The three countries hosting the annual COP climate summits from 2023-2025 – known as “the Troika” – have again called on governments to submit stronger climate action plans that can keep the warming goals of the Paris Agreement “within reach”.
The United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan and Brazil this week in New York reiterated their promise to lead by example and produce by the end of this year nationally determined contributions (NDCs) aligned with the Paris pact’s objective of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
But they failed to announce any numbers or flesh out what a 1.5C-compatible NDC means for them. Observers keen to understand how the three nations will reconcile a science-based climate plan with their expanding fossil fuel ambitions were left disappointed.
“We witnessed a worrying case of cognitive dissonance,” said Romain Ioualalen, global policy manager with Oil Change International, which campaigns against fossil fuels. “At a time of grave climate urgency, the COP Troika is failing to deliver the leadership and clarity needed to raise climate ambition.”
The Troika has previously indicated that there is no universally accepted definition of what a 1.5°C-aligned climate plan should or should not include. “It’s up to each one to decide,” Brazil’s head of delegation, Liliam Chagas, said at the Bonn climate talks in June, raising fears of “1.5-washing”.
‘Ten tests’ for a 1.5C climate plan
That view is not shared by many climate experts and campaigners who are issuing suggestions for what such an NDC should look like.
A group of leading civil society organisations this week published an open letter that outlines “ten essential tests” to determine whether countries’ plans meet the 1.5C goal – seen as safer than the other, higher ceiling of “well below 2 degrees” set in the Paris Agreement.
The tests outlined in the letter include a commitment to end fossil fuel expansion, detailed and measurable targets both for the whole economy and for specific sectors such as transport, building and agriculture, provisions for wealthier countries to scale up climate finance, and measures to protect natural ecosystems and make food systems greener.
UN climate chief warns of “two-speed” global energy transition
“A lot of the failure or success of [the] Paris [Agreement] is going to be determined in the next eight or nine months as countries put forward their next round of NDCs,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at E3G and veteran watcher of the UN climate process. “If these don’t step up and meet the mark, it’s really our last chance… this is a critical moment.”
To limit average temperature rise below 1.5C, scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say global emissions need to peak before 2025, shrink 60% by 2035 from their 2019 level, and continue on a steep downward trajectory, reaching net-zero emissions of carbon dioxide by around mid-century.
Fossil fuels in the spotlight
The next round of updated NDCs, due by next February, should turn the goals agreed at COP28 last year into practice, advocates say. In the energy sector, that means laying out plans to triple renewable energy capacity and double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency by 2030 – and, crucially, transition away from fossil fuels.
Climate experts and campaigners have stressed that a 1.5C-aligned NDC needs to include an explicit commitment to no new coal, oil and gas exploration, as well as credible targets for slashing existing production and eliminating fossil fuel subsidies.
“Claiming to lead on climate while continuing the expansion of oil, gas and coal production is indefensible at this point,” said Natalie Jones, policy advisor at the International Institute for Sustainable Development. “Governments need a plan for reducing reliance on fossil fuel production,” she added.
Senegalese banker Ibrahima Cheikh Diong picked to lead new loss and damage fund
Fossil-fuel reduction targets will be closely watched as a litmus test for the ambition of major hydrocarbon producers, including the Troika of COP presidencies. The UAE, Azerbaijan and Brazil are set to increase their combined oil and gas production by 33% by 2035, according to a new analysis by Oil Change International.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva aims to turn his country into the world’s fourth largest petrostate (it now ranks ninth), opening new extraction frontiers both on land and offshore, including in the Amazon. This plan contrasts with Brazil’s promise to present a new NDC aligned with the 1.5C temperature goal this year – reaffirmed by Lula himself in his speech at the UN General Assembly this week.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva addresses the 79th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 24, 2024. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
“As long as the Brazilian government insists on extracting oil and gas, especially in the Amazon, talking about decarbonising the economy and a fair energy transition is a pure exercise in rhetoric,” said Ilan Zugman, Latin America managing director for campaign group 350.org.
Azerbaijan has similarly come under renewed criticism this week with researchers at Climate Action Tracker (CAT) slamming its existing climate goals as “critically insufficient”.
The scientific watchdog said Azerbaijan was among “a tiny group” of countries that had weakened the targets in its latest NDC, published in late 2023, contradicting the Paris Agreement’s requirement that each climate action blueprint should be more ambitious than its predecessor. CAT singled out the Caspian country’s plans to expand fossil fuel production by 30% over the coming decade and its rising methane emissions.
