Insights and an in-depth analysis of all the key outcomes in Baku_both inside and outside the COP by Carbon Brief
At COP29, which was wrapped up later than scheduled, more than 33 hours from Saturday night, developed nations have agreed to help channel “at least” US $300bn a year into developing countries by 2035 to support their efforts to deal with climate change. However, the new climate-finance goal—agreed along with a range of other issues at the COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan—has left developing countries bitterly disappointed.
They were united in calling for developed countries to raise $1.3tn a year in climate finance. In the end, negotiators agreed on a looser call to raise $1.3tn each year from a wide range of sources, including private investment, by 2035. Some countries, including India and Nigeria, accused the COP29 presidency of pushing the deal through without their proper consent, following chaotic last-minute negotiations.
Countries failed to reach an agreement on how the outcomes of last year’s “global stocktake”, including a key pledge to transition away from fossil fuels, should be taken forward – instead shunting the decision to COP30 next year in Brazil. They did manage to find agreement on the remaining sections of Article 6 on carbon markets, meaning all elements of the Paris Agreement have been finalised nearly 10 years after it was signed.
Negotiations were overshadowed by the reelection of Donald Trump, who has promised to roll back climate action and take the world’s biggest historical emitter out of the Paris Agreement once again. COP president Azerbaijan —a country that sources two-thirds of its government revenue from fossil fuels—faced accusations of conflict of interest and malpractice, with one minister labelling its hosting style “deplorable”.
Formal Negotiations, Azerbaijani leadership
Azerbaijan was announced as the host of COP29 towards the end of COP28 in Dubai. The COP presidency is rotated around the world over a five-year cycle, with Azerbaijan being chosen this time to represent the eastern European region.
The decision came later than normal. Russia had vetoed any EU member in eastern Europe taking up the presidency, leaving just Azerbaijan and Armenia as viable options. Armenia initially vetoed Azerbaijan based on the long-standing conflict between the two countries. Eventually, Armenia withdrew its candidacy and lifted its veto on Azerbaijan, in exchange for the release of 32 Armenian prisoners. (Armenia has since been chosen to host the COP17 biodiversity summit in 2026.)
Carbon Brief analysis found that more than 65,000 delegates registered to attend COP29, with Azerbaijan having the largest delegation totalling 2,229 people. (See the analysis for a full breakdown of who attended COP, including, for the first time at a COP, analysis of which media outlets sent the largest teams of journalists.)
The appointment of a “petrostate” as the host of a climate summit—for the third year in a row following talks in Egypt and Dubai—immediately sparked backlash. Climate Home News reported in May that Azerbaijan pumps less than 1% of the world’s oil and gas, but has an economy that is heavily reliant on fuel production. Fossil fuels make up more than 90% of all exports and two-thirds of government revenue.
On 8 November, ahead of the summit’s opening, a Global Witness investigation reported on by BBC News produced footage of the chief executive of COP29 appearing to be open to using his position of host of the summit to make future oil and gas deals. In the clip shared by Global Witness, Elnur Soltanov spoke to a man posing as an investor about opportunities to invest in the country’s gas expansion, adding: “We will have a certain amount of oil and natural gas being produced, perhaps forever.”
The COP29 presidency did not comment on the investigation at the time it was published or when asked about it in daily press briefings. A separate Global Witness investigation found that at least 1,700 fossil-fuel executives had registered to attend COP29, lower than the record in Dubai but still larger than most party delegations.
On the summit’s first day, the presidency attempted to repeat the UAE’s COP28 day-one “win” on loss and damage by pushing through a deal on Article 6.4, which governs international carbon trading. (See: Article 6.) However, Drilled reported that many parties felt the fast adoption process did not allow time for proper consultations, with one negotiator describing it as a “horrible precedent”.
The summit’s first day also saw the presidency land in a lengthy fight over what should be on COP’s official agenda. The fight reflected the key battlelines at the summit: a new climate finance goal; and how, where or even whether to carry forward COP28’s deal on “transitioning away from fossil fuels”. (See: UAE dialogue and the global stocktake.)
At the opening of the World Leaders Climate Action Summit on the conference’s second day, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev brought renewed focus on the country’s fossil-fuel interests by using his intervention to describe oil and gas as “a gift of god”.
Aliyev also criticised “western fake news” about his country’s emissions and chose not to announce its new UN climate plan, as widely anticipated. This is despite Aliyev’s government going to “bizarre” lengths to prepare Baku for COP29, reported Bloomberg. This included clearing public areas and roads by moving parliamentary elections, shutting schools and universities and ordering two-thirds of the workforce to work from home, according to the publication.
The next day, the presidency suffered two headline-grabbing diplomatic blows. The government of Argentina, led by right-wing populist Javier Milei, decided to withdraw its delegation, reported the Latin American publication Climática. There was speculation that the move was intended to woo incoming US president Donald Trump, but this was never confirmed.
In addition, France’s top climate official, ecological transition minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher, told the French Senate that she would not be attending the second week of the summit to participate in negotiations following a diplomatic spat with Azerbaijan.
