DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Next year’s COP29 climate summit is set to take place in oil-rich Azerbaijan after Eastern European countries resolved a political deadlock on Saturday.
Geopolitical tensions had left the 2024 conference in limbo for months, with Russia blocking EU countries from hosting and feuding neighbors Armenia and Azerbaijan vetoing each other.
But after Armenia and Bulgaria formally withdrew their bids earlier this week, the 23-country Eastern European group backed Azerbaijan during a meeting on Saturday, Bulgarian Environment Minister Julian Popov told POLITICO.
Earlier on Saturday, Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan’s minister of ecology and natural resources, said in a speech that he was “delighted” to announce that there was overall consensus on Azerbaijan’s candidacy to host COP29.
“We are very grateful to all countries, in particular to the Eastern European group and the host United Arab Emirates for their support,” said Babayev. “We are committed to working inclusively and collaboratively with everyone to ensure the success of COP29. May COP28 lead us forward toward a more sustainable and secure future for all.”
Baku’s bid will still have to be voted on by the entire COP plenary, but that is usually a formality.
If confirmed, next year’s summit will once again take place in a major oil- and gas-producing country.
The UAE, host of this year’s COP28, is the world’s seventh-largest oil producer. Fossil fuels make up more than 90 percent of Azerbaijan’s exports. And the host of the COP30 climate talks in 2025, Brazil, has just announced it would join the OPEC+ oil cartel.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The full-scale resistance that oil-exporting countries are mounting against a COP28 deal to end fossil fuel use is a sign of “panic,” said Germany’s climate envoy.
Last week, as ministers descended on the U.N. climate talks in Dubai, the OPEC cartel of oil-rich nations urged its 13 members, including Saudi Arabia, and OPEC+ countries to reject any agreement that aimed to slash fossil fuel production. The appeal sparked contentious debate over the weekend as officials tried to finalize a deal before COP28’s scheduled end on Tuesday.
But to Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s special envoy for international climate action, the letter was also a rare admission from the oil industry that these climate talks pose an existential threat to its business model.
“They obviously felt they needed to engage,” Morgan said in response to a question from POLITICO while speaking to a group of reporters. “Whether it was a bit of panic, whether it was a bit of realization of how far the discussions are. That’s my take on that.”
Fossil fuels have landed at this year’s climate talks in a big way after decades where they were largely absent from the negotiations, despite being the driving force behind global warming.
But as the impacts of climate change have accelerated and alternative options such as wind and solar have become more affordable, a growing number of countries are drawing attention to the need to wean their economies off oil, gas and coal.
That push is proving to be among the most contentious issues at COP28, which is taking place in a region that is home to some of the world’s top oil and gas producers.
As the talks speed toward a close, officials are working to craft language that can get support from the nearly 200 countries participating in the process. It will be up to the UAE presidency of COP28 to attempt to find consensus. Draft text over the weekend offered several options for a pledge to “phase out” fossil fuels, all with various caveats.
But several people close to the talks said that Saudi Arabia and the Arab group of negotiators have resisted such language, including storming out of one meeting room, according to one observer of the process granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks.
“We have raised our consistent concerns with attempts to attack energy sources instead of emissions,” Saudi Arabia’s Albara Tawfiq said during Sunday’s public session.
His comments mirror remarks delivered on Saturday in Dubai by OPEC Secretary-General Haitham Al Ghais.
“Our goal must be to reduce emissions, which is the core objective of the Paris Agreement, while ensuring energy security and universal access to affordable energy,” the OPEC secretariat posted on X, quoting Al Ghais and referencing the 2015 international climate accord to limit global warming.
Even before COP28 began, countries were aware that getting Saudi Arabia on board with supporting a fossil fuel phaseout would be supremely challenging. Oil remains the backbone of the Saudi economy, despite efforts to diversify.
“We hope following this discussion, the presidency would be able to deal with that now that he has clearly heard from all the parties,” said Seve Paeniu, minister of finance and economic development for the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. “It’s really now in the hands of the presidency.”
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Brazil has taken its green trade row with the European Union to this year’s global climate summit.
The Brazilian government has been among the most vocal opponents of the EU’s new carbon border tax on imported goods, describing the measure as “discriminatory” and warning it might hinder rather than help global efforts to reduce planet-warming emissions.
A fight is now brewing at the COP28 conference in Dubai as Brazil — backed by China — seeks to inject its trade concerns into international talks on how to curb climate change.
In the first iteration of a draft negotiating text published Tuesday, some countries are pushing for language that would see the nearly 200 countries represented at this year’s talks criticize measures such as the EU’s carbon border tax — essentially a levy on carbon-intensive products coming into the bloc.
The proposal suggests that countries adopt a COP28 declaration that “expresses serious concern” about measures such as “sanctions on low-carbon products, restrictions on technology investment and cooperation, green barriers, discriminatory legislation, plurilateral constraints, etc.” — a series of categories that would cover the EU’s carbon levy.
That comes after delegations narrowly avoided starting the summit with a scrap over the conference agenda last week, with Brazil requesting a last-minute addition to carve out space for a discussion on “concerns with unilateral trade measures related to climate change and their potential adverse impact on equitable and just transitions.”
The development reflects the rising tensions between the EU and its trade partners, coming just as EU trade talks with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay ground to a halt this week. China earlier this year also escalated a fight against the EU at the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the tax, questioning whether the measure complies with global trade rules.
Who’s angry?
The agenda request was submitted on behalf of the BASIC group of large, emerging economies — Brazil, China, India and South Africa. The accompanying justification text explicitly complained about “unilateral carbon border taxes.”
The four countries fear they could be hit hard by the so-called carbon border adjustment mechanism, which will force exporters to the bloc to pay the difference between the EU’s carbon price and that of their home countries. Carbon prices vary from country to country, with the EU’s nearing €100 at times and China’s hovering around €8.
The measure — which entered a transitional phase on October 1, with payments starting in 2026 — was designed to protect EU companies that pay a carbon price against unfair competition from countries with no or low carbon prices.
At COP28, the EU insists that tensions over the tax aren’t affecting climate talks.
“We expect these political messages of concern to continue to come up” in climate negotiations, EU lead negotiator Jacob Werksman told reporters in Dubai on Monday.
But he added: “We don’t expect them to derail the conversations, mostly because I don’t think any party expects this to be a forum for a discussion on any party’s particular [trade] measures. … There’s a whole other institution for that. That’s the World Trade Organisation.”
Yet on Tuesday, Brazil’s lead negotiator André Corrêa do Lago told reporters again that “some countries decided to adopt some trade measures that we believe don’t help developing countries to increase their efforts toward fighting climate change.”
He cited several United Nations agreements that Brazil sees as supporting its case. The BASIC submission also warns that such measures go against the Paris Agreement principles of “equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities,” meaning that developed countries responsible for the bulk of emissions in the atmosphere should do more to tackle climate change than developing nations.
Corrêa do Lago also hit back at suggestions that Brazil should take its concerns to the WTO instead.
“Why are we dealing with that here and not at the WTO?” he asked. “It’s very interesting. The same countries that say, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t be discussing this at COP, go to the WTO please,’ say at the WTO that ‘Oh, you should be discussing this at the [COP].”
