Contributed by Robert Lyman © 2024. Robert Lyman’s bio can be read here.

COP29, the twenty ninth conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change was held in Baku, Azerbaijan and concluded on November 24, 2024. Over 55,000 people attended the conference. While its agenda covered a broad range of subjects, the principal focus was the consideration of proposals relating to climate finance; that is, the proposed establishment of a new collective goal on the financial assistance that a small group of developed countries will make to developing countries to aid their climate mitigation and adaptation efforts.

The decision on this subject notably includes the following points:

  • Acknowledgement that the “costed needs”, as identified in the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) of the developing countries for mitigation, are estimated at USD 455-584 billion annually and those for adaptation are estimated at USD 215-387 billion annually up until 2030;
  • A call on “all actors” to work together to enable the scaling up of financing to developing country Parties for climate action from all public and private sources to at least USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035;
  • A decision to set a goal, with developed countries taking the lead, of at least USD 300 billion per year by 2035 for developing countries;
  • Encouragement of developing country Parties (like China) to make contributions on a voluntary basis, while affirming that such contributions would not affect the donor Party’s recipient status; and
  • Affirmation that the scaled-up financial resources should aim to achieve a balance between adaptation and mitigation.

There are no legal commitments and no penalties for non-compliance. The agreement offers no statements of principles as to how the payments will be divided by donor country or by recipient country. It does not limit or guide the rate at which the “scaling up” will occur. In fact, it only establishes new aspirational statements about how much developed countries should pay. The “developed countries” are those that have been defined since the framework convention was negotiated in the 1991-1992 period as having a “historical responsibility” for higher GHG emissions, and includes several European countries, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

In spite of an eventual tripling of the goal for annual climate aid from that which applied from 2015 to 2025, representatives of many developing countries criticized the USD 300 billion per year figure as far too low. This will probably be addressed at length at COP30 in Brazil next year.

COP29 also agreed on the rules that will govern international carbon markets to facilitate country-to-country trading and to make a carbon crediting mechanism fully operational, including how registries will operate. A new mechanism, known as the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism, will be established and will include safeguards such as requiring any project seeking to benefit from the mechanism to obtain the agreement of indigenous peoples.

Every COP includes elaborate processes and reporting requirements imposed on the Parties. At COP29 the conference approved new and more elaborate requirements that countries submit Biennial Transparency Reports. The COP decision on matters relating to the least developed States including support for the establishment of National Adaptation Plans for these countries.

Finally, COP29 elevated the attention to gender and climate change, extending the enhanced Lima Work Program on Gender and Climate Change for another ten years, reaffirming the importance of gender equality and otherwise “enhancing gender mainstreaming”.