So, we touched down in Baku! After a full day of travel and getting acclimated, we have begun to prepare for the 29th Conference of Parties (COP29).
This is my fourth COP, and I have many thoughts and things to attend to, and yet I still don’t know much about what each day will look like for me just yet. It took me two of these conferences to figure out what it is I’m doing here and why, and three to figure out how I can do these things well and care for myself and others around me.
I get to serve in the role as a house mother for the second year in a row with the Climate Generation delegation, and I am honored to be able to share what I know about this confusing, exciting, disheartening, invigorating, ridiculous, massive conference. I am excited to participate with folks who are experiencing it for the first time. To me, this means that part of my role is to make the house feel like home however I may and however folks need, offering an ear to vent to or get some questions answered from one of the various coalition spaces that I am in, and that, wherever I may, I should be connecting these brilliant folks with the global movement for climate justice.
As many may know, I am the Director of Youth N’Power and the Youth N’Power Network, a year-round, apprenticeship-modeled program for youth in Minneapolis and a network of young folks that are learning and/or working on becoming community organizers that operate through the lens of Environmental Justice. In another capacity, I am the Environmental Justice Youth Program Director and Global Climate Justice Coordinator with MN Interfaith Power & Light. I also get the pleasure of holding space in the U.S. Fair Shares Collaborative and national Climate Reparations Camp. To be at the crux of these spaces where environment, relationships, and just transition intersect is both a challenge and a blessing.
I have 10 apprentices in Minneapolis and 3 nationally, and this year, the second of my apprentices, Manny, is attending COP29 with our delegation. Now that I am starting to see connections between local and global movements, having some of the youth that I get to spend time with and mentor also learn to navigate this space feels really cool. And, it makes it clear how much is at stake and just how far behind our country is as it relates to the global movement to move towards a just future.
The UNFCCC and the Conference of Parties can certainly be a nightmare. And, it can also be a place where you make lifelong friends, understand how folks are actualizing real solutions to overlapping crises (in addition to climate), and build a much-needed global community.
I know in my spirit that building global community is the primary solution to these crises, because while we may be at a climate conference, the United Nations does not hold the solutions to what people and the planet experience.
Community holds the solutions. Community holds the solutions. Community holds the solutions. I say that as many times as I can, so that it becomes a concept that most people, especially Americans, understand. We have been led to believe that we must do individual action only in order to make practical change, and yet, we are at a conference where the COP29 host president in Azerbaijan has set up active deals to further fossil fuel production before day one even commences.
I find myself wondering to what end we are supposed to organize towards while these oil tycoons and governments continue making deals that line their pockets and further rocket us towards our own demise. This is the stuff of nightmares. And yet, we persist?
Today, on the day before the conference begins, Manny and I attended two meetings for coalition spaces: CAN-I (Climate Action Network International) and DCJ (The Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice) members’ assembly. There were a few takeaways that I will be watching out for as the conference begins: CAN’s Fossil of the Day award — one of their major advocacy tools that call our UNFCCC parties (countries) blocking climate action and progress in negotiations based on the Network’s strategies and priorities. This is awarded to countries that are “doing their best at being the worst.” I know that the United States usually wins the award, and this adds to my personal shame about representing the country that is the highest historical emitter of Greenhouse Gases and the largest producer of Fossil Fuels, in the conference.
We also learned of a number of planned actions in support of and solidarity with Palestine, calling for an end to the genocide (and all genocides happening globally at present). Any action within the COP space must be sanctioned by the U.N., and it is imperative that anyone reading this understands that genocide is very much so an environmental and climate issue.
Knowing that some of the largest Environmental NGOs are standing in solidarity with oppressed and marginalized peoples and places reminds me why I do this work.
The second meeting we attended was for DCJ. We also talked through strategy, and the schedule of events for Palestine and other justice-focused initiatives. One of the scariest things i heard today, before the conference even begun, is that while we may be talking about staying below a 1.5 global average annual temperature increase, in actuality, we are looking at a 2 degree average increase by 2040 at the latest, and 3 degrees by the end of the century. That means that a child born today could live in a world that is unlivable, and the actions of our governments and these corporations are accelerating a future with an earth that can’t support life as we know it, or the lack of any future altogether.
The last thing I’ll add as we go into this COP is that it is a climate finance year. In order to ensure that we have some hope for a future for all generations, peoples, and planet, the Global North needs to pay its Fair Share of climate finance to the Global South. That figure is something to the tune of $5 Trillion per year. For the U.S., our Fair Share is 46% of that, or 446 Billion Dollars, annually.