Smiling, he said: “So we decided to talk about it here.”
China hasn’t come out against the EU’s carbon border tax while at COP28. But the key language in Tuesday’s draft is identical to a Chinese U.N. submission from September. It’s got the same jargon, and even the same “etc.” to wrap its list of items.
To compare — China suggested countries at COP28 declare “serious concerns that some countries imposed measures, including, inter alia, sanctions on low-carbon products, restrictions on technology investment and cooperation, green barriers, discriminatory legislation, plurilateral constraints, etc.”
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Now the real work starts.
The first few days of the COP28 climate conference featured so many lofty declarations and flashy promises that you’d be forgiven for asking what delegates are still doing here. But the main negotiations have only just gotten underway.
At the core of this year’s summit sits something called the “Global Stocktake,” often abbreviated to GST — a nondescript name that conceals its vital role in international climate efforts.
In short, it’s about drawing up a report card on where the world stands eight years after signing the Paris Agreement, and how countries plan to fix their inevitable shortcomings. That plan coming out of COP28 will help determine whether the world can stave off the worst impacts of climate change or careen toward unlivable temperatures.
German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan called the stocktake the “heart” of the Paris climate accord; Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, labeled it a “lifeline” for especially vulnerable countries like his native Samoa.
The outcome of this obscure process is also what high-ranking ministers will be haggling over when they arrive for the second week of COP28 — and what the United Arab Emirates hosts will be judged on in the end.
“What makes this COP unique as compared to the previous COPs? First and foremost, it’s the Global Stocktake,” EU lead negotiator Jacob Werksman told reporters on Monday.
So what is it? Let’s take a look.
What are we even talking about?
The Global Stocktake broadly refers to a thorough assessment of how much progress countries are making toward the Paris Agreement targets, which committed countries to limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius and ideally to 1.5C compared to the pre-industrial era.
The process consists of three components. The first stage, gathering all the relevant information, began two years ago. The second phase, evaluating that data, ended this summer.
The final task — the response to this assessment — concludes at COP28. That’s the hard part.
Under the Paris accord’s terms, countries have to conduct this exercise every five years.
Hang on, the assessment already happened?
Yup. You’ll sometimes hear that countries will conduct an assessment of their climate efforts while in Dubai, but the United Nations already published its report summarizing the findings in September — concluding that the world is falling short of its Paris goals.
“That assessment has been done, it is clear we are not on a track,” Morgan told a press conference in Dubai last week. With current efforts, she noted, “we will see a temperature rise of 2.5C to 2.9C.”
She added: “That is unimaginable.”
Beyond 1.5C, climate impacts like extreme weather or sea-level rise get substantially worse. Scientists warn that overshooting that threshold risks triggering irreversible tipping points like dramatic polar ice loss, which would further exacerbate warming.
So what’s happening at COP28?
Negotiators in Dubai are discussing what countries should do with that report, which gave strict instructions to retain any hope of hitting the 1.5C target: First, cut 43 percent of greenhouse gas emissions this decade (compared to 2019 levels), thenhit net-zero emissions by 2050.
But there are profound divisions over how to get there.
“The first component is taking stock of what the gaps are,” said Tom Evans, who tracks the stocktake negotiations in Dubai for think tank E3G. “Second, what do you do about these gaps? And that’s where the political flashpoints are.”
What could that response look like?
A lot of things, but the idea is for everyone from the Paris Agreement — that’s nearly 200 countries — to endorse a coherent plan by the summit’s end.
Again, not easy.
The document is expected to both look back at what went wrong and then look ahead with guidelines on how to remedy those shortcomings. That roadmap should include a climate wish list — everything from cutting emissions to preparing communities for climate change fallout to financing for both.
So … words on a page. Does that even matter?
It does, for a few reasons.
First, the text will give clear directions to countries as they draw up their next climate action plans. The Paris Agreement requires governments to submit new plans by COP30, which takes place in Brazil in 2025.
Second, those words send a powerful signal to markets, local governments and more. If nearly 200 countries agree on a text that says a coal phaseout is necessary, investors will take the hint.
With the stocktake, “we have the opportunity to take a set of decisions … that finds the clarity that business leaders need to invest in the future,” Morgan said.
The outcome will also test the Paris accord’s integrity. These regular check-ins and the requirement to then update climate plans are meant to ensure everyone is upping their efforts over time.
“The effectiveness of the Paris Agreement is at stake,” Evans said.
And what do countries want?
The end result should set out what to do about planet-warming fossil fuels, as well as efforts to prepare for a warmer future and steps to ensure poorer countries have the resources to do that, as well.
“No one is trying to tear the whole thing down,” said Evans.
That doesn’t mean countries are close to an agreement.
Urgent calls for a fossil fuel “phaseout” — a much-debated term — are especially contentious.
Many developing countries say they need more financial support to back ambitious language on fossil fuels and other efforts to reduce emissions.
German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan called the stocktake the “heart” of the Paris climate accord | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Meanwhile, the EU, the U.S. and climate-vulnerable countries are trying to ensure new plans don’t exempt any industries and cover all greenhouse gasses, not just carbon dioxide — something China recently said it was on board with.
Going in the other direction, several countries whose economies depend on oil and gas exports — Russia and Saudi Arabia among them — are trying to push for language that would allow for the continued use of fossil fuels.
What’s the UAE’s role here?
The UAE is running the show and must shepherd the stocktake to a conclusion. At some point, the officials in charge will have to produce a draft text for countries to accept or reject.
COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber — who, controversially also helms the UAE’s state-run oil giant — has repeatedly insisted he would push for the “most ambitious response possible” to the stocktake. But he has remained vague on what that might look like.
Still, Evans said, “They’re aware that it’s the centerpiece of their COP. The shine of those early pledges will fade, and they’ll need to produce something.”
How are the negotiations going?
There are already some rocky signs.
As of Monday evening, negotiators hadn’t produced a detailed draft text, despite spending some 10 hours talking behind closed doors on Sunday.
A text outlining possible “building blocks” was released on Friday, but it’s more of a broad summary that left all the hard questions unanswered. Regarding the energy sector, for example, options included “phasedown/out fossil fuels” and “phasedown/out/no new coal.” In other words: All options are on the table.
What’s next?
Over the coming days, negotiators will try to agree on as many sections of the text as possible, but their bosses will take over in the summit’s second week to resolve the thornier questions.
This week’s talks will “inevitably lead to some very important political questions for ministers to resolve in the second week,” said Werksman, the EU negotiator. “Exactly what those questions are, we can’t fully speculate on — but we imagine that the issue of how we’re going to address fossil fuels will be top of the list.”
Technically the deadline is December 12, but if past COPs are any guide, overtime is possible.
DUBAI — The war in Gaza crashed into the United Nations climate summit on Friday, as furious sideline diplomacy, blunt censures of violence and an Iranian boycott shoved global warming to the side.
It was a sharp change in tone from the COP28 opening on Thursday, which ended on an upbeat note as countries promised to support climate-stricken communities. The mood darkened the following day as news broke that the week-old truce between Israel and Hamas was collapsing.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog spent much of the morning in meetings telling fellow leaders about “how Hamas blatantly violates the ceasefire agreements,” according to a post on his X account. He ended up skipping a speech he was meant to give during Friday’s parade of world leaders.