Towards the end of the first week, senior figures including former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres wrote in an open letter that the COP process is “no longer fit for purpose” and that countries that do not support the phasing out of fossil fuels should not be able to take up the presidency. Figueres later distanced herself from the letter in a LinkedIn post, describing the COP process as “an essential and irreplaceable vehicle for supporting the multilateral, multisectoral, systemic change we urgently need”.
When asked by a journalist to respond to the idea that the COP process was no longer fit for purpose during a presidency press conference, Azerbaijani lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev said: “It’s better than any alternative, taking into account we don’t have any alternative process. Multilateralism, yes, we agree it’s under pressure. There are a lot of challenges and external complexities.”
The second week
At the start of the summit’s second week, focus turned to the presidency’s role in steering the negotiations. Speaking in plenary, COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev announced that Azerbaijan did not intend to produce a “cover text” for COP29 – a frontpage-style document summing up the main outcomes of the summit.
Many had hoped a cover text would be produced in order to provide a home for the key pledge on “transitioning away from fossil fuels” agreed at COP28. In the end, a reference to this pledge was included in a draft on the UAE dialogue, but countries failed to sign off on the document at the end of COP. (See: UAE dialogue and the global stocktake.)
Babayev also confirmed ministerial pairs for taking the negotiations forward, and announced that Brazil – next year’s COP host – and the UK – the last developed country to host the talks – had been chosen to help wrangle negotiations towards consensus. The day after the announcement, a UK negotiator said that they were unsure of what their role in helping to guide the negotiations was meant to be.
Towards the end of the summit, it was confirmed that the UK and Brazil acted like a ministerial pairing, holding consultations with parties on how they thought the “balance” of texts agreed should look. The UK and Brazil communicated the results of the consultations to the presidency, but received little feedback, Carbon Brief understands.
Babayev also used his interventions at the start of the summit’s second week to urge parties to work faster to make progress in the negotiations. The Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) reported that the presidency “set firm timelines” for several negotiation issues, but that many parties felt these were unrealistic, with one negotiator rejecting the presidency’s schedule as “arbitrary”.
A set of texts were eventually released on Thursday morning, including a streamlined proposal for the new climate-finance goal. It contained two options for how the goal might be formulated—branded “extreme” and “not representative” of developed or developing country views by one negotiator—and an “X” in the place of a proposed monetary figure, which incensed many poorer nations. (See: New climate finance goal.)
In a bid to address concerns, the presidency held a six-hour “Qurultay” meeting where parties were invited to air their views on the texts face-to-face – likely inspired by the “Majlis” held at COP28. On Friday—the summit’s final scheduled day—the first presidency draft of the climate-finance text was released, including for the first time a monetary figure. This text also received near universal disapproval.
Negotiations dragged into Saturday. The presidency held lengthy consultations with parties all day, which fast began to unravel when two major developing country groupings—the least developed countries (LDCs) and the alliance of small island states (AOSIS)—staged a temporary walkout over the proposed finance deal and feelings of exclusion from the negotiation process.
The breakdown in negotiations sparked frenzied rumours that COP may end without a deal. Many drew potential comparisons to the COP16 biodiversity summit in Cali earlier this month. Those talks had finished without a finance deal after a large number of developing-country delegates were forced to catch flights home, leaving parties without the “quorum” needed to reach consensus.
At this time, the presidency’s possible conflict of interest and failure to guide parties towards consensus came under sharp scrutiny. Canada environment minister Steven Guilbeault told the National Observer that the presidency’s “lack of ambition” was “deplorable”.
Text changes expose‘
Pressure on Azerbaijan intensified when the Guardian reported on documents suggesting the presidency had allowed a Saudi Arabian delegate to make direct changes to a negotiating text being circulated on Saturday. One expert said that allowing preferential access to Saudi Arabi—a country accused of blocking references to fossil fuels from being included in COP29 negotiations—risked “placing this entire COP in jeopardy”, according to the newspaper.
While intense conversations about the texts continued into Saturday, the presidency attempted to push on by beginning the final plenary_first turning to approving non-controversial technical items in front of confused party delegates. In the meantime, Bloomberg reported that the US, the UK and AOSIS came to a behind-the-scenes agreement on a new draft version of the climate-finance text.
The presidency eventually dropped draft decision texts for the key negotiating issues in the early hours of Sunday morning. The final plenary resumed, where the climate-finance text was adopted – sparking furious condemnation from developing countries, including India and Nigeria, who described the outcome as a “joke”.
The presidency “clearly decided it would be OK to ‘stage manage’ the adoption” over India and Nigeria’s objections, whereas other interventions had not formally “objected”, said Dr Joanna Depledge, an expert on the international climate negotiations at the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance. She told Carbon Brief:
“The key thing is that NCQG was only objected to by India and Nigeria (which the presidency would have known). So, without a critical mass of countries or groups objecting, the presidency clearly decided it would be ok to ‘stage manage’ the adoption.”
The presidency attempted to reach consensus on the UAE dialogue – the text containing a reference to last year’s agreement to transition away from fossil fuels – but this ended in failure. The text will need to be taken up by parties once again at COP30 in Brazil.
COP29 eventually ended at 5.31am on Sunday 24 November, 35 hours over time.
Read the full article at Carbon Brief.