COP29 host nation Azerbaijan has proclaimed a lofty ambition for this year’s UN climate summit: pausing the conflicts currently wreaking havoc around the world.
If governments follow Baku’s plan, theatres of war – from Gaza to Ukraine – would fall still next month while diplomats fight over the finer details of climate action under the “COP Truce” vision championed by the Azerbaijan presidency of the November 11-22 COP29 talks.
Baku has spoken proudly of its initiative gaining “significant traction”, with 127 countries and nearly 1,100 non-state groups supporting the appeal so far.
But a list of early endorsers features several warring states, deepening skepticism about the real impact and intentions of the initiative at a time when conflicts – which number more than 50 today – are provoking insecurity and severe humanitarian crises in many parts of the globe.
Speaking to Climate Home, veteran climate campaigners and geopolitical experts criticised the COP Truce as a “performative… PR exercise” and “a distraction” from a separate UN-supported push to strengthen climate action in conflict-affected regions.
Meanwhile, as hopes dwindle of Azerbaijan clinching its own peace deal with neighbour Armenia by COP29, Laurence Broers, associate fellow with Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme, warned about the risks of the “peace COP brand” looking “empty of content”.
World peace aspirations
Alongside the formal government negotiations, the annual climate summits see COP presidencies launch an ever-growing list of voluntary initiatives, hoping to get as many as possible governments, business groups and civil society organisations to sign onto them.
Azerbaijan has pinned its appeal for a “COP Truce” at the top of its list of voluntary declarations for COP29. Taking inspiration from the Olympic Truce, first established in ancient Greece, Baku wants all fighting parties worldwide to lay down their arms while country leaders and diplomats discuss climate policy.
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The initiative “will highlight the importance of peace and climate action” and “aim to remind all nations of the interplay between conflict and climate change”, the COP29 presidency said.
The centrepiece is a 10-line “solemn appeal”, which governments and observer groups are being urged to endorse.
Its signatories “call on everyone to observe the COP Truce during the month of COP29” – but they are not required to explicitly commit to cease hostilities themselves. “It is a generic appeal for the international community to observe a ceasefire during the COP,” Yalchin Rafiyev, Azerbaijan’s lead negotiator for COP29, told Climate Home at a press briefing.
The inherent paradox is exemplified by some of the early backers of the initiative.
War-waging signatories
Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that the truce appeal has been supported by all member states of the “Non-Aligned Movement”, a forum of 120 countries originally set up in the Cold War era as a buffer between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The movement counts among its members several countries now involved in bloody civil wars and international conflicts, including Sudan, Myanmar and Palestine.
A Sudanese national flag is attached to a machine gun of Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) soldiers. (Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File)
A COP29 official did not reply to Climate Home’s question asking what concrete purpose the COP Truce initiative would serve given the presence of warring countries among its signatories. But in emailed comments, they said the appeal “is meant to enhance ambition, set aside differences, and prioritize peace and climate action”.
The COP29 presidency has also been enlisting international non-state organisations to support the initiative, alongside governments.
It said nearly 1,100 groups have put their name next to the appeal so far. Climate Home requested a full list of signatories but a COP29 official said that would not be shared until November 15 during COP’s “Peace, Relief and Recovery Day”.
The only publicly available information shows support from around 100 NGOs linked to the Baku-based chapter of the Islamic Cooperation Youth Forum. Listed signatories feature a wide range of predominantly grassroots groups in Central and Southeast Asia, including Uzbekistan’s ‘Council of Young Farmers’ and Azerbaijan’s ‘Erasmus Student Network’.
Scepticism and mild support
Climate Home has surveyed around a dozen international organisations deeply involved in the climate, conflict and human rights agendas at the COP. It found deep scepticism in some quarters – and no more than limited support for the initiative in others.
Tasneem Essop, executive director of the influential Climate Action Network and coordinator of the coalition of environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGO) at the UN talks, told Climate Home that the Azerbaijan presidency had approached the UNFCCC Observer Constituencies – including ENGO – in early September asking them to endorse the truce declaration.
“We had a number of important questions about the practical implications of the declaration and what it meant, for example, for our efforts to spotlight human rights abuses,” she said. “But they did not give us the time to engage properly, so obviously we did not sign on.”