There were other conspicuous no-shows. Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was absent, despite being listed as an early speaker. And Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority leader, also disappeared from the final speakers’ list after initially being scheduled to talk just a few slots after Herzog.
Then, shortly after leaders posed for a group photo in the Dubai venue on Friday, the Iranian delegation announced it was walking out. The reason, Iran’s energy minister told his country’s official news agency: The “political, biased and irrelevant presence of the fake Zionist regime” — referring to Israel.
By Friday afternoon, the Iranian pavilion had emptied out.
The backroom drama played out even as leader after leader took the stage in the vast Expo City campus to make allotted three-minute statements on their efforts to stop the planet from boiling. The World Meteorological Organization said Thursday that 2023 was almost certain to be the hottest year ever recorded.
U.N. climate talks are often buffeted by outside events. This is the second such meetingheld after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. That war provoked some public barbs and backroom discussions at last year’s summit in Egypt, but leaders still maintained their scheduled speaking slots and a veneer of focus on the matter they were supposedly there to discuss.
This year, that veneer cracked.
“There are currently a number of very, very serious crises that are causing great suffering for many people. It was clear that these would also affect the mood at the COP,” a German diplomat, granted anonymity to discuss the issue candidly, told POLITICO.
But that can’t distract officials working on climate change, the diplomat added: “It is also clear that no one on our planet, no country on Earth, can escape the destructive effects of the climate crisis.”
Tell-tale signals
There had been early signs that the conflict would spill over into discussions at the climate summit.
Sameh Shoukry, president of the COP27 climate conference and Egyptian minister of foreign affairs, Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, president of COP28 | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
At Thursday’s opening ceremony, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry — president of last year’s COP27 summit — asked all delegates to stand for a moment of silence in memory of two climate negotiators who had recently died, “as well as all civilians who have perished during the current conflict in Gaza.”
On Friday, Jordanian King Abdullah II, Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan were among the leaders who used their COP28 speeches to draw attention to the war.
“This year’s COP must recognize even more than ever that we cannot talk about climate change in isolation from the humanitarian tragedies unfolding around us,” Abdullah said. “As we speak, the Palestinian people are facing an immediate threat to their lives and wellbeing.”
Ramaphosa went further: “South Africa is appalled at the cruel tragedy that is underway in Gaza. The war against the innocent people of Palestine is a war crime that must be ended now.
But, he added, “we cannot lose momentum in the fight against climate change.”
Asked for comment, an official from the United Arab Emirates, which is overseeing COP28, said the country had invited all parties to the conference and “are pleased with the exceptionally high level of attendance this year.”
The official added: “Climate change is a global issue and as the host for this significant, momentous conference, the UAE welcomes constructive dialogue and continues to work with all international partners and stakeholders across the board to deliver impactful results for COP28.”
The other summit in Dubai
In the back rooms of the conference venue, leaders were holding urgent talks on the war. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken huddled with Herzog on Thursday, according to a post on Herzog’s X account.
“In addition to participating in the COP, I’ll have an opportunity to meet with Arab partners to discuss the conflict in Gaza,” Blinken told reporters Wednesday while in Brussels for a NATO gathering. He didn’t offer further details.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters Vice President Kamala Harris would also be “having discussions on the conflict between Israel and Hamas” during her trip to Dubai.
On his X account, Herzog said he had met with “dozens” of leaders at the summit. His post featured photographs of Britain’s King Charles III, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, India’s Narendra Modi and Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He also posted about meetings with Blinken and UAE leader Mohamed bin Zayed.
Erdoğan met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at COP28 to discuss the war in Gaza, according to a statement by the Turkish communications directorate that made no mention of climate action.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made no secret of the fact that he intended to use some of his brief visit to Dubai to talk about regional security.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made no secret of the fact that he intended to use some of his brief visit to Dubai to talk about regional security | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
“I’ll be speaking to lots of leaders … not just [about] climate change, but also the situation in the Middle East,” he told reporters on his flight outof the U.K. Thursday night.
The reignited Israel-Hamas conflict came to dominate his time at the summit. Meetings with other leaders were arranged with regional tensions in mind — not climate. Sunak met Israel’s Herzog and Jordan’s Abdullah, as well as Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al Sisi and the emir of Qatar.
“Given the events of this morning in Israel and Gaza, the prime minister has spent most of his bilateral meetings discussing that situation,” Sunak’s spokesperson told reporters in Dubai.
The meetings focused on “what more we can do both to support the innocent civilians in Gaza, to de-escalate tensions, to get more hostages out and more aid in,” the spokesperson said.
Even the U.K.’s ostensibly nonpolitical head of state, King Charles III — in Dubai to give an opening address to world leaders — was deployed to aid the diplomatic effort. Buckingham Palace said the king would “have the opportunity to meet regional leaders to support the U.K.’s efforts to promote peace in the region.”
Separately, French President Emmanuel Macron was planning to meet various leaders on the security situation and then fly on for talks in Qatar, according to an Elysée Palace official.
Meanwhile, three of Europe’s leaders who have been the strongest backers of the Palestinians — Irish leader Leo Varadkar, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez — held talks on the fringes of COP on Friday morning.
Earlier on Friday, Israel withdrew its ambassador to Spain, blasting what it called Sánchez’s “shameful remarks” on the situation.
Brazil’s Lula, whose country will host a major COP conference in 2025, lamented that just as more joint action is needed to prevent climate catastrophe, war and violence were cleaving the world apart.
“We are facing what may be the greatest challenge that humanity has faced till now,” he said. “Instead of uniting forces, the world is going to wars. It feeds divisions and deepens poverty and inequalities.”
Zia Weise, Suzanne Lynch and Charlie Cooper reported from Dubai. Karl Mathiesen reported from London.
Clea Calcutt contributed reporting from Paris. Nahal Toosi contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.
Think the location of this year’s global climate summit is contentious? Wait till you hear about the next one.
When COP28 kicks off next week in the United Arab Emirates, the oil kingdom presiding over the talks will face pressure to show its fossil fuel interests won’t capture negotiations.
But at least the conference has a host. Next year’s summit, COP29, is currently homeless.
That’s because regional tensions have created a deadlock. The conference is meant to take place in Eastern Europe, but Russia is preventing any European Union country from hosting, while warring neighbors Azerbaijan and Armenia are blocking each other, and no one has been able to agree on a way forward.
The result: COP29 is in limbo, and global efforts to secure a liveable future risk being left leaderless. If no one picks up the baton, the current host may remain in place until COP30 starts in 2025 — likely leaving the UAE in charge of talks on major decisions like a new finance goal and getting governments to commit to post-2030 climate targets.
Officially, Russia’s line of reasoning “is that they don’t believe that Bulgaria or any other EU country will be impartial in running COP29,” said Julian Popov, the environment minister for Bulgaria, which has offered to host next year’s climate summit.
But behind closed doors, “their argument is that they are being blocked by EU countries about various things in relation to the war against Ukraine,” he told POLITICO in an interview.
“They are,” he said, “basically retaliating.”
The dispute now risks disrupting both COP28 and COP29, as diplomats scramble to resolve the issue before departing Dubai in mid-December.
