COP29 was all about the money
16:27 Share

Hi guys, it's Hannah Gelbart here. Welcome to this episode of What in the World from the BBC World Service. This year's climate summit, COP29, is over and it was all about money.

For two weeks, world leaders were in Baku in Azerbaijan to agree a deal on funding to tackle climate change. And that deal was meant to be made on Friday, but the talks ran on into the weekend and they finally ended at 3am on Sunday. And even though they did eventually agree, some countries are not happy with the outcome, like India. This document is nothing more than an optical illusion.

This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face. So today we're going to unpack what happened at COP29. And you're going to hear from two climate activists talking about why they feel the world is divided on climate change. Now, some people thought that Azerbaijan was an odd choice to host a climate change conference.

Oil and gas accounts for about half of the country's economy and more than 90% of its exports. That's according to US data. And early on at COP, Azerbaijan's president called oil and gas a gift from God, which raised quite a few eyebrows.

So let's hear more about the conference now from our climate specialist Georgina Ranard who has been at COP. Hi Georgina. Hi Hannah. So I understand it's been a long weekend and at the end of every COP the aim is to have a deal that every country agrees to. What happened at the end of this COP?

You're right. It's been a long weekend. This one actually ran 33 hours late after a lot of drama, delegations walking out of talks. For a while, we thought the whole thing was going to collapse with no agreement. But in the end, they did come to some sort of deal. So lots of developing nations came here to Baku asking for a lot more cash to help them prevent climate change and deal with its effects. And we're

And in the end, they got a promise of $300 billion a year up until 2035, which sounds like a very large sum, but it's not as much as they wanted, which was at least $500 billion from developed nation governments.

They asked for, in principle, $1.3 trillion, and that's what the UN says is needed for these countries to help them change their economies and deal with climate change. That number, $1.3 trillion, was agreed in principle, but it wasn't committed to. And the deal was also quite weak on fossil fuels, on moving away from fossil fuels, and that was a really big point of argument which caused a row earlier in the week. And what were some of the other criticisms of the deal?

So the deal was passed, but as soon as the COP president allowed it to go through India, the representative, she stood up and she launched one of the angriest speeches I've seen at COP actually saying that it was unacceptable because it didn't fully address the needs of India.

to help them prevent climate change and stop its effects. And then a number of other nations joined in. And basically their criticism is that it's too weak, it's not enough money. They say they need a lot more money and it's really far from the 500 billion and 1.3 trillion that they came to ask for. And they say that rich nations, developed nations like the UK, the EU, Australia, the US should pay more money because those countries are responsible for most of the emissions so far that cause climate change.

There's also a lot of unhappiness from those richer nations about weak language on fossil fuels. So they wanted much more progress on stopping the use of fossil fuels on oil, coal and gas, basically. And that was agreed last year, the last COP. But that language wasn't really there. And that's been pushed forward to the talks, which were going to happen next year in Brazil. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that some of the language wasn't as strong as people would have liked?

So you might remember that the beginning of these talks was overshadowed by the election of Donald Trump in the US. And the US are a really powerful player. But Donald Trump, who takes power in January, is a climate sceptic. And he has said he wants to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement, which is the landmark deal, which sort of governs all these talks and committed countries to tackling climate change. And so I think what was happening is people say that the US behind the scenes is

who were working for Joe Biden, the current president, they were sort of trying to future-proof the talks, as it were. So they were trying to lower how ambitious the deal would be, because they believe that once the US leaves the Paris Agreement, it will undermine a lot of the agreement. So in a way, the weaker the deal is, the more it could withstand lots of pressure in the future. What are some of the other big things that we can take away from this year's COP? It does sound like it was an unusual one. Yes, that's completely right. So

The fact that a large delegation of developing countries walked out, that hasn't happened for many years and really has only happened once before. And there was a real moment when we were running around, it was chaotic and people were saying this could really collapse. And I think that's a sign of how weak some of the

geopolitical alliances are in the world. We know the US is going to change its position on climate change. The EU was quite weak. So I think people are saying the entire sort of UN climate change talks process is quite weak at the moment. But there was also a lot of quite angry activists there who were more vocal than usual, partly, I think, because we're seeing more and more the effects of climate change. This year is on track to be the hottest yet.