CAN’s Tasneem Essop speaking at an event during COP27 in November 2022. Photo: ENB/IISD
Essop also said that “in its current form, it is a hollow and performative ‘motherhood and apple pie’ declaration that does not deal with the fundamental and systemic issues causing wars and conflict.”
“At best, it appears to simply be a PR exercise,” she added.
On the other hand, the COP Truce appeal has received the support of a different UN constituency representing local government and municipal authorities. Its coordinator Yunus Arikan, director of global advocacy at local government sustainability group ICLEI, told Climate Home they hoped the initiative could have “transformative impacts” despite the “huge challenges that lie ahead”.
“But even if this may not fulfill all its aspirations, we still believe it is a worthwhile effort, as it is a moral duty of all governments and leaders to prevent destruction of our livelihoods, either as a result of climate change or through armed conflicts and wars,” he added.
Conflict blind spot in climate action
Nonetheless, Azerbaijan’s appeal has raised an eyebrow among organisations that have been at the forefront of efforts to put a spotlight on the nexus between climate change and conflict at UN climate summits.
The UAE COP28 presidency last year inaugurated a thematic day dedicated to the connection between climate and peace. It culminated in a detailed declaration through which over 100 governments, NGOs and private-sector institutions committed to scale up climate action, including channeling more investment, in war-torn regions.
London-based think-tank ODI was one of the driving forces behind last year’s declaration, but told Climate Home it won’t be throwing its weight behind Azerbaijan’s ceasefire appeal.
“The COP29 Truce is a nice idea but it’s ultimately a distraction – and one that was always unlikely to succeed, as we saw from the failed Olympic truce earlier this year,” said Mauricio Vazquez, ODI’s head of policy for global risks and resilience.
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“Noise” from the truce day should not deflect the focus from the “huge” conflict blind spot in climate action, he added.
“More than half of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries are also fragile or experiencing conflict – yet they receive only a fraction of the finance which goes to more stable places,” Vazquez said. “A temporary truce will not fix these issues.”
Humanitarian aid group Mercy Corps – another signatory of the COP28 declaration – told Climate Home it is still weighing up whether to join Azerbaijan’s truce appeal, but added that its focus is primarily on building momentum from last year’s initiative and turning pledges into action.
Nagorno-Karabakh legacy
Notwithstanding any concrete outcomes, the initiative is also widely seen by geopolitical analysts as an attempt by Azerbaijan to burnish its peace credentials just over a year after putting a forceful end to its decades-long conflict with Armenia over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Baku conquered the contested region in a two-part military offensive, concluding in autumn 2023, that led to the mass exodus of some 136,000 ethnic Armenians. For Armenian authorities and some human rights and legal experts, the drive amounted to “ethnic cleansing” – a view Azerbaijan categorically rejects.
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Top Azeri diplomats and government officials have drawn a direct link between the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and the COP29 peace appeal.
Hikmet Hajiyev, chief foreign policy advisor to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, wrote last week in an op-ed for Newsweek that it “would be a mistake for us not to try” pushing for a COP Truce “when the COP29 meeting in Baku is itself the product of a truce – one few believed possible”.
Hajiyev was referring to a deal struck between Azerbaijan and Armenia in December 2023 that paved the way for Baku to host this year’s climate summit. Armenia backed Azerbaijan’s COP29 bid, while Baku agreed to release 32 Armenian prisoners captured during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Faltering peace process
That agreement was interpreted as a potential stepping stone towards a fully-fledged peace deal between the two nations, with watchers seeing COP29 as an ideal backdrop for the much-trailed accord to be finalised.
But hopes of that dwindled last week after President Aliyev turned down Armenia’s latest proposal to sign a peace deal, describing it as “unrealistic”. Armenia is absent from a preliminary list of countries sending their heads of state to speak at COP29’s high-level opening session, raising doubts over the participation of the country’s leaders at the summit.
Broers, of London-based think-tank Chatham House, said he does not expect the signing of a “significant” agreement “before, at or for a long time after the COP29 conference”.
“The statements in recent days and weeks show they are a long way off,” he told Climate Home. “What might be meaningful would be for Baku and Yerevan to use the COP29 venue to sign off on a new package of confidence-building measures on joint environmental action. Without some such steps, the whole ‘peace COP’ brand looks empty of content.”