“Russia has chosen to hold these negotiations almost hostage,” said Tom Evans, policy advisor on climate diplomacy and geopolitics at think tank E3G.
Race against time
The hosting dispute is inflaming geopolitical tensions heading into COP28, which takes place amid growing global discord related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, and an evolving debt crisis looming over developing nations.
The COP climate summits typically rotate among the United Nations’ five regional groups, and next year is Eastern Europe’s turn. The 23-country Eastern Europe group has to decide on the host country by consensus.
COP28 President-Designate Dr. Sultan Al Jaber | Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Bloomberg Philanthropies
In the past, that wasn’t hard: The COP conference would just rubber-stamp the host chosen by the regional group. Now, however, the decision will have to be taken at the height of tricky talks on a host of issues ranging from the future of fossil fuels to financial help for poorer countries.
“It’s unfortunate,” said Popov, that the hosting dispute may “distract” from the actual negotiations in Dubai.
Then there’s the issue of preparation. COP locations are usually chosen well in advance — the UAE was announced as host in 2021, and COP30 will take place in Brazil — to allow host cities to ready themselves for the arrival of tens of thousands of delegates.
The host country usually, but not always, also takes on the COP presidency, which plays a crucial role in leading negotiations before, during and after the summit.
“We still don’t know who will run the process next year,” Popov said. “This is damaging the whole COP process and will inevitably have a negative impact on the quality of negotiations.”
Among the key issues to be settled at COP29 is a new financial target for funding climate action in developing countries from 2025 onward. Ahead of COP30, countries are meant to submit a new round of climate pledges, including targets to reduce emissions by 2035.
“You really need months of diplomacy in advance to set these COPs up for success,” Evans said.
Geopolitical stalemate
Besides Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Belarus and Armenia also said last year they would throw their hats in the ring for 2024.
Prague eventually withdrew, proposing instead to host the annual pre-COP summit ahead of the main event in Bulgaria. But this past spring, Russia sent an email to other Eastern European representatives saying it would prevent EU countries from hosting, accusing them of blocking Russia-backed countries.
The email, obtained by Reuters, read: “It is reasonable to believe that EU countries, driven by politics from Brussels, do not have the capacity to serve as honest and effective brokers of global climate negotiations under the UNFCCC,” the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
In the summer, Azerbaijan joined the race to host COP29 — a few months before launching a large-scale offensive to retake the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, forcing tens of thousands to flee to Armenia.
Azerbaijan and Armenia are now opposing each other’s bids, said Gayane Gabrielyan, Armenia’s deputy environment minister.
“Russia is blocking any EU country, and Armenia and Azerbaijan can’t find a solution,” she told POLITICO. “We have more than 100,000 refugees … In this situation, we will not be able to discuss anything with them.”
The foreign and environment ministries of Russia and Azerbaijan did not respond to requests for comment.
The Eastern Europeans could also swap with another regional group or a specific country outside the region to host — like Spain stepped in for Chile in 2019 — but that would also require consensus, as well as the formal withdrawal of all host candidates.
“The only option now is going to Bonn,” Gabrielyan said. “The motherland of the UNFCCC.”
Bonn-bound?
Bonn is where the U.N. climate body is headquartered. The conference guidelines indicate that the summit would default to the former West German capital if no agreement is found among the Eastern European group.
But hosting a climate conference “isn’t trivial,” Evans said. “There’s a cost involved, and there’s a huge logistical headache.”
Several European diplomats, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, told POLITICO that Germany was less than keen, something German officials would neither confirm nor deny.
Asked if Germany was prepared to host, a foreign office spokesperson said that discussions within the Eastern European group were ongoing, “with the aim of COP28 taking a decision.”
While Bonn may end up serving as the venue, the presidency would likely remain in the hands of the UAE if the Eastern Europeans can’t find consensus, a spokesperson for the U.N. climate body said.
Yet the UAE, which has faced a barrage of criticism since naming national oil company CEO Sultan al-Jaber as conference president, appears reluctant to continue in its role.
COP28 Director-General Majid al-Suwaidi said last month that his country would not host again. Asked to clarify whether that also meant not extending the presidency, a COP28 spokesperson declined to comment.
The predicament has prompted Bulgaria to suggest a novel solution to, as Popov put it, “save COP29” — splitting the mega-event across several nations in Eastern Europe.
“Here’s what we suggested: A distributed COP — have the pre-COP, the presidency and the COP held by three different countries, and have some events organized in different Eastern European countries,” he said.
But that, too, would need the backing of all regional group members. Gabrielyan said Armenia was “ready to discuss” this option, but that Azerbaijan had signaled opposition.
The uncertainty over who will host COP29 may come with one positive side-effect, however: Diplomats might be wary of postponing difficult decisions to next year.
“It’s not uncommon for COPs, when they reach some of the trickiest issues, to kick the can down the road,” said Evans. “I don’t feel like this is an option this time.”
One is a king who has spent most of his adult life campaigning for bold action on global warming — but is now bound by ancient convention to stick to his government’s skeptical script.
The second is a prime minister who just scaled back Britain’s net zero ambitions and wants to “max out” fossil fuel production at home — and stands accused by former colleagues of being “uninterested” in environmental policies.
And the third? A former prime minister — now the U.K. foreign secretary — who once pledged to lead the “greenest government ever,” but then grew tired of what he called “the green crap” … and is already showing signs of overshadowing his new boss.
All three — King Charles III, Rishi Sunak, and David Cameron — are due to descend on the United Nations climate conference, COP28, which starts in Dubai next week, rounding off a year set to be the hottest ever recorded. (Sunak and the king are already confirmed to attend, while Cameron is due to do so in the coming days.)
The unlikely trio, each jostling for their place on the world stage, are symbolic of a wider identity crisis for the U.K. heading into the summit.
The country staked a claim as a world leader on climate when it hosted COP26 just two years ago. But it is now viewed with uncertainty by allies pushing for stronger action on global warming, following Sunak’s embrace of North Sea oil and gas and his retreat on some key domestic net zero targets.
“There is a lot of confusion about what the U.K. is going to do this year,” said one European diplomat, granted anonymity to give a candid assessment ahead of the summit.
“It raises the question, which team are they on? I think we’ll need to find out during COP.”
Green king, Blue Prime Minister
One of the key moments for the U.K. will come early in the conference, when Charles delivers an opening speech at the World Climate Action Summit of world leaders, the grand curtain raiser on a fortnight of talks.
Sunak is expected to fly in the same day to deliver his own speech later in the session.
Rishi Sunak speaks at COP26 in Glasgow | Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
At least Charles has been allowed to attend the summit this year. In 2022, then Prime Minister Liz Truss advised the king against travelling to Egypt for COP27.
But anyone looking for signs of friction between Sunak and the climate-conscious king will be unlikely to find them in the text of Charles’ address.
Speeches by the monarch are signed off by No. 10 Downing Street and this one will be no different, said one minister, granted anonymity to discuss interactions between the PM’s office and Buckingham Palace.
That’s not to say tensions don’t exist. Just don’t expect the king to overstep the constitutional ground rules, said Charles’ friend and biographer, the broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby.