We've seen terrible heat waves and floods around the world. So it's really sort of upping a lot of the emotion and the pressure at these talks at a time when they're quite weak because of conflicts going on in the world. There's a lot of weak economic issues. There's the US election. So it's an interesting time for these talks to happen. But some people are saying, well, at least they did actually come to a deal with

There were some similar talks last month about nature, UN talks about nature, and they actually collapsed without any deal. So some people are saying, well, they're hopeful and optimistic because at least the nations here came to some agreement. Georgina, you also spoke to two climate activists there before the event wrapped up.

I did. I had a brilliant conversation with a woman called Anushka Jain. She's 19. She lives in India, but studying in the UK. And another is Samuel Mue from Kenya, and he's 25. I think for me, this cop was more of like, yeah, of course, we're following negotiations and see how that goes. But we're keen to see, OK, fine, regardless of what they decide, how can we still keep the hope alive in our local communities? Because

We can't wait for them to decide, okay, about the money or whatever. We have to keep hope alive and we have to keep ensuring people at the local level are surviving and they're living life. It's been a really intense week. I honestly, right now, I'm feeling quite angry and upset because there's so little progress happening and I'm really concerned about what the future is going to look like, especially for the Global South because

For the Global South, this isn't just activism and it isn't just coming here for two weeks, having little chit chats with people and going back. For them, it's their entire lives because island nations are sinking, there's floods, Kenya has droughts and the Philippines have had lots of cyclones recently in a way that we've never seen before. As young people, it's so important to remember that we are the most impacted by this and the next 10-15 years of our lives

and hopefully beyond that are going to be so heavily impacted by what happens here and what's going to happen at these cops and it means so much to us it feels

like we're a bit dokenized and we're here for representation but we don't have any actual power and we see global leaders or activists older activists and things always talking about how oh young people are so inspiring and they're so hopeful but I think it's a bit unfair for us to bear the burden of the entire climate crisis because we're not the ones who created it and we're not the ones in positions of power. So some of the talk here is that well we may not decide everything this year but there's always next year which is in Brazil what do you think of that I

Firstly, we're losing a whole year, which in the climate crisis and the short timeline of the climate crisis is such a long time where we don't have any progress and we're not getting anywhere. And I also think this was a really important COP because it was a finance COP. And the point of the finance COP was to make some decisions about the actual monetary funds going to developing countries for this. Because as of now, developing countries and global south countries need $145 to $350 billion of funding.

a year per country. And that's only increasing the wealth inequality between global North and global South countries. At what point does it become, we need to act now and not next year or the year after that? I think it perpetuates the narrative of like, we have time, but we don't have time, right? It's like, yeah, we can always have, like there'll be cop, even a hundred, who even knows, right? But the question is like, can we make some progress, right? I think that's a goal is like,

Any progress matters at this point, right? So when you keep on pushing the cops, pushing and saying, yeah, we'll do this next time and next time, it's like, okay, fine. People are dying right now. And I think what now that calls for us as young people is to see how do we keep the momentum in between cops. Every day that we stall negotiations and every day that negotiations get stalled,

pushed back, that's another life or hundreds of lives that the global north is directly responsible for. Because the global south is often treated as a statistic, or oh, 5,000 people died in these floods in Nepal, or oh, 400 people died in this heat wave in New Delhi. And it's just a statistic, but it's so much more than that, because obviously people from the global south are real individuals with real lives who are losing families, their homes, their livelihoods.

And I think a big issue is that the global north is just too comfortable because, yes, for example, the UK has a heat wave once in a while in the summer, but people still have the capability to deal with that in some capacity in a way that the global south does not have. And also the UK is a much, much richer country. And there's obviously these legacies of colonialism that have created these systems and forced us to work this way. So there are definitely... The global south is owed a lot of money and a lot of help.

from the global north and not in like a mercy way or not in a we're doing this as charity but

it's a demand because we are owed it. I think everybody has a part to play. I think especially companies who are at the forefront of either polluting or causing waste, like what part are they playing in that? You know, I think it's about every person has a part to play because if you don't have a planet to live, then everybody's, everybody's business and everything they're doing vanishes. It's that person you go to dinner with and a large group of people who orders the most food and has the biggest bill and at the end says, let's split the bill. It's how I would kind of, how I think about it. What a,

What effects of climate change do you see where you come from? I'm going to be heading back to New Delhi in a few weeks and I'm so scared because the air quality is abysmal, quite honestly. Considering the fact there's so much wealth inequality in India, that's really dangerous because obviously the wealthy can stay indoors and turn on air conditioning and again don't really have to worry about it in the same way as people who are homeless or live on the streets or might not have air conditioning do. And that wealth inequality is only going to increase and I see that every day when I'm in Delhi in the summer.

