the burden on us all to do that.”
On climate finance, he said the UK was committed to an ambitious goal and neither of the two options presented in the text reflected what was needed to reach a “common ground, ambitious, deliverable goal which will make a genuine difference to the needs and interest of developing countries”.
He concluded: “We all have a task in the next two days to seek to find common ground. There are clearly wide differences between parties remaining, but we know that we cannot afford to fail at this Cop. We must bridge those differences and for our part in the UK we stand ready to do that.”
Key events
Dharna Noor
UN climate summits tend to run into overtime, sometimes lasting long into the weekend. Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, says that’s a real problem for many negotiators.
“A lot of us, we don’t have the luxury of extending [our trips], paying for tickets to change, paying for additional hotel rooms,” she said. “Most countries like mine, we can’t do that, so it’s very hard if it gets pushed.”
Stege spent much of the morning trying to digest this morning’s newly released draft text.
“The text we have now neither secures 1.5 [degrees C of warming above pre-industrial levels] nor gives me or the Marshall Islands the finance it needs to deal with a world that at the moment is on track to warm by 2.7 degrees,” she said. “It’s not a starting point that works.”
It’s time to get down to business, she said.
“Rubber’s at the road,” said Stege. “The time is now. We gotta work.”
Adam Morton
As delegates wrangle over the big tension points of this year’s Cop, countries are also fighting over who will host the Cop in two year’s time. (Brazil is already confirmed as next year’s host.) My colleague Adam Morton has broken down the debate here.
Australia’s plan to host a major UN climate summit in 2026 has hit a Turkish roadblock. It is unclear how long it will last.
The Albanese government had expected that its bid to co-host the Cop31 summit in partnership with Pacific island nations – a Labor promise since before it won power in 2022 – would be agreed by now, as the UN climate talks in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku approach their final stages.
A decision this week would give Australia and its island partners two years to prepare for what is a huge undertaking, hosting tens of thousands of people and leading the negotiations between nearly 200 countries over what should be done to combat and survive the greatest threat facing people and the planet.
The bid for what its backers call “the Pacific Cop” has the support of nearly all of a group of 29 largely western European countries that are responsible for the decision this year (hosting rights are shared between five country groups on a rotational basis). Eleven – including the UK, Germany, France, the US and Canada – have expressed their backing publicly, while it is understood 12 have offered private support.
But decision-making at the UN works by consensus. And Turkey – the only other country vying to host Cop31 – is resisting pressure for it to leave the race.
The annual Cops – short for “Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change” – are the major event on the climate diplomacy calendar, with negotiations between government officials running alongside a massive trade fair for green industries.
It is a frustrating and flawed process, but its supporters say the Cop system has led to progress amid its stumbles – most notably the landmark 2015 Paris agreement, which helped boost green energy investment. Climate activist and business organisations believe hosting a local Cop could have a similar galvanising effect in fossil fuel-reliant Australia.
There had been an expectation from some Australians earlier this year that the Cop31 rights was close to a done deal. But in the lead-up to Cop29 in Baku it became apparent that Turkey wasn’t planning to step aside.
Read the full analysis here.
Fiona Harvey
After the lead balloon of the draft texts, the host country, Azerbaijan, called governments into a special gathering to try to thrash out some of the differences before producing a new draft, expected later this evening.
This gathering, which started at noon and is expected to take a few hours, is being called a Qurultay – the name given to a “traditional gathering of Turkic tribal chieftains in which high-level collective decisions are taken under the leadership of the host”, according to a presidency spokesperson.
The tradition of having special meetings modelled on the traditional decision-making forums of the host country dates back to Cop17 in Durban in 2011, when negotiations stretched non-stop from the last Friday night (the supposed deadline for the talks) until the early hours of Sunday morning.
At that conference, the South African hosts tried to break the impasse with an “indaba” – a Zulu gathering of tribal elders to discuss thorny problems.
Indabas continued to be used, for instance at Paris, but some subsequent Cop hosts have used their own traditional meeting formats. At Cop28 last year in United Arab Emirates, it was known as a “majlis”.
Strangely, there was none at Cop26 in Glasgow – perhaps Nicola Sturgeon wasn’t consulted, for surely a traditional Scottish gathering would have been irresistible? A pity, because a proper hooley is just what this Cop needs.
UK politicians clash over country’s commitment to climate targets
In the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has hit out at the lack of Tory support for climate targets and said it shows “just how far the party has fallen”.
“It’s a shame,” he said. “When Cop was in Scotland, there was a real unity across the house about the importance of tackling one of the most central issues of our time.”