“I can only imagine that he must be intensely frustrated that the government has granted licenses in the North Sea,” Dimbleby told POLITICO. “Whatever the actual practical implications of the drilling in terms of combating climate change, it will not send a great message to the world from a nation that claims moral leadership on the issue.”
But Charles finds himself in “a unique position,” Dimbleby added.
“He is the only head of state who has a very long track record on insisting that climate change is a threat to the future of humanity … He speaks with great authority — but of course on terms from which the government will not dissent, because he has an overriding commitment, regardless of his own views, to abide by the constitutional obligations of the head of state in this country.”
Others see the speech as a major test for Charles.
“This is one of the most significant speeches he’ll make as king,” said Craig Prescott, a constitutional expert and lecturer in law at the Royal Holloway university.
Prescott noted the speech will be watched closely for clues as to how Charles maintains “political impartiality while pursuing the environmental issue — striking the right balance.”
“There will be some to-ing and fro-ing between Downing Street and the Palace,” he added. “But fundamentally he has to comply with any advice he gets.”
As is the convention, Downing Street declined to comment on any discussions with Buckingham Palace. The Palace did not respond to a request for comment.
Fossil fuel politics
The king is attending the summit at the invitation of its hosts, the United Arab Emirates — a sign of close ties between the British establishment and the Gulf monarchies presiding over some of the world’s biggest oil and gas-producing countries.
It’s a connection some view as a potential asset for British climate diplomacy.
The then Prince Charles addresses the audience at COP26 | Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images
“Trust between these royal families and institutions could provide the chance to have candid conversations” on issues such as fossil fuel reduction and the need to expand renewable energy supply, said Edward Davey, head of the U.K office of the World Resources Institute, where the king is patron.
“One could imagine those issues being discussed in a respectful way, in a way that perhaps other leaders couldn’t achieve.”
“I think it’s perfectly possible for the sovereign and the PM to both attend a COP and for them both to play a complementary role,” Davey added.
Others are much more skeptical. “[The king] has a lot of close friends in the Middle East who are massive producers of oil,” said Graham Smith, boss of the Republic campaign group, which wants to abolish the British monarchy.
“They can use him as a point of access to the British state because he has direct access to the government, and whatever he says to government is entirely secretive.”
Cameron, meanwhile, has his own close ties to the UAE and — before his return to government — took on a teaching post at New York University Abu Dhabi earlier this year.
Negotiation confusion
The U.K.’s big three will be joined in Dubai by Energy Secretary — and Sunak ally — Claire Coutinho. But the head of the British delegation is a junior minister, Graham Stuart, who does not attend Cabinet.
While the country will be officially arguing — alongside the EU — for a “phase-out of unabated fossil fuels,” Stuart sparked confusion earlier this month when he suggested to MPs that he was not troubled by the distinction between a “phase-out” (a total end to production of fossil fuels, where carbon capture is not applied) and a “phase-down,” the softer language preferred by the summit’s president, UAE national oil company boss Sultan Al-Jaber.
Chris Skidmore, an MP and climate activist in Sunak’s Conservative party, and the author of a government-commissioned report on net zero policy, said Stuart was wrong if he thought the distinction was just “semantics.”
“The fate of the world is resting on a distinction between phase-out and phase-down. But the U.K. finds itself now [unable] to argue for phase-out because it’s joined the phase-down club.
“That in itself puts us in an entirely different strategic position to where we were.”
Climate brain drain
London’s climate diplomatic corps are still well-respected around the world, said the same European diplomat quoted above. Even with Sunak’s loosening of net zero policies, the U.K. is seen to be in the group of countries, alongside the EU, leading the push for strong action on cutting emissions.
And there is a chance Cameron’s appointment will see more effort going into the U.K.’s global reputation on climate, according to Skidmore.
Citizen scientist Pat Stirling checks the quality of the River Wye water in Hay-on-Wye | Darren Staples/AFP via Getty Images
“It was under his premiership that the U.K. played a leading role in helping to get the Paris Agreement [to limit global warming] signed through … It will be interesting to see if he comes to COP and wants to play on the opportunities for the U.K. to demonstrate its climate credentials,” he said.
But the team that pulled off a relatively successful COP26 now has significantly less firepower, said one former U.K. climate official, who warned their efforts risk being undermined by No. 10’s approach to fossil fuels.
“There was a brain drain of experts working on climate, [the sort of] officials that could help hold government to account internally and try to maintain the level of ambition that we needed,” the former official said.
This spring, the U.K. scrapped the dedicated role of climate envoy, held by the experienced diplomat Nick Bridge since 2017. The remaining team of climate diplomats have been left frustrated, the former official said, by changes to domestic climate policy driven by a Downing Street operation fixated with next year’s U.K. general election, without consideration for how they might affect Britain’s negotiating position on the world stage.
“When Sunak gave his speech in September [rolling back some interim green targets], his team didn’t even realize that a U.N. climate action summit was happening in New York,” the former official said. “His team aren’t thinking in this way. For them it’s just about votes and the election.”
The risk, said the European diplomat, is that countries at COP28 pushing for softer targets on fossil fuels — likely to include the Gulf states, China and Russia — could point to Sunak’s statements on a “proportionate, pragmatic” approach to net zero as a reason to ignore the U.K. and its allies when they call for higher ambition.
“This will happen,” the European diplomat said. “They can point to the U.K.’s prime minister and say — ‘Look what the U.K. is doing with its own climate ambitions. So why are you being such a hard-ass about ours?’”
As for Cameron’s potential impact at the FCDO, the European diplomat was skeptical.
“It was a big surprise for everybody, but we’re not sure what he can do,” they said. “Maybe he can call a referendum on the climate?”
A Brussels promise has exposed the yawning gap between the United States and European Union over payments to climate-ravaged countries — just ahead of a major climate summit.
The vow came Monday from Wopke Hoekstra, the EU’s climate commissioner, who said the EU was “ready to announce a substantial financial contribution” for a new climate damage fund.
The pronouncement flew in the face of the more cautious U.S. approach — and will inevitably raise pressure on Washington and other wealthy governments to follow suit.
The emerging divide reflects how contentious the debate is over a fund to support countries scarred by extreme weather and other global warming harms, often referred to as “loss and damage.” Even settling on a framework for the fund faced challenges until climate negotiators reached a fragile agreement earlier this month in Abu Dhabi.
The dispute has often pitted rich, heavy-emitting countries like the U.S. and the EU against the developing countries facing the impacts of those emissions. But long-simmering differences between Brussels and Washington are now also bubbling over as the new fund takes shape — especially as calls mount for wealthy countries to pay up.
In Abu Dhabi, Germany’s lead negotiator went out of her way to clarify that even though she was speaking for a group of developed countries, “our constituency is not one single group with one single voice.”
That transatlantic divide risks complicating rich countries’ efforts to get developing nations to sign up for more ambitious climate action at the COP28 climate summit starting later this month in Dubai. Cracks in the EU-U.S. alliance will make negotiating against the likes of China and Saudi Arabia trickier, and Washington’s reluctance to pay is impeding efforts to build trust between the poorest and most vulnerable nations and those with the resources to help them.
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told an event on Friday he was “confident” that Washington would contribute “several millions,” though it’s unclear when it could be delivered. The Biden administration has struggled to get finance for international climate efforts through Congress and tends to take a more hardline stance on climate disaster funding — for both strategic and ideological reasons.