I think in Kenya and I think a lot of Africa, like the effects are so real. And it's like in April we had like extreme flooding. Madness.

A month later, we have drought. The shift is so drastic. So I think that's a very visible thing. I think for me, when I look at the climate conversation, I look at it from a very interconnected aspect that it's just not about the weather events, but how the weather events affect education, right? So that means learners were, like schools were closed for a bit. People stopped learning, right? It looks at the intersection of gender, right? You know, how does that increase the gender-based violence at homes? I look at connections to migration as well.

Guys are forced to move because of climate. So I think the climate thing is bigger than just the weather events. It's about how it affects our lives to the health. People are actually calling the next COP a youth COP. That's the one happening in Brazil and Anushka and Samuel are probably going to be there. Georgina, what can we expect from the next COP?

Yes, that's right. So the talk is that the COP next year in the Amazon, it should be in Belém, which is the first time there will be UN climate talks in the Amazon, will be a much bigger, much more ambitious COP with lots of decisions that weren't really taken here, moved to next year. So there should be more talk of that finance, maybe getting more agreement on how to deliver that money to help countries prevent climate change, and maybe about how to

create progress on cutting fossil fuels. But I think it should be a much more sort of powerful COP. The president of Brazil, President Lula, has said in the past that he wants Brazil to be a climate leader and we're expecting lots and lots of people to go. It's a huge symbol of what is happening in the world, how climate change is affecting the world, because we're seeing loss of biodiversity,

And of course, the Amazon is such an important layer in terms of it being called the lungs of the planet because it soaks up so much carbon.

So I think it will be a very sort of exciting and dynamic COP with perhaps some quite big decisions coming out of there. And it will also be the 30th COP, so 30 years since the UN Climate Convention was agreed. And Georgina, before you go, as our resident climate expert, you have been on What in the World loads of times. Can I ask you, can I put you on the spot, what is the favourite story that you have done for us?

I think my favourite story is probably the story about global bleaching of coral because coral are such a fascinating creature but so important in climate change. And if you're listening and you want to hear more of that, you can find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Georgina, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Hannah. Thank you.

Although it does sound a bit gloomy, there are some positives of how the world is currently dealing with climate change. Jordan Dunbar is from the BBC's Climate Question podcast and he's come up with a list of his top three climate success stories.

My first bit of progress is solar power because the price of solar power has dropped massively. It's been absolutely incredible. So 1975 when they first put a price on it, it was 131 American dollars per watt of electricity. In the year 2000 that fell to $6.41 cents.

This year, it's 31 cents. It's not even a dollar. That's an incredible drop in price. And because it's so much cheaper, we're seeing it spread everywhere. China, the USA and India are the top three solar producers. And we now produce 40 times more electricity from the sun than we did in 2010. 40 times more. And it's getting cheaper. So that number is only going to get bigger.

My second bit of progress is on wind power. So back in 2010, we produced around 345 terawatts of wind energy. A terawatt is a trillion watts. That's an incredible amount of electricity already. So 345 back in 2010. Last year, we produced more than seven times that, nearly 2,400 trillion watts of wind energy.

and as we build more of it as it gets easier to build and we put it in windier places that number is only going to get bigger and we're only going to get more and more of that clean energy

Our third bit of progress is electric vehicles. Cars, trucks and buses. China is the world's largest vehicle market. They sell well over 8 million vehicles every single year. And last year 54% of those vehicles were either fully electric or plug-in hybrid. So meaning they run on electricity most of the time.

That's absolutely incredible for such a big market. And it's not just China. India's had a rise of 40% in the sales of electric vehicles. And globally, 20% of all vehicles sold last year were electric. That again is going to go up as they get cheaper. And there's more charging infrastructure along our roads and motorways. So pretty soon, most cities are going to be cleaner, quieter and healthier.

Those bits of progress are really important. But the other really important thing is we need more of them and we need it faster and we need to spread it all over the world so it's not just happening in the rich countries. That is it for today. Thank you for listening to this episode of What in the World from the BBC World Service. I'm Hannah Gelbart and I'll be back with another episode soon. See you then. Bye.