(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Megan Rowling)
The post In a warring world, Azerbaijan’s COP29 truce appeal draws fire as “PR exercise” appeared first on Climate Home News.
In a warring world, Azerbaijan’s COP29 truce appeal draws fire as “PR exercise”
After witnessing the effects of sea-level rise in the low-lying island nation of Tuvalu, Pacific leaders on Tuesday used the pre-COP31 summit in Fiji to voice their frustration at the difficulties they have experienced in tapping the global climate finance system.
A small group of government leaders, climate negotiators and heads of development banks and climate funds took a trip to Tuvalu’s Funafuti atoll on Tuesday morning, travelling by road over land just 10-20 metres wide to visit a project that is building barriers to keep the sea from the land.
They then flew to Fiji for the pre-COP summit, where several Pacific leaders said they had been let down by the insufficient quantity, bad terms and slow speed of international finance to help them adapt to a warming climate that is bringing higher oceans, drought and more powerful storms to their shores.
“Right now, our islands are like a canoe that has been rammed by a massive foreign ship. Our canoe is taking on water, we are sinking, and what is the world’s response?” asked Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr.
“They hand us a tiny patch to cover a gaping hole,” he continued, “but the bureaucratic process just to receive that patch is so slow that the water fills the hole while we wait. Then to rebuild the vessel so that we can survive the next storm, we are offered loans, debt that adds weight to a sinking boat packaged in red tape so thick we can barely access it. And while we wait, the water continues to fill.”
Pacific leaders and Australia called again on governments to invest in the new Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), which has been designed by the Pacific Islands Forum and is seeking $500 million in investments by COP31 in November.
It has around $180 million so far, but did not receive additional pledges during the UN General Assembly in New York. The PRF aims to invest to generate annual returns which it can give to projects like water tanks for drought-hit communities.
Witnessing sea level rise
The annual pre-COP gathering is usually a low-profile technical meeting of climate negotiators. But this year, Australia – which is the president of negotiations at COP31 – partnered with the Pacific to introduce a “leaders segment” in an attempt to shine a spotlight on climate issues affecting the region.
Fourteen government leaders – from Australia, Timor-Leste, Mauritius and the Pacific – made the trip. They were joined by the European Union’s climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, the heads of the Green Climate Fund and the Asian Development Bank and former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard.
On their return to Fiji, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale told the pre-COP leaders roundtable that the sea level rise they had witnessed was personal for him.
“Tuvalu was not just a site visit for me. I saw the story of my own saltwater people,” he said, adding that he, his daughter and his grandfather had lost their houses to sea level rise and that three-quarters of his electorate live on land that will be underwater in the next 30 years.
From the other side of the world, Antigua and Barbuda’s environment minister Michael Joseph said Tuvalu’s problems felt similar to those of his own Caribbean islands. “I saw vulnerable communities… just metres from the sea and people determined to remain on their land, preserve their culture and way of life,” he said.
A group of Fijian schoolchildren told the leaders it was not just sea level rise the Pacific struggles with but also heatwaves, droughts and storms, which worry their families and prevent them from learning.
Climate finance red-tape
Several Pacific leaders criticised the world’s leaders for not doing enough to combat climate change. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown expressed disappointment that only two non-Pacific leaders had come to the pre-COP, a fact Australian media widely picked up on to label the event a flop and question its A$20 million (US$14m) price tag.
“We’ve heard a lot of numbers these last two days,” Brown said. “Let me share one of my own. More than 50 invitations extended to world leaders… to see for themselves what high emissions are doing to our nations and our ocean – an ocean that covers nearly one-third of the Earth’s surface.”
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He called for more climate finance for the Pacific, asking “if the world is prepared to assess our suitability for climate finance, why is it not equally prepared to scrutinise whether those responsible for delivering it are meeting their obligations?”
Like Palau’s president Whipps, Naoero’s President David Adeang criticised the red tape that is hindering access to climate finance as well as a lack of money, complaining especially about “complicated procedures, heavy reporting, delays in approval and disbursement”.
Adeang added that “the way we assess vulnerability matters”, adding that it should be measured by more than income. Naoero, for example, is classified by the World Bank as high-income, restricting which climate finance it is eligible for.