The comment comes after Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch described Starmer’s targets to cut planet-heating pollution as “yet another example of putting short term publicity above long term planning.”
She said:
When will he publish the plans to achieve this new target?
Where this government does the right thing, we will back it. Yet, where it puts politics before people and press releases before practicality, we will hold them to account.
It is time for politicians to tell the truth, and it is time the prime minister provided some substance to back this costly rhetoric.
The UK announced it will cut emissions by 81% compared with 1990 levels by 2035, as part of its journey to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.
For more on this story, head over to our UK politics blog.
Talks cannot fail, says UK climate minister
Adam Morton
The UK secretary of state for energy security and net zero, Ed Miliband, spoke in the plenary today and focused on the risk of a backward step on mitigation in the draft text released this morning. He said:
“I’m afraid the text doesn’t yet meet the moment and the demands of this Cop. On mitigation, we see, as other colleagues have said, increasing disasters all around us. So in this context, standing still is retreat and the world will rightly judge us very harshly if this is the outcome. I’ve heard it said that our focus can be elsewhere on this Cop than mitigation, but that cannot possibly be the case when we see the evidence of the climate crisis in all of our countries. In particular, we know we have this task over the next year to set ambitious NDCs consistent with 1.5C and I’m afraid the text does in no way adequately reflect the burden on us all to do that.”
On climate finance, he said the UK was committed to an ambitious goal and neither of the two options presented in the text reflected what was needed to reach a “common ground, ambitious, deliverable goal which will make a genuine difference to the needs and interest of developing countries”.
He concluded: “We all have a task in the next two days to seek to find common ground. There are clearly wide differences between parties remaining, but we know that we cannot afford to fail at this Cop. We must bridge those differences and for our part in the UK we stand ready to do that.”
Damian Carrington has this summary from the plenary session at Cop29 where countries are still lining up to express their unhappiness with the state of the negotiations.
It’s extremely clear the new negotiating texts have pleased no countries – “deeply disappointing” was the most common response. That is not necessarily a problem at this stage with 36 hours to go – Cop negotiations always go to the wire.
But the obstacles do look daunting. There is still no number on the table for the all-important climate finance that is the key goal of Cop29. Developing nations are demanding $1.3tn a year to cope with the climate crisis they did not cause. The rich nations have yet to propose a number.
There is also a lot of anger across countries on work to cut climate-heating emissions, in particular re-affirming and developing the pledge made at the last Cop to “transition away from fossil fuels”. Progress on this has met with “silence or complete blocking”, said Peru’s delegate, with Saudi Arabia having been earlier named as the culprits, as well as allies such as Bolivia.
Dharna Noor
Many at Cop29 are stressed about the prospect of reaching a climate finance goal by the summit’s conclusion.
But Todd Stern, Paris agreement negotiator for the US, is more concerned about how the negotiators will address climate mitigation, or the phasing out of greenhouse gas emissions.
Last year at Cop28, negotiators agreed to “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”.
There has been a “real effort” on the part of China, as well as Saudi Arabia and the other Like-Minded Developing Countries negotiating bloc, to “bury” that text and therefore limit ambition on this front, Stern told the Guardian.
He hopes to see stronger text on mitigation in the global stocktake – or the required assessment of the collective progress on Paris commitments.
“It’s kind of ridiculous to think we’d have a focus on how the [global stocktake] is doing that doesn’t include mitigation,” said Stern, who served as climate envoy to President Barack Obama.
He is not panicking, however, about the climate finance negotiations.
“I read the text this morning, and I mean, it’s kind of a mess,” said Stern. “But it’s not like that’s shockingly different from other Cops.”
Hi, Ajit Niranjan here – I’m taking over from Matthew Taylor for the rest of the day. Please keep sending us your tips, requests and feedback as we head into the final stages of the summit. We really appreciate it!
Never forget what is at stake, says UN Secretary-General
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has arrived at Cop29 to give the negotiations some much needed impetus. My colleague Damian Carrington has sent this summary of Guterres’s message to delegates.
The UN secretary general António Guterres, long outspoken on the climate crisis and the fossil fuels that drive it, often returns to Cops near the end to read the riot act to wrangling countries. He’s done the same today, with the negotiations at a fraught stage:
“COP29 is now down to the wire [but] failure is not an option. It might jeopardise both near-term action, and ambition in new national climate action plans, with potential devastating impacts as irreversible tipping points are getting closer. A surge in finance is essential.
Amidst geopolitical divisions and uncertainties, the world needs countries to come together. So, I appeal directly to ministers and negotiators: soften hard lines. Navigate a path through your differences. And keep your eyes on the bigger picture. Never forget what is at stake – to help move us closer to securing a decent world for all humanity.
