When I first visited Azerbaijan this spring, one fixture of the Baku skyline was unmissable. The bright orange of flaring — the product of the oil and gas extraction that makes up 90 percent of Azerbaijan’s export revenues — lit up the night sky, not far from the Olympic stadium, where nearly 200 nations would gather last month for the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) climate summit.
Flaring burns methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and is a major source of carbon emissions. If all the world’s flared gas were captured instead, it could power sub-Saharan Africa. However, that entails installing new equipment, so producers do not bother.
By the time we were standing in the converted stadium for the two weeks of an exceptionally bad-tempered conference — one that ended in cries of betrayal and injustice — the flame was invisible. Was it doused for the duration? I tried to point out to delegates where it had been, but I do not think they believed me.
Baku was the second-worst climate COP of the 18 that I have covered. In rancor and division, it was rivaled only by Copenhagen in 2009, which notoriously ended in chaos and discord, although also a partial deal.
What failed at Baku — where poor countries received a promise of US$1.3 trillion a year in climate finance by 2035, but only US$300 billion to come directly from the rich world — is that governments refused to put aside their apparent short-term interests in favor of the real, long-term interests they all know are firmly on the side of climate action.
Rich countries came preparing to offer only US$300 billion a year in direct overseas aid and through institutions such as the World Bank, leaving the rest of the US$1.3 trillion to come from a mixture of potential new levies on high-carbon activities and the private sector. That public finance number is too low — economists Nicholas Stern, Vera Songwe and Amar Bhattacharya have calculated that US$390 billion would be necessary by 2035. Insultingly, it was also delivered only on the last day of the talks.
Many developed world governments are struggling with budget constraints and economic turmoil — witness Germany’s bombing car sector. They fear the weaponization of climate action by the resurgent far right — former US president Donald Trump’s re-election just five days before COP29 showed how powerful that can be.
However, providing climate finance for poor countries to cut their emissions and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather is clearly in the rich world’s real interests. Climate migration is already in the tens of millions a year and is only going to accelerate.
There were other actors, too, for whom short-term apparent self-interest ruled. Saudi Arabia, whose entire wealth is built on oil and gas, has long played an obstructive role at COPs. This year, the negotiating team did not bother to hide it. A Saudi official was accused of altering a key text without full consultation in a way observers said the Azerbaijani presidency should have prevented. A key resolution to “transition away from fossil fuels” was effectively defeated.
India also played an intriguing role. With the conference running more than 30 hours overtime, the Azerbaijani presidency thought it had achieved consensus, with poor countries judging a meagre deal better than putting off negotiations to next year with a Trump White House. Then India made a last-minute intervention. Delhi has a long history of trying to prevent climate deals or forcing concessions: in 2011, blocking the roadmap to what became the Paris Climate Agreement; in 2021, forcing the weakening of a resolution to “phase out” coal to a “phase down.”
On those occasions, India had the backing of China. However, this time China — the world’s biggest supplier of renewable energy components — clearly wanted a deal.
In the end, an agreement was reached, and India, with a handful of allies, claimed to have been ignored. That is not unusual in UN talks — deals are reached by consensus, not unanimity, and if the presidency is satisfied that holdouts have been heard, they can bring down the gavel. Whatever India’s intentions, the outcome was in its favor: without having to scupper a deal that poorer countries desperately needed, India could still vent its anger and claim to be standing up for the developing world.
Azerbaijan, whose presidency was roundly condemned by many participants, also came away with a deal that would please Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is supplying the country with gas while it sells its own to Europe.
Next year, countries would meet again, charged with laying out stringent new plans to cut their greenhouse gas emissions in a last attempt to limit global temperature from rising to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. Poor countries would argue they cannot set stricter limits with so little finance. Fossil fuel producers would do their best to prevent a deal through their lobbyists and country groupings.
As I prepared to leave Baku, more than a day after the last delegates had straggled home, I scanned the shore of the Caspian Sea in the darkness. There it was, burning again. The flame of self-interest.
Fiona Harvey is an environment editor at The Guardian.
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