Trump in the shadow of the climate summit: expectations for COP29 and possible outcomes

Trump in the shadow of the climate summit: expectations for COP29 and possible outcomes

Extreme storms fueled by climate change have wreaked havoc around the world in 2024, among other events in Brazil and in the Philippines. The Earth's average annual temperature This year could be 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels for the first time. But another worrying development for many this week UN climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan could participate Re-election of Donald Trump as US President be.

The last time Trump was in the White House, beginning in 2017, he withdrew the United States from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, a pact that governments made to prevent the Earth from warming by more than 1.5-2°C by reducing their emissions. The US President-elect is expected to... will do the same when he takes office next year. This is already casting a shadow over the 29th UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) as representatives from nearly 200 countries gather to discuss financial assistance for low-income and low-income countries (LMICs) affected by climate change. The summit will take place from November 11th to 22nd.

It will be "very difficult" to negotiate a strong agreement without the United States — the world's largest economy and second-largest greenhouse gas emitter — says Niklas Höhne, a climate policy expert and co-founder of the NewClimate Institute in Cologne, Germany.

This article from Nature looks at what's on the COP29 agenda.

Another exit of the USA

When the Paris Agreement was signed, world leaders included a clause that any party wanting to withdraw from the pact would have to wait three years after it came into force. That meant Trump the United States officially until November 4, 2020 could not withdraw from the agreement. When US President Joe Biden succeeded Trump just over two months later, he signed the paperwork to return to the agreement.

This time the exit process will only take a year, but observers say the damage has already been done in many ways. Trump's election means that the United States will be unlikely to be able to fulfill its promise made under Biden to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 50% below 2005 levels by 2030. This could give other countries political space to scale back their efforts under the agreement, says Joanna Lewis, who directs the science, technology and international affairs program at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

A US withdrawal could also cause more problems for climate finance, the main theme of the summit in Baku. The United States has already fallen short under Biden on its commitment to increase international aid to developing countries to $11.4 billion annually to help them adapt to climate change and avoid industrialization that brings heavy pollution. The U.S. Congress only appropriated $1 billion this year. And few see any prospect that the new Trump administration, which has questioned the existence of climate change, will step up efforts.

The price of change

Industrialized countries, responsible for the majority of historic greenhouse gas emissions, have committed to providing climate finance to ‘developing countries’ under the UN climate framework. In 2009, they estimated this commitment at $100 billion annually.

By some measures they were two years late in reaching that goal, but researchers say much more is needed now. Negotiations at the summit, which begin this week, will set a 'new collective, quantified climate finance target' to support developing countries that are least responsible for climate change and often most vulnerable. Which countries pay, how much and where the funds go is being discussed in Baku.

Estimates of developing countries' adaptation needs vary, but negotiations are expected to start at around $1 trillion annually, says Melanie Robinson, global climate director at the World Resources Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, DC. Others say the need is much greater: an economic body has the need estimated at approximately $2.4 trillion annually by 2030.

Whatever the new financial target, the summit will discuss how to track wealthy countries' contributions to LMICs. Transparency is already a challenge because there is no broad agreement on what is meant by 'climate finance,' says Romain Weikmans, a researcher who studies the issue at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium. “Every country has its own accounting system.”

For example, a LMIC might use funds from a wealthy nation to build a new school with solar panels, but it is unclear whether the wealthy country would report the entire cost of the school or just the cost of the solar panels as part of a climate investment. “My hope is that the new goal will be formulated in a way that allows observers to assess the extent to which it has been met,” says Weikmans.

The countries will also discuss whether financial aid to cover the costs of climate-related disasters will be included in the new financial target. Wealthy countries promised about $700 million last year for a new 'Loss and Damage Fund' created to support countries suffering from such disasters. But this “pales in comparison to the $580 billion in climate-related damage that developing countries could suffer by 2030,” says Robinson. This number was 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 this decade.

The Earth has already warmed by 1.3°C, and some predict that the Earth will officially reach 1.5°C this year. One message scientists are sending to decision-makers at COP29 is that the climate is changing and risks are rising faster than they were a few years ago.

“This year we have experienced severe weather events, droughts, extreme heat, floods and hurricanes on a scale we have never seen before, and these impacts will not go away — even in the best scenario,” says Höhne. As the world heads toward an unlivable future, he adds, leaders at COP29 must switch to “emergency mode.”