Deals, new targets and the hand of God at COP29

Climate has been firmly in the headlines these past few days.

Well, over the past week. Since President-elect Donald Trump swept the board in the US election, one of the main talking points in the media has been what action the US may take to row back on its environmental targets and commitments.

Many other nations have sought to remain positive, while scientific experts have been far less so. But all that comes as other world leaders, politicians and opinion-formers - and far fewer corporate leaders this time - have been descending on Azerbaijani capital Baku for the COP29 summit.

Early this week, the landmark COP deal was done: the signing of a carbon market standards agreement that is seen as the centrepiece of a United Nations-backed initiative to finance major international projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The accord is widely seen as having the teeth for committing larger western nations to levels of investment that will fund a progressive transition to cleaner economies, in lieu of whether the US opts to withdraw from the Paris Agreement again.

But the action in Baku, and the potential US action to come, have put London and Washington on something of a collision course, according to Politico, with the Prime Minister Keir Starmer having previewed a new UK target of reducing emissions by 81 per cent by 2035, from 1990 levels.

Even China has lent some weight to the political pressure on the incoming US administration to stand alongside other nations in building on climate commitments, with what the Financial Times called a “thinly veiled swipe” around multilateral emissions collaboration.

Yet COP29 also drew headlines for what many will see as the wrong reasons this week, with Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev branding fossil fuels a “gift from God” in outlining their value to the world in his opening speech, in a less thinly veiled swipe at detractors who criticise his country’s economic reliance on oil and gas.

"As a president of COP29 of course, we will be a strong advocate for green transition, and we are doing it. But at the same time, we must be realistic," he said.

Not all green transition advocates are made equal, it seems.

The summit will continue into next week, when the focus will likely shift to the list of agreements that will need to be finalised or supported in principle in order to finance the transition to lower-carbon economies that achieving the UN’s headline targets will necessitate.

The signs look fairly bright. A group of financial institutions, including the World Bank, announced a joint goal of increasing funding to $120 billion by 2030, a significant increase on what the same organisations already committed to last year.

Even so, whatever momentum is created with new pledges and agreements is likely to be overshadowed by the venue, which continues to attract unwelcome headlines. The Wall Street Journal’s perhaps encapsulates the sentiment best: Welcome to Baku, a City Built on Oil Hosting the World’s Climate Conference.