Azerbaijan is now working on a new NDC that should be in line with the 1.5C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, the government said.
Looking beyond energy
But, while energy is a crucial piece of the puzzle, it is not the only economic sector that needs a dramatic transformation in order to limit global warming to 1.5C. Agriculture, food production, industry and transport all contribute a large share of greenhouse gas emissions.
Experts say that spelling out specific emissions reduction targets for each sector can help guide policy-making across different government departments and attract larger investments.
COP29 aims to boost battery storage and grids for renewables, as pledges proliferate
E3G’s Meyer told journalists that “a robust consultation and transparent engagement process” are also key to building a 1.5C-aligned NDC. “If you’re going to get buy-in to implementation of the NDCs on the ground – which is the real key to reducing emissions – you need all those sectors engaged and backing the plan,” he added.
Mike Hemsley, deputy director at the Energy Transitions Commission think-tank, told Climate Home that sectoral targets will also play a pivotal role in engaging the private sector, alongside roadmaps and policy packages to implement them. “There’s increasing recognition that if you don’t have that in there, you’re not going to actually realise the ambition you set out in the NDCs,” he said.
‘Creative accounting’ trap
With goals only as good as the measures taken to meet them, a significant gap remains between the already-deficient set of national climate targets on paper and action in the real world.
Civil society groups say that governments need to outline how they are planning to hit their NDC targets in a clear and transparent way without resorting to “creative accounting”, as CAT warns.
A major sticking point is the reliance on forests and other carbon sinks to bring down emissions, because of the complex calculations involved and the unpredictable risk of carbon being released back into the atmosphere if, for instance, trees are decimated by a forest fire.
Australia, for example, has been accused by CAT of creating an “illusion of progress” towards its NDC targets by constantly revising its carbon sink assessment upwards and allowing more room for increased fossil fuel emissions.
E3G’s Meyer is sceptical that, despite the promises of 1.5C -aligned NDCs, countries will step up with the level of ambition needed – and said the task for COP30 host Brazil next year should be to encourage countries to work out how to fill the gaps.
“We need to see [the next NDCs] as a floor not a ceiling, and say what more can we do to supercharge ambition,” he said.
(Reporting by Matteo Civillini and Megan Rowling; editing by Megan Rowling)
The post As COP Troika dithers on 1.5C-aligned climate plans, experts set the bar high appeared first on Climate Home News.
As COP Troika dithers on 1.5C-aligned climate plans, experts set the bar high
Governments at the COP17 nature summit in Armenia agreed on Saturday to scale up their policies to protect the planet’s shrinking biodiversity, and for the first time invited large emerging economies like China and Gulf states to take on donor responsibilities to help fund those efforts.
For the past two weeks, countries held talks in Yerevan under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to outline a plan to ramp up currently “insufficient” policies to conserve land and marine ecosystems. A recent UN progress report found the world is off track to meet 22 out of 23 global targets aimed at reversing species loss and protecting 30% of land and seas by 2030.
While a response plan, called the “Global Review of Collective Progress”, was expected to be the main outcome of COP17, negotiations struggled to advance amid a deadlock over the controversial subject of how to finance the boost in conservation measures needed.
After an all-night session on Friday, delegates agreed to invite developing countries to voluntarily signal their interest in assuming donor funding obligations alongside developed nations. Negotiators repeatedly warned that any stronger provisions on expanding the donor base would collapse the deal.
COP president: Results beat expectations
An exhausted COP17 president Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenia’s environment minister, told journalists in the early hours of Saturday that “we’ve achieved more than we could’ve expected” given the “importance” of the decisions being taken.
“It was 100% possible that those items did not made it through. 100% possible,” he said, adding that the conference had made progress on “all the most important items”.
Speaking at the closing plenary, the group of Pacific Islands said that, while the summit had achieved “great outcomes”, delegates are also departing Yerevan “with realities not reflected in the official text”, such as the low replenishment of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a key funder of nature projects.
-
Lula’s election win in Brazil raises hopes for zero deforestation drive
Lula’s re-election makes it more likely Brazil can meet a key goal to end forest loss in the Amazon and builds confidence in a new fund to protect the world’s rainforests, experts say
Some observers also said the deal did not go far enough. Steven Guilbeault, a former Canadian environment minister who helped broker the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), said the Yerevan package of action is “an important step forward”, but still “falls short of what is needed to meet our 2030 commitments”.
