Climate Cops hitting peak capacity may prompt scale-back of UN negotiating process

There are two sharply contrasting views on global climate “conferences of the parties”, known as Cops, hosted annually by the UN.

The first acknowledges it may be an imperfect mechanism, attempting to get almost 200 countries to agree on how to address runaway warming of the planet due to human-generated carbon emissions but it brings everyone into the negotiating room. And increasingly, it attracts the world’s best experts including climate scientists under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); financial institutions and industries forging ahead in decarbonising their activities. It is also an important platform for climate activists and NGOs.

The second says the process has become bloated, and this is worsening long-running problems due to being too slow in reaching consensus. It is cumbersome and an inadequate response to the crisis, as more ferocious and more frequent extreme weather events occur – and rising climate migration. Further undermining Cops, they contend, is a recent trend of them being hosted by petrostates.

Cop28 was in Dubai last year with Sultan Al Jaber as facilitator – the chief executive of UAE’s state oil company. Cop29 president is Mukhtar Babayev who ran Azerbaijan’s oil company for nearly 25 years before becoming minister of ecology and natural resources. Climate campaigners say the pattern is proof the UN process is flawed, and many are calling for a substantial overhaul of the Cop system, which has allowed countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, India and the US to single-handedly block decisions that otherwise would have passed.

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Analysis by UK-based advocacy group Global Witness found oil giant BP and its project partners have invested $35 billion in oil and gas production by Azerbaijan’s Government since 2020.

“The UN has largely lost the confidence of youth climate advocates who feel betrayed by what they see as a deck stacked heavily on the side of polluters. Given the enormous conflict of interest, oil industry executives should not be allowed to heavily influence, much less preside over the summit,” prominent climatologist Michael Mann wrote in the Los Angeles Times recently.

Prof John Sweeney of Maynooth University, who has attended 13 Cops, says the seriousness of the climate crisis is not reflected in the urgency shown by the negotiators.

“Delegations are broken up into segments where individuals are given restricted briefs and their mandate is often circumscribed by their heads of delegation, and often it is a defensive one rather than a progressive or radical one. This is particularly the case for authoritarian states when concessions could be consequential for some negotiators,” he says.

Cop27 in Egypt in 2022 exhibited the classic division between rich and poor countries that has bedevilled progress for going on three decades now, he says. “Essentially the Global South comes looking for financial assistance to cope/develop/adapt while the Global North (with some exceptions) is wary of transferring funds, suspecting they may be misused or become a precedent for ramping up the true scale of reparations necessary on a historical basis.”

Cop28 surprisingly made early progress, he adds, with agreement on setting up a loss and damage fund – a financial mechanism designed to provide crucial support to vulnerable nations facing the brunt of climate-related challenges. “The chair had been receiving all sorts of negative publicity in advance of the meeting and needed an early ‘win’ to provide any momentum and take the focus off his alleged conflict of interests.”

Interventions by climate campaigner Mary Robinson challenging Al Jaber’s position on the science of keeping warming to within 1.5 degrees and press reports of negotiations with African countries to develop their oil and gas reserves allegedly taking place during the conference took away early momentum.

A simplistic methodology for disbursing funds seems to have been agreed, but the squabbling will be long-lasting over what events are climate-change related and which countries should contribute to the fund, Sweeney predicts. Rich countries and petrostates will throw money at the problem in increasingly large amounts to avoid internal social opposition and making necessary lifestyle changes.

The Cop28 statement on “transition away from fossil fuels” is fairly typical Cop language, he says – a compromise committing nobody to doing anything soon though is a small bit of progress.

My personal view is that the slow extension of ‘carbon border adjustments’ promised by the EU is one way of getting the problem of climate change into the economic arena

—  Prof John Sweeney

Saving 1.5 degrees by containing temperature rise to that key Paris Agreement target became a mantra at Cop26, less so at Cop28 when the IPCC declared it almost beyond reach. “No doubt saving 2 degrees will become the next mantra,” Sweeney says. Meanwhile nationally determined contributions (key national targets) are widely flouted.

Progress at COP29 in Baku is not expected to be major, Sweeney says. “There will be a big push for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, now gaining some traction, even among Irish local authorities! Rather it seems to be Cop30 in Brazil that is being held up as the next big opportunity.”

But rules of engagement will remain the same. “My personal view is that the slow extension of ‘carbon border adjustments’ promised by the EU is one way of getting the problem of climate change into the economic arena. But the unspoken fear of a trade war has stifled debate in this area. However, ultimately it may be through the World Trade Organisation that Cop makes progress.”

Overall, the cumbersome nature of Cop in making any progress due to the unanimity rule, Sweeney says. “This has been the root cause of 28 years of Cop failure to take decisive steps to tackle the problem. Attempts are regularly made to change the voting system but these always founder.”

The ever-escalating size of Cops up to now, and logistical difficulties at forthcoming gatherings in Azerbaijan and Brazil is pushing the case for smaller gatherings. The prospect of scaling back has been raised by UN climate chief Simon Stiell who said he hopes to see fewer people after participants at Cop28 in Dubai hit a record high of nearly 84,000 people.

He told an audience at London’s Chatham House think-tank he personally would certainly like to see future Cops reduce in size as “bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better”.

“Size does not necessarily translate to the quality of outcomes,” Stiell said, noting the UN climate change secretariat is discussing the issue with Cop29 and Cop30 hosts. Climate Home News visited the host cities of Baku and Belém, to see how preparations were going for the 2024 and 2025 gatherings.

[ ‘Fossil fuel lobbyists fought tooth and nail’ - Eamon Ryan on how agreement was reached at Cop 28 ]

Azerbaijan’s Government is expecting just 40,000 people to come to Baku Olympic Stadium this year with temporary structures built nearby to accommodate negotiations and side events, while Belém’s remoteness, congested roads and lack of hotels are likely to substantially limit how many people can attend. The stadium is connected to the city centre, where most hotels are located, by a Soviet-era metro railway with a one-way journey taking about 45 minutes. CHN revealed the government has told hotels in Baku not to sell rooms for Cop29′s November dates until further notice.

On Belém, which is in northern Brazil near the Amazon rainforest, Stiell said he was “actively discussing with the Brazilians how we can reduce the size of the Cop so that the logistics of it can be supported at that hosted destination”.

It is expecting 40,000-50,000 people but there are concerns the city will struggle to cope with those numbers. It is not a large tourist destination. The federal government, meanwhile, is reportedly considering hosting part of Cop30 in bigger cities like Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro.

The remoteness of the location is likely to translate into a bigger carbon footprint for overseas delegates. While Cops have a sizeable carbon footprint, researchers investigating misinformation have found this is often exaggerated by those trying to undermine climate action. Questioned about the issue, Stiell replied: “At every COP, we get the reports – how many private planes [and] the CO2 footprint for hosting those Cops.”

But, he added, “taking a very pragmatic view, we need the right people around the table in order for this process to work and there will be a cost to that. How you ensure that those that are present are the ones necessary to contribute positively to the process is also important.”

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