COP29: Reconcile Indigenous Peoples and their Role in Governing Text and Abelian-State Agreements
“To actually unchain ourselves from the colonial nature of the COP itself,” he said. The erasure of Indigenous nationhood is the focus of the COP. We won’t see change until we acknowledge and include the nationhood of Indigenous peoples.
Graeme Reed, Indigenous North American representative for the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform at COP29, says his group will focus on ensuring that there’s no additional harm to Indigenous peoples and on building global Indigenous solidarity.
Eriel Deranger, executive director of Indigenous Climate Action and an Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation member, says Indigenous peoples are still largely relegated to the sidelines.
Indigenous people hold a sliver of power at these meetings. They can give advice to states that are willing to listen when it comes to negotiated text and agreements.
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Those gains put solar, in particular, on schedule to meet the 2030 goal of tripling capacity. But there are still shortfalls when it comes to wind power and batteries needed to store renewable energy when sunshine and gales wane. The International Energy Agency said earlier this year that power grids around the world will need a nearly 15-fold increase in energy storage by the year 2030.
The assessment shows that countries are on track to double their renewable energy capacity. There’s a lot of opportunity for growth with the falling cost of wind and solar, but whether policymakers are ready to ditch fossil fuels is a trickier question.
“It is still possible to achieve this goal, but each year the target falls further out of reach,” Francesco La Camera, IRENA’s director-general says. The two of us made a shared commitment at the conference. Now is the time for us to deliver.
Negotiating teams at the end of last year’s congress struck a breakthrough agreement on the issue of transitioning away from fossil fuels. Trump has said he will increase US fossil-fuel production. And even before Trump reclaimed the White House, the United Nations warned that efforts to curb climate pollution are far off track. The European Union says that the hottest year on record will be in 2024, as global emissions rose to a new record.
A group of over 200 countries will gather at a UN summit in Azerbaijan this month to find new targets to combat climate change. This year is about getting more funding from the wealthy nations to help poorer countries transition to cleaner energy and adapt to worsening climate disasters.
Money will be a priority for the UN climate summit in Azerbaijan. The world needs to spend huge sums to overhaul entire economies that still mostly run on fossil fuels, and to deal with risks countries face from extreme weather. The needs of the developing nations are urgent as they face the consequences of global warming.
“I think for me, success is when the money is actually delivered,” says Vijaya Ramachandran, director for energy and development at The Breakthrough Institute. “What we really want to see is an increase in resources to poor countries that will actually enable them to tackle climate change. Instead, what we are seeing are these statements.
Donald Trump winning the election is a major story at the summit. He has called climate change a “hoax.” Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris agreement during his first term.
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Rich Lesser, global chair of Boston consulting Group, is optimistic about technology. “The challenge is that the timeline to do this is not set by us.”
The industrialized countries agreed to give 100 billion of climate finance each year to developing countries to help them with their actions to combat the effects of climate change. Then, in Paris in 2015, countries agreed that a new, larger target should be set for helping developing countries from 2025 onward. The NCQG was born.
It requires almost all of the countries to pledge how much pollution will be cut and to update their plans every few years. It is the aim of the organization to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius and ideally, no more than 1.5 degrees in order to decrease the risk of extreme weather disasters.
The senior associate at Climate Change think tank E3G said that President-elect Trump will pull out of the Paris agreement on his first day in office.
The process would take a year if the US withdrew. But the threat is already reshaping the diplomatic landscape. If Vice President Harris had been elected, all countries would rely on U.S. leadership, according to Meyer.
“With Trump’s victory, I think people will be looking to see other countries, other leaders pick up the slack,” Meyer says. Also the European Union and China.
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The United States is an example of why industrialized countries built their wealth using fossil fuels. Developing nations, on the other hand, have contributed far less pollution. They’re suffering disproportionate harm because of their smaller economies.
The developing countries are in a bind. They need help, but whatever money is pledged will almost certainly be a fraction of what is needed. And they’ll be relying on wealthy neighbors that have been unreliable.
Everyone has a microphone at these conferences as they try to make decisions on how to curb climate change and its impacts.
The meeting kicks off today with a plenary, and tomorrow will hear from heads of state and their environment ministers. They will then make way for the negotiators and so-called sherpas: the people who prepare the text of the conference’s decisions.
All final decisions are approved by a consensus rather than voting on them, and approval can be obtained in the absence of objections. Here is what to look out for.
According to the press release, the analyst at the energy think tank stated that the renewable markets have moved, but governments’ ambitions have not.
The good news is that industry forecasts look brighter than what’s reflected in national policies, and renewables can grow, even with lawmakers dragging their feet on climate action. A 29 percent increase in solar installations this year will make them more affordable than fossil fuels for most of the world. There was a surge in solar installations in the next few years.
Trump’s promise to reform the US clean energy sector will have a devastating impact on US manufacturing, trade, and climate negotiations in the early 2020s
Trump has also said he would rescind unspent funds from the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes $369 billion in federal funding on climate and clean energy and has triggered more than $200 billion in clean energy investment in the US.
China is already the leader of clean energy markets, and could be in line for a boost under a Trump-inspired “retreat” on renewable energy. A recent analysis by the Net Zero industrial policy lab at a University states that the repeal of the inflation reduction act would likely cause a blow to US manufacturing and trade.
After all, an underlying question gnaws at every round of climate negotiations: how big of an impact can these splashy summits have unless delegates can turn promises into action at home?