Action plan to improve access
On Thursday, the Australian government will present a statement and action plan on improving access to climate finance for small island developing states and least developed countries, which it is asking other countries and organisations to endorse.
The statement addresses some of these Pacific complaints as well as acknowledging that progress has already been made on simplifying access by multilateral development banks and climate funds.
In Fiji, Asian Development Bank head Masato Kanda said his institution is “tailoring our finance and operations to island realities” because “your children and their children should be able to grow old in the countries their ancestors have called home for millennia”.
The executive director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Mafalda Duarte, said that the GCF-backed coastal adaptation project leaders visited in Tuvalu shows that “climate finance works” although – as the project took eight years to implement – “it takes time, and therefore we have no time to waste”.
Australia calls for optimism
While Pacific leaders expressed concern that the world is set to blast past its agreed 1.5C warming limit, endangering their nations, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called for “optimism”. “If people think there is no hope, then they will not strive to get the change that we need,” he said.
He said that when he attended his first COP in 2005, Australia’s renewable energy target was 2%. Its target is now 82% renewable electricity by 2030.
While Albanese promoted Australia’s success at electrifying homes and businesses and rolling out renewables, he has been criticised by climate campaigners for extending the production of fossil fuels, including coal – largely for export.
France’s Minister for Ecological Transition Monique Barbut defended the European Union’s climate action at the pre-COP meeting. She said the continent was heating up and reducing emissions faster and providing more climate finance than anywhere else in the world.
“It is time for all major emitters to step up and do their fair share” on climate finance, she said. Most developing countries with large emissions have fiercely resisted joining the club of climate finance donors, arguing they have played a disproportionately small historic role in causing climate change.
Barbut, as well as Palau’s president Whipps, called for the next flagship scientific assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be finished by COP33 in 2028, in time to inform the next global stocktake of national climate action.
This timeline has been opposed by countries like India, Saudi Arabia and China, who argue it would put an unfair burden on developing countries. Barbut said countries should “support the work of the IPCC rather than sabotage its calendar”.
Barbut said that governments should agree at COP31 to aim to raise the share of “clean electricity” in final energy consumption to 35% by 2035. The Turkish and Australian governments have pushed for this goal although without specifying that the electricity should be “clean”. Barbut added that COP31 should also agree to cut emissions of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.
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Pacific leaders rail at climate finance failures after pre-COP trip to Tuvalu
Jacynta Fa’amau is a Pacific campaigner at global grassroots climate movement 350.org and a secretariat member of Pacific Climate Warriors.
The first thing that struck me was the sheer size of Queensland’s Saraji coal mine. Standing at the edge of the enormous pit, my brain scrambled for words as I scanned the earth’s open wound – a whole island could probably fit inside it.
Looking down, I noticed footprints of an emu and a koala, pressed and dried in what was once a puddle – signs of how drought had driven animals in desperate search of water, so dangerously close to the coal trucks and heavy machinery ahead.
Earlier this year, I joined a small group of Pacific Islanders on a journey through the Bowen Basin to learn from First Nations communities battling Australia’s mammoth coal industry. Of the more than 40 coal mines operating in the area, BHP & Mitsubishi Alliance’s Saraji mine is one of the largest. So it came as a painful shock to us when in August, the Australian government approved the mine’s extension just months after our visit.
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Witnessing coal extraction is devastating. It is bad enough to see what pillaging tonnes of coal can do to a mine’s immediate surroundings: dry creek beds, dwindling wildlife, denuded land. But to know that this coal will be shipped across the ocean, bring air pollution, and eventually lead to the destruction of Pacific islands thousands of miles away is another kind of heartbreak.
Rising ocean waters
I’m an Australian-born Samoan. In 2002, I visited my family home for the first time. My father took me to the rural community where generations of my family were raised. He did not have the words to describe how much has changed since rising ocean waters had taken away almost a third of the beach.
I learned of how we had to relocate my great‑great‑grandparents’ grave to higher ground twice in the last 15 years. Of how my cousins have to paddle out further to sea to catch fish, since warmer waters have destroyed much of the reef. Of how the ocean crashes so close to my uncle’s home that he had to build a new house further away.