‘Travesty of justice’: Cop29’s controversial deal
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They're not the preparations you might expect a group of journalists covering a climate conference to need. We took precautions, so we all had burner phones and we're using heavy anti-digital surveillance measures, so hopefully they weren't able to track us too closely.

Then again, for Guardian Environment editor Damien Carrington, attending COP29 in the world's first petrostate, a country reliant on oil and gas for half of its GDP, was always going to be an unusual experience. So Azerbaijan's an authoritarian state. It's run by someone called Ilham Aliyev, who is essentially a dictator. He has doubled down on fossil fuels as being a gift from God, quote,

Azerbaijan is intending to increase its gas production by about 30% over the next decade or so. In the real world, Azerbaijan was a controversial choice to host. But Damian noticed a different narrative appearing online.

So in the run-up to COP29, I reported on scores of fake social media profiles which were boosting Azerbaijan, in particular its hosting of COP and telling people how great it was going to be.

And as the conference began, he found his reporting was attracting attention. I started becoming a target for some of these people. I got called a clown. I was told I was repeating propaganda shit like a true bot. I got told I was a political propagandist.

The combative atmosphere continued in the conference halls. Allais was pretty undiplomatic in the speeches he gave at the conference. He ended up offending the French so much that they didn't send a lead negotiator at all. But against the odds, the negotiations finally wrapped up on Sunday and a deal has been signed. So today, what did COP29 achieve? MUSIC

From The Guardian, I'm Madeleine Finlay and this is Science Weekly.

Damian Carrington, you're a Guardian Environment Editor and you've been reporting on this year's UN Climate Conference, COP29, which has been going on for the past couple of weeks in Baku, Azerbaijan, this authoritarian petro-state that plans to upscale its gas production. And this is all taking place in a context of wars and conflicts and a new US president.

The expectations going in can't have been particularly high, but give me a sense of what this year's COP was all about.

So it was the first finance COP in the sense that it was the first time that they were going to try and agree some sort of hard numbers in terms of the amount of money that the rich world has to pay to the poor world to help cope with climate change and develop in a green way. COPs have a rhythm. So at the start, you know, world leaders turn up. They're meant to sort of gee up the conference and get people feeling ambitious. And there's lots of reports and talking. But in the end, it comes down to the last few days. That's when the

ministers take over from this sort of technical negotiators to try and get those hard decisions made that's when the negotiators and the ministers are up all night that's when everyone's getting tired and fractious did look pretty sketchy for a while about whether they were going to get anything over the line but in the very early hours of Sunday morning they did

And so tell us what happened. What was agreed in the end? So the key thing that was agreed was that the COP decided, and that means the 200 countries agreed, that $300 billion a year should be delivered with rich countries taking the lead to give that to the poorer developing nations by 2035.

They also called on all the countries to work towards delivering 1.3 trillion a year by that same time. So those were the numbers. This goal of 1.3 trillion a year by 2035, this is just a target and the

the developed nations have promised 300 billion in grants and low-interest loans. And this is triple what they're currently doing, but it's a lot less than that 1.3 trillion. What's been the response? The response?

particularly from the developing countries, was anger, you know, in the hall in those early hours of Sunday morning. In particular, the delegate from India was furious, called it a travesty of justice, complained that it shouldn't have been gaveled through, which is what happens when the presidency thinks there's enough of a consensus. On the other hand, you know, the

The EU Commission of Climate Change took the other side of the argument, saying, yeah, this is as much as could be delivered, given the financial problems in many countries around the world. And it would help start spurring even more investment in climate action, which is already happening. But the lead negotiator from Panama, who was quite prominent throughout COP26,

said he didn't like the deal, said it had been shoved down their throats, but he also said that they had to accept it. And the reason for that is that this multilateral process, all the nations coming together and agreeing, is the only forum, and in particular for those poorer nations who are suffering the most, who've done least to

caused the problem. This is the only time they get to sit down at a table, look those others in the eye and say, this is what's happening. This is what we need. You have a moral responsibility to take action and therefore accepting a deal, even if it's a very poor one in their eyes, felt like the only option, I think, at the end. In the end, it's often a power play. The big countries with the big budgets essentially get what they want because they say, it's this or nothing.

Damien, like you say, perhaps this was the highest amount that a lot of countries would find politically feasible. And $300 billion by 2035 each year does sound like a lot, but...

Just to kind of emphasise why a lot of other countries found this totally inadequate, an LSE study last year estimated that countries in the Global South would be entitled to $192 trillion by 2050 on the basis of the share of the global carbon budget consumed by the Global North and...

fossil fuel companies have made $1 trillion a year in profit annually for half a century. I mean, should they not be paying for a lot of this? Yeah, absolutely. A lot of fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas, the burning of those is what's causing global heating and the climate crisis. And so...

People often say the polluter should pay. That isn't really happening. So, as you say, reported in the past, this trillion dollars a year in pure profit for the last 50 years, it's actually more in probably two or three times that in the last few years because of the high energy prices after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But as you say, you know, these numbers seem big. Even 300 billion seems big. A trillion dollars a year seems big.

