Developed nations have agreed to help channel “at least” $300bn a year into developing countries by 2035 to support their efforts to deal with climate change.
However, the new climate-finance goal – agreed along with a range of other issues at the COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan – has left developing countries bitterly disappointed.
They were united in calling for developed countries to raise $1.3tn a year in climate finance.
In the end, negotiators agreed on a looser call to raise $1.3tn each year from a wide range of sources, including private investment, by 2035.
Some countries, including India and Nigeria, accused the COP29 presidency of pushing the deal through without their proper consent, following chaotic last-minute negotiations.
Countries failed to reach an agreement on how the outcomes of last year’s “global stocktake”, including a key pledge to transition away from fossil fuels, should be taken forward – instead shunting the decision to COP30 next year in Brazil.
They did manage to find agreement on the remaining sections of Article 6 on carbon markets, meaning all elements of the Paris Agreement have been finalised nearly 10 years after it was signed.
Negotiations were overshadowed by the reelection of Donald Trump, who has promised to roll back climate action and take the world’s biggest historical emitter out of the Paris Agreement once again.
COP president Azerbaijan – a country that sources two-thirds of its government revenue from fossil fuels – faced accusations of conflict of interest and malpractice, with one minister labelling its hosting style “deplorable”.
Here, Carbon Brief provides in-depth analysis of all the key outcomes in Baku – both inside and outside the COP.
- Formal negotiations
Formal Negotiations
Azerbaijani leadership
Azerbaijan was announced as the host of COP29 towards the end of COP28 in Dubai. The COP presidency is rotated around the world over a five-year cycle, with Azerbaijan being chosen this time to represent the eastern European region.
The decision came later than normal. Russia had vetoed any EU member in eastern Europe taking up the presidency, leaving just Azerbaijan and Armenia as viable options. Armenia initially vetoed Azerbaijan based on the long-standing conflict between the two countries.
Eventually, Armenia withdrew its candidacy and lifted its veto on Azerbaijan, in exchange for the release of 32 Armenian prisoners. (Armenia has since been chosen to host the COP17 biodiversity summit in 2026.)
Carbon Brief analysis found that more than 65,000 delegates registered to attend COP29, with Azerbaijan having the largest delegation totalling 2,229 people. (See the analysis for a full breakdown of who attended COP, including, for the first time at a COP, analysis of which media outlets sent the largest teams of journalists.)
The appointment of a “petrostate” as the host of a climate summit – for the third year in a row following talks in Egypt and Dubai – immediately sparked backlash.
Climate Home News reported in May that Azerbaijan pumps less than 1% of the world’s oil and gas, but has an economy that is heavily reliant on fuel production. Fossil fuels make up more than 90% of all exports and two-thirds of government revenue.
On 8 November, ahead of the summit’s opening, a Global Witness investigation reported on by BBC News produced footage of the chief executive of COP29 appearing to be open to using his position of host of the summit to make future oil and gas deals.
In the clip shared by Global Witness, Elnur Soltanov spoke to a man posing as an investor about opportunities to invest in the country’s gas expansion, adding:
“We will have a certain amount of oil and natural gas being produced, perhaps forever.”
The COP29 presidency did not comment on the investigation at the time it was published or when asked about it in daily press briefings.
A separate Global Witness investigation found that at least 1,700 fossil-fuel executives had registered to attend COP29, lower than the record in Dubai but still larger than most party delegations.
On the summit’s first day, the presidency attempted to repeat the UAE’s COP28 day-one “win” on loss and damage by pushing through a deal on Article 6.4, which governs international carbon trading. (See: Article 6.)
However, Drilled reported that many parties felt the fast adoption process did not allow time for proper consultations, with one negotiator describing it as a “horrible precedent”.
The summit’s first day also saw the presidency land in a lengthy fight over what should be on COP’s official agenda.
The fight reflected the key battlelines at the summit: a new climate finance goal; and how, where – or even whether – to carry forward COP28’s deal on “transitioning away from fossil fuels”. (See: UAE dialogue and the global stocktake.)
See where countries stood on the key issues in Carbon Brief’s interactive table of who wanted what from COP29.
At the opening of the World Leaders Climate Action Summit on the conference’s second day, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev brought renewed focus on the country’s fossil-fuel interests by using his intervention to describe oil and gas as “a gift of god”.
Aliyev also criticised “western fake news” about his country’s emissions and chose not to announce its new UN climate plan, as widely anticipated.