This figure is one that has grown as polluting countries have continued to pollute and destroy all of existence, and the Global South calls for us to begin the process of reparation. The narratives surrounding reparations have been debated for too long, and while year after year and conference after conference, we somehow never can find the money to do so, our nation somehow finds the money to send so that atrocious harms can continue.
This reality is one that most Americans refuse to understand, acknowledge, or talk about, and so in my fourth go-around, I hear the same two questions rising to the surface: Is the Global North going to pay its Fair Share and repair harm? For the Global South is paying from their own pockets and with their lives and livelihoods, and we still treat the climate crisis as a conversation for activists only, where I come from. Will we be able to see a future for the next seven generations, or will we fail time and again, to change our understanding of what needs to happen in the present? These are my thoughts as I go forth into Day 1 of Week 1, of a conference that has happened every year of my life since my birth, and still hasn’t figured out how to fix these issues.
Analyah is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP29. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation, support our delegates, and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.
Analyah Schlaeger dos Santos is a young Afro-Brazilian-American woman born and raised in North Minneapolis, Minnesota. After living in Atlanta, Georgia, she moved back to Minneapolis in 2015 to study Global Relations and Environmental Justice at the University of Minnesota and the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs. She has been an aquatic guide to all ages for 12 years and counting and loves to infuse environmental wellness into her frameworks.
She is currently the International Campaign lead at MN Interfaith Power & Light, and serves on the board of multiple local organizations.
The post Context, Priorities, and Plans for COP29 appeared first on Climate Generation.
Delegates will soon gather in the Turkish resort city of Antalya for UN climate negotiations, against a backdrop of war, energy crisis and climate extremes.
At COP31, nations will try to find agreement on various issues, including climate finance for developing countries and a global “just transition” towards a cleaner economy.
This summit is unusual due to its joint presidency, which means that Australia is leading the negotiations while Turkey hosts the conference.
Outside the formal negotiations, Turkey is also pushing its own priorities as part of a wider “action agenda”, including electrification, oceans and “green industrialisation”.
In order to track parties’ positions on key negotiating points and wider issues at COP31, Carbon Brief has analysed around 100 documents and captured them in the interactive table below.
The first column shows the countries and UN negotiating blocs, the second shows the topics up for debate and the third indicates specific issues within those topics.
The final column indicates the positions that the parties have expressed on each topic. These range from “priority” – meaning the party is likely to be pushing the issue – to “oppose”, meaning it is likely to push against it.
This is a “living document” that will be updated over the course of COP31.
Please get in touch if you would like to offer additions by emailing policy@carbonbrief.org.
Brief explanations of the key issues and jargon-filled language that permeate the talks can be found below the interactive table.
Just transition
At COP30 in Brazil in 2025, nations agreed to establish a practical mechanism to help drive a “just transition” to a low-carbon economy.
Key aspects of this “Belém-Antalya mechanism” (BAM) – often referred to as the “just transition mechanism” (JTM) – were agreed during the June climate negotiations this year, but many details are missing and dividing lines remain between parties.
Parties have disagreed about the scope of the mechanism and whether it should be tied to the provision of finance.
Nevertheless, following progress in June within the “just transition work programme” (JTWP), civil society groups highlighted that getting the mechanism up and running is a “key expected outcome” from COP31.
Climate finance
Climate finance is always a highly contested issue at UN climate negotiations.
Developing countries have successfully pushed for a “work programme” on climate finance to feature on the conference agenda.
These parties see this programme as a way to pressure developed countries into providing more funding from their public coffers, specifically under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement. Some are even proposing a “burden sharing” arrangement for climate-finance provision.
This comes against a backdrop of major donors cutting their aid budgets and the Trump administration in the US pressuring multilateral development banks (MDBs) to drop their climate objectives.
Developed countries, which have traditionally been responsible for providing finance, would prefer to keep a broader focus on issues such as improving access to existing finance and broadening the range of donors. Some developing countries, such as small-island states, also support these goals.
Nations have also been discussing Article 2.1c of the Paris Agreement under the “Veredas dialogue”. This focuses on making all global “financial flows” consistent with climate action.
Countries have different views about what this involves, with developing countries again hoping to keep the focus on developed countries’ responsibilities to financially support them.
Adaptation and mitigation
At negotiations in June, parties were unable to agree on the details of a “global goal on adaptation” (GGA), which is intended to drive climate adaptation worldwide.
Having agreed at COP30 on a list of 59 “indicators” – ways to assess progress towards the GGA – nations now need to refine these before COP32 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This is a highly technical process that involves a taskforce working out how to use and track these indicators.
