Weather Bee: What is at stake in Baku?
While all COPs have the mandate to mitigate the climate crisis, the ongoing one is being termed as the ‘finance COP’.
The 29th Conference of the Parties (COP), a meeting of the governments that adopted the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992, is set to conclude in Baku on November 22. While all COPs have the mandate to mitigate the climate crisis, the ongoing one is being termed as the “finance COP” because the existing funding arrangement of developed countries paying developing ones to fund climate crisis mitigation and adaptation plans expires in 2025. What exactly is at stake in Baku? Here are five charts that explain this in detail.

The planet has already seen a year of 1.5°C warming
An important goal of the Paris Agreement in 2015 was to limit global warming (relative to the pre-industrial average) under 1.5°C. While this goal is for long-term warming, earth’s temperature has already taken the first step towards that. Of the five prominent global temperature datasets analysed by HT, the 12-month running average has already breached the 1.5°C threshold in all (at different points starting December 2023) but the one published by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), which even generally shows a lower level of warming. This is a clear proof of the fact that the world has, so far, failed to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement.
And business as usual might make a long-term breach also a foregone conclusion
To be sure, long-term changes in global temperature are taken as the average change in at least a decade. Therefore, the breach of 1.5°C threshold long-term might appear distant. However, it is inevitable under the current trajectory of fossil fuel emissions.
The science of managing global warming works on the idea that annual carbon emissions must peak at a certain level and then come down if the earth’s temperature is to be kept from breaching a certain level compared to pre-industrial levels. According to estimates by the Global Carbon Project, the stock of carbon in the atmosphere will breach levels concomitant with 1.5°C warming in the next six years if we emit at the rate estimated for 2024, and that for 2°C warming in the next 27 years. Estimates for 2024 published by Global Carbon Project earlier this month show that global annual emissions have not yet peaked. This means that the world is nowhere near the second order problem of bringing down emissions.
Who needs to do what to bring down current emissions?
Estimates suggest that China’s carbon emissions in 2024 were more than the share of major European countries (EU27), US and India. This cohort of four actually account for around 59% of total 2024 emissions. However, what makes the emission reduction debate complicated because late industrialising countries argue that they be compensated for the economic loss which emission reduction would inflict, something which today’s rich countries did not have to do. A comparison of current and cumulative share in emissions vindicates this argument.
Resolving this debate is the (unrealised) bulwark of the climate accord
In 2009, the COP agreed in principle that developed countries would pay $100 billion every year to developing countries latest by 2020 to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis. This was only realised in 2022. Developing countries are now demanding upwards of $1 trillion – experts believe that even these could be underestimates – in climate finance requirements. Unsurprisingly, developed countries are stalling these negotiations once again.
What to read in the fine print of the Baku agreement
If the Baku COP does result in an agreement on climate finance, the headline number on the amount developed countries agree to fund will be an important figure. However, this headline number can mask other sticking points in the negotiation so far. Three important sticking points are: whether the finance is provided through public or private institutions, whether the finance is through loans or grants, and whether climate finance by developing countries is counted towards the total.
The first is a sticking point because any percentage of funding that developed countries tie to funds mobilised through private institutions will be hard to enforce through the COP arrangement, to which private institutions are not party. The second is a sticking point because the development of poor countries will suffer if they have a higher debt burden. Most of public climate finance so far has been in the form of loans. The third is a sticking point because developing countries are already funding climate finance. For example, of the $116.9 billion of climate finance in 2022 that counted towards developed countries’ contribution, $46.9 billion of climate finance came from multilateral development banks (MDBs). Because developing countries are also members of MDBs, they also funded $19.2 billion. They just don’t want it to be counted towards the total that is developed countries’ burden.