This is not a zero-sum game. Finance is not a hand-out. It’s an investment against the devastation that unchecked climate chaos will inflict on us all. It’s a down-payment on a safer, more prosperous future for every nation on Earth.”
More from my colleague Patrick Greenfield, who is still following the plenary where countries give their formal response to the draft text.
Next up is Pakistan
“An ambitious outcome on the New Collective Quantified Goal [NCQG] is specifically important for us due to the impact of flooding which devastated the countries,” says the representative, bemoaning the lack of a specific number.
“We do not agree to any specific allocation to a specific group of countries as it is unfair.” She said Pakistan must have unconditional access to money.
Zambia, stealing Yemen’s spot
On the NCQG, Zambia says they are “extremely concerned and sad” that there is no number given in the text.
“We wish to reiterate that they need a number that reflects the need of countries to develop climate change.”
The required resources are in trillions of dollars and that the $1.3tn per year to 2030 are needed, they said.
“We are counting on your leadership” he concludes. “We want Baku to deliver on its expectation that it’s a finance Cop.”
New Zealand
Environment minister Simon Watts says: “Across the board, NZ is deeply frustrated with the pace of progress being made. Many texts presented over night do not move us forward. It is unacceptable that mitigation outcomes are not being taken up.”
“It is not acceptable to restrict the scope of this dialogue to cherry-picking outcomes.”
Watts says that the text only reflects two extreme outcomes on the NCQG and is not bringing countries together. “Multiple rapid iteration are going to be needed,” he says, adding: “We are still optimistic that we can land a successful outcome”
Germany steps up now
Jennifer Morgan, the climate envoy: “We are deeply disappointed with the text on mitigation.” It offers “no progress” she says. “This cannot be our response to the suffering of millions of people around the world.”
“The world needs to know where we stand and what we are doing – individually and collectively – to implement the GST outcome on mitigation.”
“We want to see clear messages here on the next NDC – absolute economy wide emission reductions.”
Cop29 issues statement defending the draft text
The Cop29 presidency has issued a statement defending the draft text that came out overnight and which has received widespread criticism this morning for not containing a concrete figure for climate finance.
The statement says: “The next iteration – to be released tonight – will be shorter and will contain numbers based on our view of possible landing zones for consensus.”
Here it is in full:
The COP29 Presidency has published a first set of substantially streamlined texts on critical mandates, including the NCQG. These documents come as a package with finance at the centre, they recall and take forward the outcomes of the first Global Stocktake, and they contain options to address the key concerns of all groups.
They are not final. The COP29 Presidency’s door is always open, and we welcome any bridging proposals that the Parties wish to present. We are spending the day engaging with everyone.
On the NCQG, we did not believe that presenting a wide range of numbers for the financial goal would be useful in this text. The next iteration – to be released tonight – will be shorter and will contain numbers based on our view of possible landing zones for consensus.
We are now in the endgame and we believe that a breakthrough in Baku is in sight. Everyone must engage with the texts and with each other so that they are ready to make the ambitious choices we all need.
Dharna Noor
In a small press gaggle on Thursday, US officials declined to comment on the draft texts released at Cop29 this morning and instead touted the accomplishments of the Biden administration.
“When we came into office there were zero commercial offshore wind projects in federal waters off the United States,” said Laura Daniel-Davis, acting deputy secretary of the country’s interior department. Now the nation’s first ten have been approved, with a total capacity of more than 15 gigawatts of “clean, renewable energy,” she said.
Rick Spinrad, under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, said the administration have been “extraordinary environmental stewards while we are fostering economic development.
“And that’s not necessarily always been the case, said Spinrad, who is also the administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
They said the progress toward decarbonization will continue under Trump, echoing the studiously optimistic rhetoric we have heard from US officials since Cop29 began.
“Denying climate change is not going to make it go away, and if the US government does not continue to lead, we know in the United States that states and tribes and local communities will,” said Daniel-Davis. “It is truly up to every single one of us to move our collective work forward to the benefit of workers, communities, families, for a safer planet for all of us.”
For more on US’ officials response to the Trump administration at Cop29, check out my story from this week.
Climate finance – what is it and what is the background?
Today’s discussions are centring on climate finance – in simple terms how much money rich countries, largely responsible for driving the climate crisis, will give to poorer nations to cope with the reality of the crisis and to develop in a sustainable way.
As the negotiations roll on here are a couple of articles by Fiona Harvey explaining the background [and some of the endless jargon these conferences throw up]