Cop summits ‘no longer fit for purpose’, say leading climate policy experts

Future UN climate summits should be held only in countries that can show clear support for climate action and have stricter rules on fossil fuel lobbying, according to a group of influential climate policy experts.

The group includes former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, the former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, the former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and the prominent climate scientist Johan Rockström.

They have written to the UN demanding the current complex process of annual “conferences of the parties” under the UN framework convention on climate change – the Paris agreement’s parent treaty – be streamlined, and meetings held more frequently, with more of a voice given to developing countries.

“It is now clear that the Cop is no longer fit for purpose. We need a shift from negotiation to implementation,” they wrote.

This year’s talks, known as Cop29, are nearing their halfway mark in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku.

Azerbaijan is a controversial host for the conference, as it is a major fossil fuel producer, with oil and gas making up half of its exports. Last year’s conference was also held in a petrostate, the United Arab Emirates, and the president of that edition, Sultan Al Jaber, kept his main job of heading the country’s national oil company, Adnoc.

Before Cop29 opened, one of the key members of the Azerbaijan government’s organising team was filmed appearing to offer help striking fossil fuel deals. Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, also remarked at the opening ceremony that his country’s oil and gas were “a gift of God”.

“We need strict eligibility criteria to exclude countries who do not support the phase-out/transition away from fossil energy. Host countries must demonstrate their high level of ambition to uphold the goals of the Paris agreement,” the group wrote.

Figueres said: “At the last Cop, fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered representatives of scientific institutions, Indigenous communities and vulnerable nations. We cannot hope to achieve a just transition without significant reforms to the Cop process that ensure fair representation of those most affected.”

At least 1,773 coal, oil and gas lobbyists have been granted access to Cop29, according to data analysed by the Kick Big Polluters Out activist coalition. That is more than all but three countries (Azerbaijan, Brazil and Turkey), and considerably more than the 10 nations most vulnerable to the climate crisis, who have a combined 1,033 delegates.

Al Gore, the former US vice-president, also took aim at fossil fuel influence at the conference, particularly from Azerbaijan.

Gore said: “There’s an old country song from Nashville called Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places. For a long time, lots of people bought the line that as the fossil fuel industry caused [the climate crisis] they would solve it for us. But they are not going to solve it for us. The global community has to organise a far more effective way to run these Cops [than to host them in petrostates]. The UN secretary general ought to have a role in who’s going to be host.”

The focus of Cop29 is how to supply enough cash to poor countries to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate-driven extreme weather.

Poor countries will need about $1tn a year by 2030 to fulfil the aims of the Paris agreement and limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above preindustrial levels. Close to a third of that should come from developed countries, either through development banks such as the World Bank, or through direct funding, according to a report by leading economists, while most of the rest should come from the private sector.

But there is still little agreement from developed countries on how much they are willing to provide and on what terms, or over which other countries – including petrostates and major emerging economies such as China – should be asked to contribute to such funding.

Campaigners who took over the outside areas of the Cop venue – the Olympic Stadium in Baku – were in no doubt who should provide the money. “Make polluters pay” read the giant banner unfurled over the conference, as campaigners chanted the slogan.

The core talks on a new climate finance settlement – called the “new collective quantified goal” – moved slowly on Thursday, with a new draft text called “unworkable” by some countries. Negotiations will continue throughout next week, and are scheduled to finish next Friday evening.

Outside the negotiating rooms, some countries are looking for new sources of finance to plug the gaps. A report by a taskforce led by Laurence Tubiana, a former French diplomat and the current chief of the European Climate Foundation, found that new “global solidarity levies” could raise large sums towards the climate finance needed for the poor world.

Levying a charge on cryptocurrencies – which are energy-intensive to create – could be one option, the report found. Charging just $0.045 per kWh for the energy would produce $5bn, it said.

A plastics production levy, charged on producing plastics from polymers rather than from recycled material, could yield $25bn-$35bn a year if set at $60 to $90 a tonne. Even more effective would be a 2% wealth tax, an idea championed by Brazil, which could yield $200bn-$250bn a year.

Taxing frequent flyers and business class airline tickets could generate up to $164bn a year, depending on the design of the scheme.

Tubiana said: “One of the founding pillars of the Paris agreement is financial solidarity between developed and developing countries. Such solidarity makes it possible for all countries to gradually raise their national ambitions to achieve the goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5C. However, there can be no climate justice without fiscal justice, as all countries are facing the same challenge: how to fund the transition while ensuring that those with the greatest means and the highest emissions pay their fair share.”

She will present the final report of the taskforce, led by the governments of France, Barbados and Kenya, before next year’s Cop.