The EU is no longer waiting around.
“We, the EU, are not only prepared to lead, but we are capable of showing leadership,” a senior EU diplomat, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the matter, told POLITICO.
Differing philosophies
The divide stems partly from a different sense of the moral responsibility borne by the U.S. and EU.
As the climate talks earlier this month concluded in Abu Dhabi, European representatives reluctantly supported the framework, while the U.S. continued to press for changes even after the meeting had ended, claiming the adopted text was “not a consensus document.”
A house destroyed by the sea on the island of Carti Sugtupu, in the Indigenous Guna Yala Comarca, Panama | Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images
A State Department official told POLITICO the U.S. “did not consider it sufficiently clear what the members were being asked to agree to, particularly on the issue of sources of funding.” The text has now been clarified, the official added, putting the U.S. in a position to welcome the negotiators’ recommendations.
“So I hope we’re going to avoid an implosion in Dubai because we now have agreed … on the way in which we can manage this fund,” Kerry said on Friday.
But the tiff over punctuation — the Americans were largely concerned about the placement of a comma they argued could indicate developed countries had a particular responsibility to pay — is another sign of the divergence between Washington and Brussels.
The EU and the U.S. are aligned on core issues: Both want a fund for vulnerable countries that doesn’t pin a unique responsibility on developed countries to provide the cash.
But Europe has been more comfortable with a document calling on wealthy nations to take the lead on money. “These distinctions can cut in both directions — if we’re taking the lead, then we’re expecting someone else to follow,” the EU diplomat said.
The EU’s more relaxed approach stands in contrast to Washington’s obsession with legally watertight language. The U.S. worries that any suggestion that rich polluting nations might have a responsibility toward countries hit by climate disasters could lead to legal obligations to pay compensation.
“As always, the European team is more flexible, and they’re the first who are ready to invest,” said Gayane Gabrielyan, Armenia’s deputy environment minister, who participated in the Abu Dhabi talks.
America’s political trump card
Cash-strapped countries argue such financial pledges are the incentive they need to make their own emissions-slashing commitments.
“You can’t ask developing countries to have a faster, greater green transformation than any developed country ever did and then on the other side say, ‘Oh, well we feel no obligation, and feel no responsibility for their climate loss and damage,’” said Avinash Persaud, climate envoy of Barbados, who participated in the talks in Abu Dhabi.
“I think the Europeans get that but our American partners don’t always appear to — or local politics trumps that,” he added.
Those politics are quite tricky for the U.S., however. President Joe Biden must get international climate finance pledges through Congress — a momentous challenge given the Republican-controlled House and a slim Democratic majority in the Senate, not to mention a potential looming government shutdown that would stall all funding bills.
Officials bring that challenge with them into climate finance negotiations, observers say.
President Joe Biden must get international climate finance pledges through Congress | Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
“They try to create funds or agreements that are going to be more palatable in Congress,” said Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA. “But historically, the results of that has been the U.S. has just consistently watered stuff down and has not been a reliable partner in joining agreements or contributing funds.”
That’s true for all kinds of climate funding, not just loss and damage. When Germany hosted a replenishment conference of the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund last month, Berlin put forward a record €2 billion, with other EU countries also contributing. The U.S. pledged nothing.
In another interview on Friday in Singapore, Kerry promised that Washington would “make a good-faith effort” when it comes to helping victims of climate disasters.
“But we need everyone to take part — it can’t be just a few countries, we need everyone to help to the degree that they can,” he said.
Leading or ceding leverage?
Some see the Europeans’ flexibility as a strategic mistake.
A former U.K. official, granted anonymity in order to discuss a sensitive diplomatic matter, said that at last year’s COP27 in Egypt, the European Commission team undermined the position of other wealthy countries by backing a climate disaster fund before developing countries had agreed to cut emissions in return.
The EU appears to have taken that message on board this year, with Hoekstra strongly implying Brussels will use climate disaster funding as a bargaining chip to obtain emission-cutting concessions.
If countries make enough pledges at COP28 to slash emissions, the new climate disaster fund “can be launched in Dubai, with the first pledges, too,” he said in a speech in Kenya last week. “Because if we don’t cut greenhouse gas emissions, no amount of money will be able to pay [for] the damages.”
But the EU is already gathering money. A senior European climate negotiator, who could only speak on condition of anonymity because of their sensitive position, said Hoekstra had been touring European capitals asking them to prepare contributions, something the Commission would not confirm but did not deny.
No official POLITICO spoke to would say on the record whether and how much their country would pay into the fund — except for Denmark’s climate minister Dan Jørgensen.
“We were the first country to pledge money last year … and we will also be ready to do that again now,” Jørgensen told POLITICO and four European newspapers last week, promising a “generous pledge.”
Asked for more details later, his office asked POLITICO not to publish the comment — implying that the minister should not have revealed Denmark’s intention to pay just yet.
Still, the EU let the cat out of the bag on Monday with its promise to pay into the fund, even as it declined to detail how much. The precise amount, a diplomat from a European country represented at the recent loss and damage talks, was the “big fat carrot” in the COP28 negotiations.
But asked if Brussels was also bringing a stick to Dubai, the diplomat conceded: “I think the Americans are the ones swinging a stick.”
Recriminations were spreading Saturday morning after the failure of talks on the creation of a new fund to help vulnerable countries rebuild from climate disasters.
During fraught talks that were partially webcast, negotiators from developing countries blamed the U.S. in particular for insisting on housing the proposed fund in the World Bank, an institution dominated by highly developed economies.
“If wealthy nations do not come to the next meeting prepared to let go of this unrealistic proposal, meet their international obligations, and set up a stand-alone, rights-based and resourced fund, they might as well not show up at all,” said Lien Vandamme, an observer at the talks for the Center for International Environmental Law.
Vandamme accused the EU, which also backs the idea of the World Bank as host, of hiding behind the U.S.
A European Commission spokesperson said the 24-member committee of government officials from rich and poor countries tasked with designing the fund “was unable to complete its work this week but made some good progress in certain areas, and the EU remains committed to taking the work forward.”
The headquartering of the fund was among a host of contentious issues that were left unresolved after this week’s meeting in Egypt, which was supposed to be the final round of technical talks on setting up a so-called loss and damage fund.
Developed and developing parties both expressed disappointment in the final hours of the talks, which wrapped up in the early hours of Saturday.
“What message do I take back home? There is nothing on the table. No recommendations,” said Pakistani negotiator Ali Waqas Malik. German negotiator Heike Henn pleaded with colleagues to not give up, saying: “We are failing the process, the mandate, people, expectations.”
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Another meeting is now likely to be scheduled for early November in Abu Dhabi to try to find a deal before the world’s governments gather in the United Arab Emirates for the COP28 global climate talks, which start on November 30.
Earlier in the meeting, the Emirati president of the COP28 talks, Sultan al-Jaber, urged governments to make early financial contributions to the fund to demonstrate good faith.
“I don’t want this to be an empty bank account. This committee has to deliver recommendations. The COP has to make the decision of activating the fund,” he said.
Under pressure from the EU to rein in deforestation or face trade restrictions, Amazon countries must figure out how to bring prosperity to the region without destroying the forest. And that’s proving difficult.