But it's really not. You know, it's like a trillion dollars is 1% of global GDP. We already spend more than that on energy infrastructure in terms of investments every year. And I think the most critical point is that it's actually a bargain. I know that sounds kind of crazy to say spending a trillion dollars is a bargain. But when you look at the costs of unchecked climate change, the damage that that will cause all around the world, we're already seeing it, you know,

hurricanes costing tens of billions of dollars and lots more more subtle things about you know loss of work and so on it's going to be so expensive to try and live with or cope with unchecked climate change that you know these sums of money are available you can mobilize them and we really need to

So this key climate financing agreement, not a disaster, but not anything to kind of shout from the rooftops about. But what were some of the other key takeaways from the summit? I think the other key takeaway was also about fossil fuels. So some listeners might remember that a year ago at COP28, which was also held in a petro state, the United Arab Emirates, although they did rather a better job, I think,

There was an agreement for the first time, remarkably, that countries agreed that the world should, quote, transition away from fossil fuels. That was the first time any statement specifying that kind of move or phasing out, if you like, of fossil fuels had been made.

had been made in 28 COPs. And so at this COP, there was a lot of people wanting to build on that. However, there was a pretty big operation by Saudi Arabia and some of its allies like Bolivia to try and get any mention of it scrapped from any documents.

and I did some reporting around the Saudi operation. We found rather hilariously in a way that through looking at tracked changes in one of the official negotiating texts that one of the Saudi delegation had been directly editing the text, which is an absolute no-no in UN terms. What happens is papers usually get passed out as uneditable PDFs, so all the countries could have a look and then they'd chat about it and say what they'd like changed. So

The Azerbaijan presidency allowing the Saudis to make their own edits was actually rather outrageous. So there was this big counter-operation from the fossil fuel states to try and weaken, backslide, water down this commitment they'd made a year ago. What happened in the end was deadlock, essentially, in that the relevant texts had ended up

in a place that was so weak that the countries that wanted more ambition refused to let them pass. And so that's been bumped onto the sort of half-yearly meeting they have between COPs in June. So how would you characterise the success or, I don't want to say failure, but failings of this year's COP?

The process still exists. The countries are still coming together. There was a risk at one point in this conference that it could collapse completely. And at that point, you know, you really worry because nothing's going to happen. The big picture we have to always remember is that the climate crisis here right now is causing a lot of damage all around the world, which also raised the voucher in COP. We've now had remarkably at least 24 heat waves, which would have been absolutely impossible before climate change.

CO2 emissions are still going up when we actually need them to come down by about half in about six years' time, which seems an extraordinarily unlikely thing to happen. But we're still in the game. Any progress that gets made is good because it curbs global warming a bit.

Damien, according to measurements from the EU's space programme, 2024 is set to be the hottest year on record. It will be the first year to surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial temperatures.

And this year's COP was at risk of collapsing and achieved, as you say, the bare minimum. We obviously need a lot more. So next year's COP, COP30, is taking place in Brazil. Brazilian President Lula da Silva has been vocal about needing to act faster and harder. Does this hold any promise for getting us back on track?

Well, I hope so. So Brazil and Lula in particular, you know, have very positive approach to climate action. You know, we should note at this point that Brazil is a significant producer of oil and gas and its latest plan, which it revealed at COP, I was in the room, actually didn't say much about reducing their oil and gas production in the future. But nonetheless, I think they'll certainly have a more positive attitude to climate action than Azerbaijan did.

So the big thing for the next COP in a year's time in Belem is what's called nationally determined contributions. And what this is, is each country has to produce a climate plan saying what it's going to do, how it's going to do it, how it's going to reduce its emissions, by when. That was already a big job to try and get all those countries to produce plans that add up to something meaningful. But

But they've now got some stuff left over already from this one. The Brazil presidency already had a pretty full plate and now they've got more piled on top of it. Well, it sounds like Brazil are going to have a hell of an agenda. Do you think they're going to be up to it?

I think they will be much better prepared and able to run a COP. Running a COP is a big ask. It's 60, 70, 80,000 people, nearly 200 countries. So it requires an enormous amount of diplomatic skill and negotiating skill and bureaucratic skill. And frankly, Azerbaijan didn't have that. It's a small reclusive state that rarely appears on the world stage. And I

I think they were like rabbits in the headlights at points during COP. Whereas Brazil is a major G20 nation, they just hosted the G20. I think they're going to have this sort of framework and ability and the people in order to hopefully make a better job.

The COP process will continue. It's the best forum that exists for trying to tackle this in the international multilateral way that needs to happen. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Can it be improved? Yes, it can.

Having said that, to be more positive, in the real world, renewable energy is taking off like crazy because it's cheaper than fossil fuel energy pretty much everywhere in the world. And so it will win in the long term. We will have a green energy system. The problem is a mismatch of timing. The climate crisis is accelerating faster than the process of greening the world.

Well, Damien, I know that COP's a journalistic ultramarathon, so I'm going to let you go now and hopefully lie down. But thank you so much. Thank you. It has been a long one. I'm not asking for any sympathy from anybody at all, but I hope that I have at least made some sense on this podcast. And thank you for having me. That was Damien Carrington. You can find his and all of our COP29 coverage on theguardian.com.

Climate breakdown is the biggest issue of the 21st century and it's reporting, like we heard from Damien, that can hold countries and companies to account, tell the stories of those impacted and show us the glimmers of hope. If you're able to, please consider supporting our environmental journalism by following the link in the episode description. Thank you. We appreciate it. Thank you.

And that's it for today. This episode was produced by me, Madeline Finlay. It was sound designed by Joel Cox and the executive producer is Ellie Burey. We'll be back on Thursday. See you then. This is The Guardian. The Guardian.

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