The COP climate talks are at risk of failing – but there is a way to save them

The UN’s climate conference has been beset by controversies and criticism, writes Ruth Townend. But it is the best chance we have of saving the planet from devastating global warming

The COP29 presidency is accused of striking gas deals in the conference sidelines; vast numbers of world leaders haven’t shown up; and now the UN’s former climate chief says the summit in its current form can’t deliver change at the speed and scale needed for the safety of humanity. Is Baku, then, the location of this year’s summit, the end of the road?

With a rapidly closing window for global climate action, the Paris Agreement is still the world’s last and best hope of some level of global coordination to keep temperature rises below the critical 1.5 and 2 degrees thresholds. Despite valid recent criticisms, the world must work with what it has, compromised as it certainly is, and broken as it may be. There is no time to throw out what governments have agreed and begin again.

This is the subject of a letter from climate veterans including Ban Ki-moon, the former UN general secretary, and Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland. The signatories lay out seven measures to reform the COP, the first of which is to implement “strict eligibility criteria to exclude countries who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy”.

With Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev using his opening address at the COP29 World Leaders’ Summit to once again call oil and gas ”a gift from god” “just like the sun, wind and minerals,” it is not hard to guess whether these elders believe the current host, Azerbaijan, would meet such strict criteria.

In the run up to COP29, Azerbaijan faced a barrage of criticism over alleged greenwashing of their national image, escalating oppression of civil society, and imprisonment of environmental activists. As lead author of a recent report on Azerbaijan’s climate leadership challenge, I might be counted among these critical voices. But I firmly believe that countries like Azerbaijan have a role to play in leading the negotiations, embodying as they do the dilemmas of both climate vulnerability, and risk from the sustainable transition.

If Azerbaijan is an unsuitable location for the COP, parties seeking ambitious outcomes should ask why, and not stop at the most obvious answers. Azerbaijan is not the only developing petro-state in the negotiations, nor is it the only autocracy, oppressor of civil society, or rentier state to pin its political stability to fossil fuels. Many countries with all or some of these characteristics are part of the Paris Agreement, and because of the negotiations work on consensus, regardless of conference leadership, such states set both the floor and the ceiling of ambition.

If Azerbaijan has indeed, as alleged, been lining up gas deals to strike in the margins of COP29, what might stop it, and other producer-states from such acts, or from otherwise blocking progress at the talks? With a heavily oil and gas reliant economy, accounting for roughly 90 per cent of export revenue and 30–50 per cent of GDP, Azerbaijan’s short-term interests are overwhelmingly stacked towards maximising fossil fuel income while it still can.

The Paris Agreement mechanisms, with their focus on in-country emissions and reduction of demand for, rather than supply of fossil fuels, have enabled countries like Azerbaijan to argue that fossil fuel production should remain peripheral to the talk, sidelined in ambitious external initiatives such as the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance. Production, however, is increasingly the elephant in the room. While this remains the case, countries which are economically reliant on fossil fuel production will continue to block ambition, as COP presidents or as COP participants.

The exposure of producer countries to falling fossil fuel demand is unavoidable if the Paris Agreement is to work. The UAE, Azerbaijan and Brazil, who have formed a climate ambition ‘Troika’ covering COPs 28-30, are together equivalent to the world’s 4^th largest oil producer. With such countries presiding over the negotiations until 2026, now is the moment to focus on the economic and political disincentives of transition.

Countries that rely on exporting fossil fuels need transparency about projected demand from countries and blocs, such as the EU – and they need to understand what climate finance and technical support will be available to ease the pains of their transition. All countries need a roadmap for transition in an era of growing geopolitical tensions, where incentives for fossil fuel expansion are likely to ebb and flow.

Azerbaijan and the parties assembled at COP29 now face a choice: to mandate new, tighter guardrails to the Presidency role, and so bring fresh openness to the negotiations, or cling to the status quo, and hope against hope for the progress needed all the same.

Ruth Townend, senior research fellow, environment and society centre, Chatham House