At a two-day summit starting Tuesday, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is looking to corral countries to speed up efforts to stop deforestation and decide on a common strategy to save the rainforest.
But it’s likely to be an uphill climb, with countries disagreeing on whether they should commit to a zero deforestation goal and on whether oil and gas drilling should be banned in the region.
The summit comes as the EU is rolling out new rules to ban commodities’ imports driving deforestation abroad and is asking countries to police their supply chains against environmental and human rights violations.
That’s increasing pressure on the Amazon region — and particularly on Brazil, one of the largest exporters of agri-food products to the EU and home to 60 percent of the rainforest — to commit to ambitious action at this week’s meet-up.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has argued that phasing out fossil fuels is essential for the forest’s protection. “Even if we get deforestation under control, the Amazon faces dire threats if global heating continues to climb,” he wrote in an op-ed last month, adding that “to avoid the point of no return, we need an ambitious transnational policy to phase out fossil fuels.”
But Lula isn’t pushing to phase out fossil fuels domestically, highlighting a tension between conservation efforts and ensuring economies stay on track.
The Brazilian leader told local media ahead of the summit he wants to “keep dreaming” about drilling in the region. His comments come as Brazilian oil major Petrobras is looking to open new fields near the mouth of the Amazon River despite receiving a negative opinion from the national institute for the environment.
If fossil fuels are kept underground, Amazon countries will need alternative activities to keep their economies afloat. Observers have suggested using this week’s summit as a way to promote greener farming and sustainable forest management,as well as discuss potential schemes to pay farmers and indigenous people to help protect the forest.
“The bioeconomy is the key to unlocking the region’s economic potential while preserving its ecological heritage and, as such, needs to be at the center of any sustainable and inclusive development plan for the Amazon,” said Vanessa Pérez, global economics director at the World Resources Institute.
Indigenous groups are also watching the summit closely, and want their contribution to climate protection, as well as their rights and territorial claims recognized by country leaders.
“It is not possible to plan the future of the Amazon without indigenous peoples, without guaranteeing our territorial rights,” said Ângela Kaxuyana, political adviser at the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon.
High stakes
The outcome of the summit is a major political and diplomatic test for Lula, who has pledged to achieve zero deforestation in the Amazon.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has argued that phasing out fossil fuels is essential for the forest’s protection | Guillermo Legaria/Getty Images
Since taking office last year, Lula has stepped up efforts to crack down on illegal miners, protect indigenous groups and boost conservation efforts in the Amazon, with the government reporting a 66 percent drop in the rate of deforestation in July compared to the same month last year.
But not all Amazon countries are ready to commit to a similarly ambitious goal; Bolivia and Venezuela failed to sign a pledge made at the COP26 climate talks to end global deforestation by 2030.
Scientists have warned that the continued deterioration of the Amazon, a major carbon sink, is likely to have a profound impact on global climate efforts.
“If [Lula] doesn’t come out of this summit with agreement from other countries that they also see this goal as important, it really undermines Brazil’s efforts to reach this [zero deforestation] goal,” said Diego Casaes, campaign director at the NGO Avaaz.
The regional meet-up is also a key opportunity for Lula to assert his credibility as a climate leader both domestically and internationally as Brazil prepares to host the COP30 summit in 2025, Casaes added.
The outcome is “a test of how far Lula can go given the constraint that he has from the congress,” he said, given the Brazilian legislative body has pushed back against measures to boost policing and protection of the rainforest.
Scientists have warned that the continued deterioration of the Amazon, a major carbon sink, is likely to have a profound impact on global climate efforts | Victor Moriyama/Getty Images
European lawmakers will be looking for signals for how the region is preparing to adapt to new rules to police imports driving deforestation, tackle human rights abuses and green trade.
Under the EU Deforestation Regulation, imports of commodities like soy and beef produced on deforested land will be forbidden from 2024, while under the new corporate sustainability due diligence rules companies will be forced to scrutinize their supply chains for environmental damage and human rights abuses.
And although the trade deal between the EU and the Mercosur countries isn’t officially on the agenda, it will certainly come up.
That’s because the EU is currently negotiating a sustainability addendum to the trade deal with his Latin American counterparts, which should give reassurances — notably to France — the agreement will not have negative consequences on the environment and worsen deforestation.
The summit is an opportunity to see whether Amazon countries “are able to coordinate efforts” and to ensure policies related to the forest “are aligned with [global] climate goals,” said Caseas.
G20 climate ministers failed to make progress on key issues on Friday, drawing sharp criticism from the European Union.
Talks in the southern Indian city of Chennai took place against the backdrop of scientists finding that July is on track to become the world’s hottest month on record.
But the discussions wrapped up without consensus on the global transition away from fossil fuels; last week’s G20 energy ministerial ended on a similar note.
The EU, represented by Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius at the meeting, responded with exasperation.
“At the end of our meeting today, is the glass half full or half empty?” Sinkevičius asked in his closing remarks. “It is certainly empty when we look at where we stand on G20 commitments to address climate change — we simply are nowhere.”
Noting the devastation wrought by extreme weather across the globe in recent weeks, he decried the G20’s inability to find agreement on climate and energy issues as “disheartening.”
He added: “We cannot be driven by the lowest common denominator, or by narrow national interests. We cannot allow the pace of change to be set by the slowest movers in the room.”
France’s Ecological Transition Minister Christophe Bechu also told Agence France-Presse he was “disappointed” with the outcome, adding that discussions with China, Saudi Arabia and Russia in particular had been “complicated.”
The split forced the Indian G20 presidency to publish an incomplete outcome document on issues countries managed to agree on, as well as an additional chair’s summary on others where ministers did not reach consensus.
“There are some issues about energy and target-oriented issues,” Indian Climate Minister Bhupender Yadav acknowledged in a press conference Friday.
There was no agreement on setting global goals for scaling up the deployment of renewables and energy efficiency — a key objective for the Emirati presidency of this year’s COP28 climate talks — or on phasing down planet-warming fossil fuels.
Earlier on Friday, COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber expressed concern that the EU-backed target for tripling global renewable capacity had “yet to find expression in G20 outcomes.”
The chair’s summary included a short section on the energy transition that listed the issues that were discussed, concluding: “G20 members expressed views reiterating their positions” outlined at last weekend’s energy ministerial in Goa.
Discussions on efforts to reach a peak in global emissions by 2025 also ended without consensus, according to the document.
German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan echoed Sinkevičius’ disappointment, saying: “While fires rage around the world and temperatures break records, the G20 as a group has unfortunately been unable to act with the necessary sense of urgency and clarity.”
Progress, she added, “was blocked by a small group of countries.”
The EU and Germany both praised the G20’s “strong signal” on stepping up the fight against plastic pollution and deforestation, as well as countries’ agreement to look at deep-sea mining regulation.
Still, on climate, the G20 “were asked to make bold choices, to demonstrate courage, commitment and leadership,” said Sinkevičius. “But we, collectively, failed to achieve that.”
All eyes are now on the G20 leaders’ summit in New Delhi in September.
“The disappointing G20 energy and climate outcomes show ministers don’t have the mandate to negotiate on the defining issues of our time,” said Luca Bergamaschi, co-founder of Italian climate think tank ECCO. “G20 leaders must step in and together agree the actions needed for a safer planet.”