An Lambrechts, biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International, said COP17 had kept things moving forward and set well-intentioned promises, but added that these “won’t remove major roadblocks to implementation” such as insufficient finance and debt constraints in developing countries.
WWF chief conservation officer Daudi Sumba noted that financial issues were not fully resolved. Despite the deal in Yerevan, “I fear finance will remain the key issue that continues to haunt the UN biodiversity summits,” he said in a statement.
‘Yerevan Pathway’ tackles nature plans and subsidies
In the lead-up to the summit, the UN assessment report showed countries are falling short on virtually all targets in the GBF, the 2022 global deal often referred to as the ‘Paris Agreement for nature’.
They include a landmark target to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030. If countries all stick to their current national goals, about 26% of land would be protected and only about 12% of marine ecosystems would be under conservation measures.
The main COP17 decision – named the Yerevan Pathway by the presidency – calls for countries to revise their biodiversity plans, subject to available funding, with a particular focus on addressing the gap in coverage of “marine, coastal and inland water ecosystems”.
It also urges the over 60 countries who have not submitted a biodiversity plan yet to finalise them “as soon as possible” and taking into account the gaps identified by the UN progress report.
Countries also agreed to tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss by “accelerating” the reduction of subsidies for activities that damage nature. Subsidy reform, covered by Target 18 of the GBF, is where countries have made the least progress so far, according to the assessment report.
Jill Hepp, director of nature and marine policy and incentives at green group Conservation International, said singling out subsidies in the Yerevan Pathway “gives a strong signal” that closing the gap for biodiversity action requires “more urgent efforts to reform harmful incentives and scale up positive incentives”.
“Timid” steps to expand base of donors
Having failed to meet a target to channel $20 billion for biodiversity conservation by 2025 and faced with shrinking aid budgets, the EU pushed a proposal to expand the list of which countries count as donors, so that wealthy emerging economies like China and Saudi Arabia could also voluntarily contribute. The group of Arab nations strongly opposed this.
During the talks, Irish minister of state for nature, Christopher O’Sullivan, whose country holds the EU presidency, said the bloc wanted the world’s “new realities” to be reflected in the donor list.
Negotiations remained gridlocked for most of the two-week talks, until a last-day compromise was struck to invite developing countries that may want donor status “to indicate to the [Convention on Biological Diversity] secretariat their interest in being included in the corresponding list”.
Countries also asked the secretariat to send an invitation to emerging economies wanting donor status at each subsequent COP, and requested a technical report on “the implications of inclusion in the list” for emerging economies.
Swiss lead negotiator Gabriela Blatter said during one of the sessions that her country had expected greater steps towards expanding the base of contributing countries, but added that “if we’re mutually unhappy, it’s probably the closest we can get on these very delicate political compromises”. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, also noted their dissatisfaction but said it had expected “a lot less”.
The fragile deal was approved in a package of decisions together with the Global Review, after some delegations including Brazil and China appealed to the plenary not to make further changes to the text at the risk of collapsing the whole agreement.
In a statement delivered to the closing plenary, the EU said the finance outcome had delivered “timid” progress towards fully broadening the base of donors.
Cali Fund still not operational
Adopted two years ago at COP16, the Cali Fund was seen by some observers as a way to channel private-sector finance into biodiversity conservation, as governments struggle to find public funds. But it is still struggling to get up on its feet.
The fund allows big corporations to access certificates for the use of genetic material found in biodiversity in return for a financial contribution, which experts estimate has the potential to raise up to $6.9bn for biodiversity. While voluntary, companies are encouraged to pay 1% of their profits or 0.1% of revenue into the fund.
But since its creation, the fund has received little more than $10,000, which Guilbeault argued is because the rules for disbursements to local communities and the operation of the fund had yet to be fleshed out. This was due to happen at COP17.
Yet, while the final decision on the fund laid out some of the rules – including how companies can earn “Cali Fund certificates” – some key technical details were left to the next COP in 2028 in Ecuador. This includes the issue of whether companies can pay a lower rate if they use genetic data for only a small portion of their products.
“By punting essential decisions to two years from now, parties have all but ensured the fund remains empty until then,” said Pakhi Das, a public policy advisor at NGO Plant-for-the-Planet.
The post COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
-
Early speakers’ list suggests few powerful leaders will attend COP31
Just 77 heads of state or government are scheduled to address the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, a third less than the COP28 peak -
Africa wants adaptation finance on COP31 agenda, raising risk of a fight
The African Group wants dedicated space on tripling adaptation finance, the Green Climate Fund and trade, setting up a possible clash
To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