Broadly, developing countries stress the importance of finance to fund adaptation efforts, rather than simply to track progress. They also want reassurances about a pledge made last year to “triple adaptation finance”.
At the June climate negotiations, negotiators also failed to make any progress when discussing the mitigation work programme (MWP) – the only formal agenda item that concerns cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Among other things, parties disagreed on whether the MWP should continue running over the next few years, or simply be brought to a close.
Global stocktake and NDCs
Back in 2023, the first “global stocktake” (GST) of the Paris Agreement set out the state of climate action and what needed to be done to set the world on course.
On mitigation, nations agreed to a package of measures, including “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, tripling renewable energy and “halting and reversing deforestation” by 2030.
Some of these outcomes remain contentious among certain parties, particularly large, developing countries and those with economies that rely on fossil-fuel exports.
Developing countries have persistently argued that they need more climate finance to implement the global stocktake outcomes.
Parties were meant to update their climate plans under the Paris Agreement, informed by the first global stocktake, by 2025. These plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), cover the period out to 2035.
So far, only 150 parties – responsible for three-quarters of global emissions – have submitted new NDCs.
Iran, Vietnam, Egypt and Argentina are among those without new NDCs – and the US has withdrawn its climate plan under the Trump administration.
Some parties, such as the EU, have stressed the need for countries to submit their new NDCs ahead of COP31 – and to ensure they are aligned with the 1.5C temperature limit.
COP31 will also see the launch of the second global stocktake, which will conclude in 2028.
Action agenda and other issues
Turkey will be pushing its “action agenda” priorities at COP31, including global targets for electrification, reducing waste and reducing building-sector emissions.
(The Australian “presidency of negotiations” is intending to pursue a “cover text” decision at COP31 that may capture some of these wider targets, such as the electrification goal.)
The action agenda is meant to provide a complementary track to the formal negotiations, where governments and non-state actors can advance specific, real-world solutions.
A new COP31 presidency effort dubbed the “climate implementation bridge” is also meant to complement these ambitions by turning NDC goals into an “investable project portfolio”
Some parties have explicitly signalled their support for various elements beyond the formal negotiations, in the run-up to COP31.
For example, a joint letter signed by 105 parties called for COP31 to “put the ocean at the heart of climate action” by embedding ocean-based climate action in the UNFCCC architecture.
The post Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit
Prepared by a coalition of nine Western Australian union, industry, conservation, and community organisations—including UnionsWA, the Conservation Council WA, and the Smart Energy Council—the WA Clean Energy, Jobs & Industry Plan provides a practical roadmap to transform Western Australia into a clean energy powerhouse while creating thousands of secure local jobs.
Western Australia stands at a pivotal crossroads: lead the global clean energy economy or watch investment, future industries, and secure jobs go elsewhere. The WA Clean Energy, Jobs & Industry Plan outlines a transformative blueprint to harness the state’s world-class solar and wind resources. Discover how legislated renewable targets, green iron manufacturing, and a dedicated regional training strategy can generate tens of thousands of local jobs, lower household bills, and build a resilient, net-zero future for all Western Australians.
WA needs a clear and forward-thinking plan if it is going to become a competitive renewable energy powerhouse and maintain its economic strength through the energy transition.
“Western Australians know a faster renewable energy transition will lower their household expenses and prevent harmful climate pollution. But the community also needs clear direction to ensure this transition will create jobs, lower costs and not cause undue environmental harm.
“Here, sectors representing a broad range of interests have laid the groundwork for those outcomes, clearly outlining what is needed to create a future for WA that is good for the environment, for the climate, for workers and for the economy.
Summary
The WA Clean Energy, Jobs & Industry Plan sets out a strategic roadmap to position Western Australia as a global clean energy superpower while creating thousands of secure local jobs.
The report establishes three overarching goals:
- Creating local employment.
- Maintaining industrial competitiveness.
- Lowering household energy costs
To realize this vision, the framework details actionable measures to follow on from the recent WA Government announcement of a 75% Renewable Energy Target by 2031 for the South West Interconnected System. This includes developing a statewide Renewable Energy Target, coordinating statewide workforce and training pipelines, strategically planning regional infrastructure to safeguard high-value biodiversity and cultural heritage, and ensuring equitable benefit-sharing through household electrification incentives and First Nations equity partnerships. Ultimately, the plan highlights that establishing clear policy and regulatory certainty will unlock lower energy bills, boost power reliability, and secure the state’s global competitiveness in emerging green commodity export markets.