Delegates landing in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh for U.N. climate talks this week are a global elite bent on tearing down national borders, stripping away individual freedoms and condemning working people to a life of poverty.
That dark view is held by a range of far-right or populist parties — among them Donald Trump’s Republicans, who are seeking to retake control in Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections. Some of these radicals are rampaging through elections in Europe while others, such as Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro last week, have been defeated only narrowly.
Republican and Trump acolyte Lauren Boebert derides the environmentalist agenda as “America last;” Britain’s Brexit-backing Home Secretary Suella Braverman says the country is in thrall to a “tofu-eating wokerati;” and in Spain, senior figures in the far-right Vox party dismiss the U.N.’s climate agenda as “cultural Marxism.”
Right-wingers of various strains around the world have co-opted climate change into their culture war. The fact this is happening in countries that produce a large share of global greenhouse gas emissions has alarmed some green advocates.
“Reactionary populism is now the biggest obstacle to tackling climate change,” wrote three climate leaders, including Brazil’s former Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira, in a recent commentary.
In the U.S., Republicans are eyeing a return to power in one or both houses of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Many at the COP27 talks will be reliving the first week of the U.N. climate conference in Morocco six years ago when Trump’s election struck the climate movement like a hurricane.
A Republican surge would gnaw at the fragile confidence that has built around global climate efforts since President Joe Biden’s election, raising the specter of a second Trump term and perhaps the withdrawal — again — of the U.S. from the landmark 2015 Paris climate deal.
“I don’t want to think about that,” said Teixeira’s co-author Laurence Tubiana, a former French diplomat who led the design of the Paris Agreement and who now leads the European Climate Foundation.
Some on the American right are pushing a more conciliatory message than others. “Republicans have solutions to reduce world emissions while providing affordable, reliable, and clean energy to our allies across the globe,” said Utah Congressman John Curtis, who will lead a delegation from his party to COP27.
Tubiana and others in the environmental movement are trying to put on a brave face. They argue Republicans won’t want to tamper too much with Biden’s behemoth Inflation Reduction Act, which contains measures to promote clean energy.
“You might see railing against it, and I’m sure there’ll be lots of political talk and rhetoric, but I don’t expect that would be a focus for the Republicans,” said Nat Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a green NGO based in Arlington, Virginia. Nevertheless, if Republicans take both houses, “we certainly won’t make any progress,” Keohane said.
Trump’s first term and the presidency of Brazil’s Bolsonaro — which ended in a narrow defeat in last month’s election — now look like the opening skirmishes in a struggle in which the planet’s stability is at stake.
In parts of Europe, the right present their policies as sympathetic to the risks of climate change while dismissing internationally sanctioned action as sinister elitism that threatens their voters’ prosperity.
“The Sweden Democrats are not climate deniers, whatever that means,” Swedish far-right leader Jimmie Åkesson told a crowd days before a September election that saw his party win big. But Sweden’s current climate plans, Åkesson said, were “100 percent symbolic” rather than meaningful. “All that leads to is that we get poorer, that our lives get worse.”
This is the gibbet on which the far right are hanging environmentalism: depicting them as the witting or unwitting cavalry of global elites.
“We consider it to be a globalist movement that intends to end all borders, intends to end our freedom, intends to end our freedom for our identities,” Javier Cortés, president of the Seville chapter of Spain’s far-right Vox party, said in an interview with POLITICO. “We are not in favor of CO2 emissions. On the contrary, we want to respect the environment. All we are saying is that the European Union has to clarify that it wants to sell us a climate religion in which we cannot emit CO2, while we make our industries disappear from Europe and we need to buy from China.”
To describe this as climate denial — a common but often inaccurate charge — would be to miss the point that this is now just another front in the culture wars.
Online disinformation about the last U.N. climate talks was largely focused on the hypocrisy and elitism of those attending, according to research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). The main spreaders weren’t websites and figures traditionally associated with climate denial, but culture war celebrities such as psychologist Jordan Peterson, Rebel Media’s Ezra Levant and Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams.
Populist attacks on globalism “rely on a well-funded transnational network,” said Tubiana. “It warrants serious scrutiny.”
But while economic interests may be powering parts of the movement, there is also a sense of political opportunism at work. Huge changes to the economy will be needed to lower emissions at the speed dictated by U.N.-brokered global climate goals. There will be winners and losers — and the losers may gravitate toward populists pledging to take up their cause.
“Far-right organizations are recognizing this as a potentially lucrative topic that they can win votes or support on,” said Balsa Lubarda, head of the ideology research unit at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.
Loving the losers
The far right’s focus on the losers has been “turbo charged” by the energy crisis, said Jennie King, head of civic action and education at ISD, which populists have wrongly argued is the fault of green policy. The European Parliament’s coalition of far-right parties has grown and capitalized on the energy crisis by joining with center-right parties to vote down environmental legislation.
Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson — newly elected with Åkesson’s support — aims to dilute the country’s ambitions for cutting some greenhouse gas emissions, a move center-right Liberal Environment Minister Romina Pourmokhtari justified in familiar terms: “That is a reaction to the reality people are facing.” And in Britain, Brexit leader Nigel Farage retooled his campaign to become an anti-net zero mouthpiece.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni says she wants to reclaim environmentalism for the right | Vincenzo Pinto/AFP via Getty Images
Strains of right-wing ecology may also mean that not all groups are actively hostile to the climate agenda, said Lubarda. Italy’s new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is a huge fan of the books of J.R.R. Tolkien, which center on the Shire, an idealized bucolic homeland. Meloni says she wants to reclaim environmentalism for the right, but the protection of national economic interests still comes first.
“There is no more convinced ecologist than a conservative, but what distinguishes us from a certain ideological environmentalism is that we want to defend nature with man inside,” she said in her inaugural speech to parliament last month.
While Meloni has announced that she will attend COP27, she has also renamed the Ministry for the Ecological Transition the Ministry for Environment and Energy Security. The governing program of her Brothers of Italy party includes a section on climate change, but it strongly emphasizes the need to protect industry.
It’s this broad sense of demotion and delay that alarms those who are watching these ideas grow in stature among populists on the right. They say that while it may not sound like climate denial, the result is effectively the same.
“You can say that you are climate friends,” said Belgian Socialist MEP Marie Arena. “But in the act, you are not at all. You are business friends first.”
Jacopo Barragazzi, Charlie Duxbury and Zack Colman contributed to this report.
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King Charles III will not be traveling to Egypt for the COP27 climate summit next month, after U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss advised him to stay away, the Sunday Times reported.
The monarch, a lifelong environmental campaigner, had planned on giving a speech at the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference, taking place in Sharm el-Sheikh between November 6-18. It would have been his first overseas tour as king.
Truss objected to the plan during a private audience at Buckingham Palace last month, according to a royal insider cited by the newspaper. The person also said the decision was made “entirely in the spirit of being ever-mindful as king that he acts on government advice.”
Last year, both Charles and his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth, delivered speeches at the opening ceremony of the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland. In contrast to his mother, Charles has been throughout his life significantly more vocal regarding his political views, campaigning for such things as organic farming and action on climate change.
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