Frustration grows at fossil fuel influence and structure of UN climate talks

Good or bad, the United Nations climate negotiations process itself became the focus of the international talks that aim to curb warming from coal, oil, and natural gas.

Environmental advocates released reports Friday decrying fossil fuel industry influence at these climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, called COP29. At the same time, a letter signed by a former United Nations Secretary General and ex-top climate negotiators called for dramatic reform. And the conference’s chief negotiator said current talks – aimed at striking a multihundred-billion dollar deal on financing a transition to clean energy and adapting to climate change – were going too slowly.

All that put the focus on process – not results.

“We consider COP29 as a litmus test for the global climate architecture,” conference lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev said at a Friday news conference.

A letter causes a stir about the direction of future talks

A letter signed by former UN chief Ban Ki-Moon, former UN climate secretary Christiana Figueres, and former Ireland President Mary Robinson called for “a fundamental overhaul of the COP”.

“We need a shift from negotiation to implementation,” it said.

Two of the signees – Figueres and Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research – said the letter was being badly misinterpreted as criticism of the climate talks. They said the letter was intended to show support for the process, which they said has worked and just needs to shift into a new mode.

Instead of spending so much effort negotiating new deals in annual conferences that can attract 70,000 people, the process should be smaller, more frequent, and aimed at putting what was already agreed upon into action, Rockstrom said.

“It’s about strengthening the COP,” Rockstrom said. “It’s about recognising we’ve accomplished so much that we have what need. ... We really need to get serious about delivery.”

Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare said he had issues with some of the suggestions in the letter and personally considered the COP process broken. His analysis this week showed that after the 2015 Paris agreement projected future warming dropped, but in the past three years, warming projections – based on negotiations, promises, and policies – for the future have stayed the same or even gone up slightly.

An analysis from the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition said Friday that the official attendance list of the talks featured at least 1,770 people connected to the fossil fuel interests.

FIREWALL

Catherine Abreu, director of the International Climate Politics Hub, suggested that there should be a “firewall” between fossil fuel lobbyists and UN climate bodies and negotiators from countries. “We know over 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists are here at COP29. That is not acceptable,” she said.

Former US Vice President Al Gore, who on Friday presented new data on carbon pollution sites, said, “It’s unfortunate that the fossil fuel industry and the petrostates have seized control of the COP process to an unhealthy degree.”

For his part, COP29 negotiator Rafiyev defended the process.

“The process has already delivered, the COP process, so far by reducing projected warming, delivering finance to those in need,” Rafiev said. “It’s better than any alternative.”

One key benefit of the UN climate talks process is that it is the only place where victim small island nations have an equal seat at the table, United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen told The Associated Press. But the process has its limits because “the rules of the game are set by member states”, she said.

At a press conference with small island nations, chair Cedric Schuster said the negotiating bloc felt the need to remind everyone else why the talks mattered.

“We’re here to defend the Paris agreement,” Schuster said, referring to the climate deal in 2015 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. “We’re concerned that countries are forgetting that protecting the world’s most vulnerable is at the core of this framework.”

Also at the talks Friday, new data from an organisation co-founded by Gore that combines observations and artificial intelligence found that cities in Asia and the United States emit the most heat-trapping gas, with Shanghai the most polluting.

China, India, Iran, Indonesia, and Russia had the biggest increases in emissions from 2022 to 2023, while Venezuela, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States had the biggest decreases in pollution.

– AP