Trump in the shadow of the climate summit: expectations of COP29 and possible results
Trump in the shadow of the climate summit: expectations of COP29 and possible results
Extreme storms that are fueled by climate change caused devastation in 2024, including in Brazil and on the Philippines . The average annual temperature of the earth this year could be 1.5 ° C above the pre-industrial level for the first time lie . But another worrying development for many that this week on UN-Klimagdee in Baku, Azerbaijan could participate, the Restrict by Donald Trump as US President .
When Trump was the last time in the White House, he began in 2017, he withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement of 2015, a pact, closed the governments to prevent the earth from heating up by more than 1.5–2 ° C by reducing its emissions. It is expected that the elected US President will do the same after taking office next year . This already throws a shadow about the 29th UN climate conference (COP29), while representatives from almost 200 countries come together to discuss financial aid for low -income and funds countries (LMICS) that are affected by climate change. The summit takes place from November 11th to 22nd.
It will be "very difficult" to negotiate a strong agreement without the United States - the largest economy in the world and the second largest greenhouse gas emittent, says Niklas Höhne, a climate policy expert and co -founder of the Newclimate Institute in Cologne.
This article illuminates what is on the agenda of the COP29.
Another exit from the USA
When the Paris Agreement was signed, the world leaders contained a clause that every party who wants to leave the pact must wait three years after entry into force. That meant that Trump the United States officially could not withdraw from the agreement until November 4, 2020. When US President Joe Biden followed Trump a little more than two months later, he signed the documents to return to the agreement.
This time the exit process will only take a year, but observers say that the damage is already caused in many ways. Trump's choice means that the United States will hardly be able to promise their promises under bidges to meet the greenhouse gas emissions to 50% below the level from 2005 . This could give political scope to other countries to return their efforts as part of the agreement, says Joanna Lewis, who heads the program for science, technology and international matters at Georgetown University in Washington.
A leaving of the USA could also have more problems for climate finance, The main topic of the summit in Baku . The United States has already not fulfilled their obligation under bidges to increase international help for developing countries to $ 11.4 billion annually in order to help them adapt to climate change and to avoid industrialization that entails heavy pollution. The US Congress has only provided $ 1 billion this year. And only a few see the view that the new Trump administration, which questions the existence of climate change, will reinforce efforts.
The price of change
industrialized countries that are responsible for the majority of historical greenhouse gas emissions have undertaken to help ‘developing countries’ as part of the UN climate frame with climate finance. They put this commitment in 2009 at $ 100 billion annually.
After a few standards, they reached this goal at two years late, but researchers say that significantly more is now needed. Negotiations at the summit that begin this week will determine a new collective, quantified climate finance destination 'to support developing countries that are least responsible for climate change and are often strongest. Which countries pay, how much and where the funds flow is discussed in Baku.
The estimates for the adaptation needs of the developing countries vary, but negotiations are expected to begin around $ 1 trillion annually, says Melanie Robinson, the global climate director at the World Resources Institute, a non-profit research organization based in Washington DC. Others say that the need is much greater: An economic committee has the need for about 2.4 trillions estimated annually until 2030.
Regardless of what the new financial goal looks like, the summit is discussed at how the contributions can be followed by wealthy countries to LMICs. Transparency is already a challenge because there are no broad agreements about what is understood as 'climate finance', says Romain Weikmans, a researcher who examines the topic at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium. "Each country has its own accounting."
For example, an LMIC funds from a wealthy nation could use to build a new school with solar cells, but it is unclear whether the wealthy country would report the entire costs of the school or only the costs of the solar cells as part of a climate investment. "My hope is that the new goal will be formulated in such a way that it is possible for observers to evaluate the scope of fulfillment," says Weikmans.
The countries will also discuss whether financial aid will incorporate into the new financial goal to cover the costs of climate -related disasters. Wealthy countries Last year promised about $ 700 million $ for a new 'loss and damage fund' that was created to support countries that suffer from such disasters. But this "pale compared to the $ 580 billion in climate-related damage that developing countries could suffer by 2030," says Robinson. This number was valued by researchers at the Basque Center for Climate Change in Leioa, Spain, and represents the maximum costs that developing countries could experience in the future.
The earth has already heated up by 1.3 ° C, and some predict that the earth will officially reach 1.5 ° C this year. A message that scientists send to the decision -makers on the COP29 is that the climate changes and the risks increase faster than a few years ago.
"This year we have experienced heavy weather events, droughts, extreme heat, floods and hurricanes from a scale that we have never seen before, and these effects will not disappear - even in the best scenario," says Höhne. While the world is heading for an unauthorized future, he adds, the guides have to switch to "emergency mode" on the COP29.