Subscribe
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 sixth day of COP29. Also read the diary for November 11, November 12, November 13, November 14, November 15, November 18, November 19, November 20 and November 21.
At the closing plenary for the subsidiary bodies (SB), countries expressed disappointment on the slow progress of negotiations on important agenda items such as the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) and the Mitigation Work Programme (MWP). India, Bolivia on behalf of the Like Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) and Kenya on behalf of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) accused developed countries of expanding the mandate of the MWP and making it obligatory and prescriptive. Developed and some developing country Parties pointed out the importance of MWP to keep the planet under the 1.5°C threshold. Many important agendas such as MWP, Reviews of the Adaptation Committee and the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for loss and damage will be taken up at the SB62 conference in Bonn, Germany, in June 2025. Negotiations on the rest of the agenda items will continue in the second week of COP29.
On November 15, the co-chairs of the Contact Group on the NCQG had provided Parties with a streamlined draft decision text, with further opportunities for Parties to provide inputs for streamlining without any substantive changes. On November 16, Parties continued their discussions largely behind closed doors. The final text — now 25 pages long — has been provided to the COP29 Presidency and will be the basis for deliberations by the high-level Ministerial Pairs during the second week of COP29. The ministers in charge of NCQG are Yasmine Fouad of Egypt and Australia’s Climate Change Minister, Chris Bowen. With no discussions on the amount, contributor base and structure of the goal happening in week one, the second week is going to be make or break for an ambitious outcome on the NCQG.
Parties were not able to come to a consensus on the draft negotiation text. So, a draft conclusion was adopted at the end of the first week. The draft text was forwarded to the Conference of Parties (COP), noting that there was no agreement or consensus reached in the first week of discussions under the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), the technical subsidiary body of the UNFCCC.
The group of LMDCs asked for more time to coordinate on the draft negotiation text that was being forwarded to the COP without a consensus, similar to what happened under Article 6.2. A late evening draft decision text prepared by the SBSTA chair was sent to the COP for the discussion in the second week, with the parties noting that no consensus was achieved on the draft decision text in week 1.
Debt, nature, climate change side event
An Interim Report prepared by the Expert Review on Debt, Nature and Climate was released at a side event on November 16, 2024. The Expert Review, established by the governments of Colombia, Kenya, France and Germany aims to examine how sovereign debt of emerging economies can be made more fiscally and environmentally sustainable. The report’s key recommendations include improving the debt sustainability frameworks to include nature/climate related criteria; increasing sustainability linked bonds; and furthering debt-for-nature swaps. While Sam Mugume Koojo from Uganda’s Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development stated he was in favour of the report’s findings, Susana Muhamad, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Colombia stated she found the recommendations weak given the state of crises being confronted by emerging economies.
WMO Early Warning for All
A high-level event on the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Early Warnings for All initiative was held on the sidelines of COP29. The need of finances, technologies and capacity building for developing and maintaining early warning systems in vulnerable developing countries was discussed by many high level representatives from the WMO, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), International Telecommunication Union, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Mountain Partnership, International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) and country representatives from Turkiye, Finland and Denmark. The lack of and the need for weather observation systems and financing for the same was also discussed at the event. UNDRR head Kamal Kishore wanted early warning systems to be both at weather and climate scale.
The United States and Ukraine have announced three nuclear energy-enabled industrial decarbonisation projects in the embattled country. These include building a pilot plant to demonstrate production of clean hydrogen and ammonia using simulated safe and secure small modular reactors (SMR or small reactors with a power capacity of up to 300 MW(e) per unit), enable the country to transition from coal-fired power plants to secure and safe SMR nuclear power plants and to use SMR to develop a roadmap and provide technical support to rebuild, modernise, and decarbonise the steel industry.
The COP presidency hosted the World’s Space Leaders Summit, which endorsed a “International Pledge for Space-Based Climate Action — COP29 Impact and Output” by around 20 global space agencies to identify and deploy space-enabled solutions to address climate challenges, support the UN’s Space2030 Agenda, and enhance scientific data sharing.