Climate finance, the challenge perpetuated at COP29

The financing mechanisms needed to implement the Paris Agreement are set to be one of the main issues at the COP29 negotiations in Baku (Azerbaijan), although this is a key aspect of all global climate summits. It is so for achieving mitigation, damage and loss, adaptation and carbon market targets, to name a few. “It has been dubbed the COP of finance, specifically linked to Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, and we hope it will be one of the positive outcomes”, assesses Alicia Perez-Porro, head of Policy Engagement and Institutional Relations at CREAF, who will be attending this summit. “I also hope that the Global Goal on Adaptation will gain notoriety to give prominence to adaptation and not be buried under financing”. Adaptation and mitigation have critical roles to play in the global negotiation being driven by the UN: “There is a tendency to give prominence to mitigation, although adaptation needs to be considered as well. The IPCC and science have made this very clear, and I hope that it will also gain importance in the COP29 negotiations”, according to Pérez-Porro.

The technical and implementation character is another characteristic of COP29: “negotiations at international summits are a process. There are issues where there is a giant step, but in others the steps are more discreet. As long as meetings and negotiations are convened to implement the Paris Agreement, there is a positive part”. 

The coincidence of COP16 on biodiversity, COP29 on climate and COP16 on desertification in a 6-week period in the last quarter of 2024 constitutes a warning that there will not be a sustainable future without a healthy natural environment. What Alicia Pérez-Porro calls a polyhedral crisis. “We must move towards coordinated processes governed by synergies, not only in negotiations but also from science. Promote connections between the IPBES and the IPCC and above all, make the processes concrete in public policies. Implementing a public policy on climate change cannot be detrimental to biodiversity, for example. And we must also take into account pollution, the oceans...”. 

Extreme episodes, such as the DANA that recently hit the Mediterranean coast of the Valencian Community and also affected the southern coast of Andalusia and Catalonia, bring the globalization of this crisis to the table. Therefore, coordinated work, adaptation strategies and public policies must be adapted to the territory, in a constantly changing context.

As an oil and natural gas producing and exporting country, Azerbaijan has been questioned as the host of a summit aimed at reaching consensus to reduce CO₂ emissions. A criticism already received by the United Arab Emirates at the previous edition, held in Dubai. “We will not achieve progress by talking only with those who join the cause”,  is of the forceful opinion of the head of Political Interaction and Institutional Relations at CREAF, who has attended several COPs on both climate and biodiversity. “It is necessary to dialogue with people and states that are uncomfortable and to be able to convince them”.

The ambition to reduce fossil fuels was included in the final text of COP28 in Dubai and the ongoing summit in Baku should be a step further. “At global climate summits consensus decisions lower ambition, but COP29 should ideally meet expectations and increase it”. The fact that the negotiating tables include fossil fuel producers is an opportunity, because “actors who are an active part of the problem must take part in the solution”.