Argentina’s Javier Milei withdraws delegation from UN climate talks in Baku

Right-wing president ordered delegation to leave Cop29 just hours after he spoke with with Donald Trump

Right-wing president Javier Milei has withdrawn Argentina’s delegation from the Cop29 UN climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.

The decision, confirmed by delegate officials, means the South American country will not participate any further in the UN climate negotiations that are expected to conclude with a treaty next week.

It is not clear whether Argentina will leave the Paris Agreement altogether.

The delegation received an order to stop engaging in the negotiations on Wednesday evening, Climatica reported, just hours after the high-profile leaders’ address section of the summit wrapped up. Another delegation from Argentina due to arrive in Baku next week was told to cancel its plans.

Argentina’s move adds to growing concerns about the influence of right-wing leaders on global climate commitments. Hopes for Cop29 were already dampened by Donald Trump’s return as US president and fears that he could once again withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement.

Mr Milei’s decision to withdraw from Cop29 aligns with his political stance and his intention to strengthen ties with the US. The Argentinian president is a denier of climate science and calls the environmental crisis a “socialist lie”.

Argentina will now only be represented in Baku by civil society and private sector groups – meaning the country is shut out of critical negotiations.

“More than 50 people from various sectors continue to actively participate in Cop29, promoting Argentina’s climate agenda in a challenging context,” Sustentabilidad sin fronteras (SSF), an independent organisation from the country, said in a statement.

Campaigners said Mr Milei’s decision was not in Argentina’s interests, especially because the main goal of the summit is to create a fund for countries in the global South.

A spokesperson for Greenpeace Andino, the South American branch of the NGO, said: “Withdrawing from decision-making on an issue as sensitive and critical as financing is a lost opportunity for those who can benefit from the agreements reached in Baku.”

Mr Milei’s decision “isolates Argentina from the international community” and “sends a negative signal to investors and companies,” SSF said.

Some campaigners in Baku said they were “shocked” by the decision, but added that it would not deter them from pushing the interests of the country and the wider region.

“We have lived through changes of government during Cops,” climate campaigner Maria Azul Schvartzman told The Independent in Baku. “But we have had some sort of consistency in terms of our foreign affairs policy on climate change.”

This time, she said, it was “shocking because we believed that we have some ground rules that are not going to change”.

The Milei administration, she added, “is showing time and time and again with different topics that these ground rules do not exist and that the agreements that we thought we had as a society don’t exist anymore”.

At the General Assembly in September, Mr Milei criticised the UN for attempting to "impose an ideological agenda" and distanced Argentina from the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. “We are at the end of a cycle. The collectivism and moral high ground from the woke agenda have crashed with reality, and they don’t offer credible solutions for the world’s problems,” he said.

Activists participate in a demonstration for climate finance at the Cop29 summit in Baku (AP)

His administration has moved to distance Argentina from trade partners led by leftist leaders such as Cuba and Venezuela. He sacked foreign minister Diana Mondino after she voted in favour of lifting the US embargo against Cuba at the UN.

Mr Milei threatened to withdraw Argentina from the Paris accords in the run-up to his election victory in November of last year.

The decision to withdraw the delegation from Cop29 came just hours after Mr Milei spoke with Mr Trump. Mr Milei’s spokesperson said the incoming US president told his Argentine counterpart that he was his “favourite president”.

He is expected to attend a Conservative Political Action Conference meeting at Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and meet the incoming president, according to CNN.

Argentina isn’t the only country to skip Cop29. Papua New Guinea snubbed negotiations in Baku in protest at “inaction” on small island nations.

“We will no longer tolerate empty promises and inaction, while our people suffer the devastating consequences of climate change,” the country’s foreign minister Justin Tkatchenko said ahead of the summit.

On Wednesday, French ecology minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher told the French senate she would not take part in the climate talks, after what she called Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev’s “unacceptable” attacks on her country during a speech on Tuesday.

Mr Aliyev accused France of “brutally” suppressing climate crisis concerns in its overseas territories.

“After discussion and in agreement with the president of the republic and the prime minister, I will not go to Baku next week,” she said.

A French delegation is attending the summit.