Countries Dither and CEOs Push as COP29 Approaches

In a brief preliminary meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, intended to help set the stage for the upcoming U.N. climate meeting known as COP29, not much happened. This is not great news.

The so-called pre-COP meeting hoped to make some progress toward a new climate finance goal, where rich countries provide many, many billions of needed dollars to the developing world to help them adapt to the changing climate and build out clean infrastructure. According to some AFP reporting, no such progress was made.

“Despite some hopeful talk of coming together, countries remain quite far apart,” said Iskander Erzini Vernoit, of the Morocco-based think tank IMAL Initiative for Climate and Development, according to the AFP. Another NGO observer present in Baku called it “outrageous” that the rich world is largely refusing to offer up dollar amounts they are willing to commit.

That commitment, if we get it, will likely represent the signature achievement of COP29, after last year’s “success” involving the first-ever agreement to “transition away” from fossil fuels (eventually, sort of). It would mean an update to a 15-year-old pledge, first announced by then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in Copenhagen, of $100 billion from rich to poor each year starting in 2020. They didn’t quite make that deadline, of course, but it does seem like the $100 billion mark was crossed — with caveats, in the form of interest-bearing loans and other types of funding instead of just, you know, given poor countries the money — in 2022 or 2023.

Since 2009, the scope of the problem has been made abundantly clear, and the international conversation now at least acknowledges that the need is more likely in the trillions of dollars. “The scale of need has been recognized, but no figure has been put on the table,” another NGO observer said.

Meanwhile, even as leaders of some of the world’s major financial institutions shrug and stay home rather than heading to Baku, a coalition of CEOs of large corporations is advocating for greater ambition from national delegations. The Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, representing $4 trillion in annual revenue and four million employees, published an open letter on Thursday with a series of requests directed at “regulators and policy makers.”

They asked for increased promises in the form of nationally determined contributions or NDCs, the emissions reduction pledges made under the Paris Agreement; a scale-up of climate finance into that trillions range; for regulators to grease the wheels a bit when it comes to building out massive amounts of renewable energy; and increased government support for research into transformative climate tech that hasn’t reached its potential.

“We urge our peers to demonstrate leadership and accountability in decarbonizing their operations and value chains by setting science-based targets, disclosing progress and developing climate transition plans, consistent with evolving frameworks and standards,” wrote the group, which includes CEOs of companies like Ikea, Hitachi, and Nestlé. Of course, virtually every analysis of corporate climate pledges shows them coming up short of promise and expectation, but big companies speaking out on the issue is probably still better than not doing so.

Still, corporate pressure likely isn’t enough to move the government needle when it comes to finance pledges. The increasingly “bleak” COP begins in one month.