The 29th Conference of Parties (COP29) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Baku, Azerbaijan, began November 11, 2024. Here’s a look at what happened on the seventh day of COP29. Also read the diary for November 11, November 12, November 13, November 14, November 15, November 16, November 19, November 20 and November 21.
Party negotiations on the NCQG have continued to take place in an informal setting this week, while ministerial consultations have also commenced. A new iteration of the draft negotiating text will be made available on November 20 for Parties to take the discussions forward. According to Politico, the EU has been holding internal discussions about a global quantum of US $200-300 billion annually for the NCQG, although this figure hasn’t been put forward in Party negotiations yet. Furthermore, a media report on India’s stance has revealed that India will look for a US $600 billion grant-based funding segment in the US $1.3 trillion annually demanded by the G77 and China group. There are also rumours of developed countries softening their stance on the issue of expansion of the contributor base, with the possibility of major economies outside of the Global North undertaking voluntary reporting of their climate finance provisions to poorer countries.
The discussions on the scope and definition of cooperative approaches continued but there is no consensus on it yet. Parties also discussed what should be the consequences when ‘significant’ and ‘persistent’ inconsistencies are identified in the expert review of reports that parties provide to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), based on their voluntary cooperation. The negotiations were technical in nature, but the core issues of transparency and accountability has the developed and developing countries divided. A further revision to the present text would be done based on the inputs provided by parties.
Discussion began on a new draft text prepared for the second week. On the aspect of guidance to the supervisory body, the text mentioned that the supervisory body should ‘ensure regulatory stability by avoiding frequent substantive revisions’. AOSIS and some others demanded that a provision be made for a scope of constant improvement in this section of the text. On the transition of clean development mechanism-based afforestation/reforestation (A/R) activities to Article 6.4-based market, several parties raised objection to an EU proposal of requesting supervisory body to apply additionality to all such projects in the A/R category requesting transition. A cleaner draft decision text would be reintroduced for discussion.
At an event to celebrate 30 years of adaptation action under the UNFCCC organised by the Adaptation Committee (AC), experts talked about the history, evolution and future of adaptation action at various Conferences of Parties (COPs). They highlighted the major milestones culminating in the establishment of the United Arab Emirates Framework for Global Climate Resilience (UAE-FGCR) as the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) and the beginning of the UAE-Belem Work Programme on Indicators for measuring the progress to achieve the targets under the UAE-FGCR. The AC also launched its 2024 report that collates all information on adaptation action in the last five years and a portal using which people can get information about adaptation initiatives and their progress directly from Parties.
The Group of 20 major countries released a joint statement on November 18 during the G20 summit being held in Brazil, where COP29 issues like Global Stocktake and NCQG were highlighted in the text. Leaders also welcomed Brazil’s initiative of establishing the Task Force on a Global Mobilisation against Climate Change to mainstream climate change into the global financial, economic and development agendas. It also noted that measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones (reference to CBAM), should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade — which was part of the agenda fight on the opening ceremony of COP29.
At an event at COP29, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said they have completed preliminary work for a special report on carbon dioxide removals (CDR) and carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) expected to be released by the end of 2027. The preliminary work has identified a set of technologies that remove greenhouse gases for consideration that will be discussed and approved at the February 2025 meeting. Once this is approved, authors will work on producing methodologies for new CDR Technologies and CCUS, and improvements on the old ones. This can help nations prepare national inventories, an estimate of emissions and removals of greenhouse gases from given sources.
The European Union and the COP Presidency organised press conferences. While the EU said that public finance should remain at the core of NCQG, more resources like carbon markets and voluntary contribution from donor developing countries are needed to bring in additional financing. Earlier last week, EU emphasised on the importance of private finance and widening contributor base. The COP29 President said they requested ministerial pairs to hold consultations and resolve key issues. They expect to strike a balanced and high ambition outcome by the end of the week.