In one sense, the multilateral United Nations Conferences of the Parties (COPs) on Climate Change, like the one currently in crisis in Baku, Azerbaijan, have always been set up for failure.
Consider the diametrically contradictory positions of the rich fossil fuel producing nations who dominate them, supported by a kleptocracy of petro-lobbyists, and the poor countries who seek financial support – and compensation – for the havoc inflicted on their societies by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels elsewhere in the world.
Yet there was – and remains – an unassailable argument for seeking a just agreement between these opposed interests. Their divergence is more apparent than real, if only humanity could learn to take the real, that is, the science-based, projections for climate change seriously.
Because all the evidence indicates that climate-based ruin in, say, Rwanda today will bring climate-generated bad consequences in, for example, Rome tomorrow. It is not just that the recent unprecedented floods in Valencia, Spain, reminded us on the very eve of the conference that climate disasters are now striking virtually without warning in rich as well as poor countries, and that weather systems know no frontiers.
It is also that the current expanding global climate upheaval will disrupt the whole system of linkages in supply chains, bringing “economic carnage” to the intimately interlinked industrial and communications of the rich world, while extreme weather events in the Global South super-charge a migration crisis without precedent.
At least G20 countries meeting in Brazil have sent a signal to the Cop29 talks, increasing chances of breakthrough in Baku. They endorsed multilateralism and increased support for developing countries from billions of dollars to trillions without specifying a figure. Their support for doubling renewable energy globally by 2030 was helpful though, disappointingly, they did not explicitly mention the need to phase out fossil fuels to rapidly reduce emissions.
The bottom line is that all participants in this conference have vital interests in its success, and will all suffer, albeit to different degrees in the short term, by its failure. True, there are a baffling myriad of political, economic and financial instruments requiring to be harmonised. True, the global context, from Trump’s election to the fatal distractions of intractable wars, cast very long and dark shadows.
But it must not be beyond the political imaginations of the rich nations to act in their own real interests. And it must not beyond the vision of those poor nations who rightly feel aggrieved to make a meaningful deal with the big climate polluters.
Those are the outcomes desperately needed from this conference. Failure does not bear thinking about, and must not be entertained.