This is despite Aliyev’s government going to “bizarre” lengths to prepare Baku for COP29, reported Bloomberg. This included clearing public areas and roads by moving parliamentary elections, shutting schools and universities and ordering two-thirds of the workforce to work from home, according to the publication.
The next day, the presidency suffered two headline-grabbing diplomatic blows.
The government of Argentina, led by right-wing populist Javier Milei, decided to withdraw its delegation, reported the Latin American publication Climática. There was speculation that the move was intended to woo incoming US president Donald Trump, but this was never confirmed.
In addition, France’s top climate official, ecological transition minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher, told the French Senate that she would not be attending the second week of the summit to participate in negotiations following a diplomatic spat with Azerbaijan.
Towards the end of the first week, senior figures including former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres wrote in an open letter that the COP process is “no longer fit for purpose” and that countries that do not support the phasing out of fossil fuels should not be able to take up the presidency.
(Figueres later distanced herself from the letter in a LinkedIn post, describing the COP process as “an essential and irreplaceable vehicle for supporting the multilateral, multisectoral, systemic change we urgently need”.)
When asked by a journalist to respond to the idea that the COP process was no longer fit for purpose during a presidency press conference, Azerbaijani lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev said:
“It’s better than any alternative, taking into account we don’t have any alternative process. Multilateralism, yes, we agree it’s under pressure. There are a lot of challenges and external complexities.”
At the start of the summit’s second week, focus turned to the presidency’s role in steering the negotiations.
Speaking in plenary, COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev announced that Azerbaijan did not intend to produce a “cover text” for COP29 – a frontpage-style document summing up the main outcomes of the summit.
Many had hoped a cover text would be produced in order to provide a home for the key pledge on “transitioning away from fossil fuels” agreed at COP28. In the end, a reference to this pledge was included in a draft on the UAE dialogue – but countries failed to sign off on the document at the end of COP. (See: UAE dialogue and the global stocktake.)
Babayev also confirmed ministerial pairs for taking the negotiations forward, and announced that Brazil – next year’s COP host – and the UK – the last developed country to host the talks – had been chosen to help wrangle negotiations towards consensus.
The day after the announcement, a UK negotiator said that they were unsure of what their role in helping to guide the negotiations was meant to be.
Towards the end of the summit, it was confirmed that the UK and Brazil acted like a ministerial pairing, holding consultations with parties on how they thought the “balance” of texts agreed should look.
The UK and Brazil communicated the results of the consultations to the presidency, but received little feedback, Carbon Brief understands.
Babayev also used his interventions at the start of the summit’s second week to urge parties to work faster to make progress in the negotiations.
The Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) reported that the presidency “set firm timelines” for several negotiation issues, but that many parties felt these were unrealistic, with one negotiator rejecting the presidency’s schedule as “arbitrary”.
A set of texts were eventually released on Thursday morning, including a streamlined proposal for the new climate-finance goal.
It contained two options for how the goal might be formulated – branded “extreme” and “not representative” of developed or developing country views by one negotiator – and an “X” in the place of a proposed monetary figure, which incensed many poorer nations. (See: New climate finance goal.)
In a bid to address concerns, the presidency held a six-hour “Qurultay” meeting where parties were invited to air their views on the texts face-to-face – likely inspired by the “Majlis” held at COP28.
On Friday – the summit’s final scheduled day – the first presidency draft of the climate-finance text was released, including for the first time a monetary figure. This text also received near universal disapproval.
Negotiations dragged into Saturday. The presidency held lengthy consultations with parties all day, which fast began to unravel when two major developing country groupings – the least developed countries (LDCs) and the alliance of small island states (AOSIS) – staged a temporary walkout over the proposed finance deal and feelings of exclusion from the negotiation process.
The breakdown in negotiations sparked frenzied rumours that COP may end without a deal.
Many drew potential comparisons to the COP16 biodiversity summit in Cali earlier this month. Those talks had finished without a finance deal after a large number of developing-country delegates were forced to catch flights home, leaving parties without the “quorum” needed to reach consensus.
At this time, the presidency’s possible conflict of interest and failure to guide parties towards consensus came under sharp scrutiny. Canada environment minister Steven Guilbeault told the National Observer that the presidency’s “lack of ambition” was “deplorable”.
Pressure on Azerbaijan intensified when the Guardian reported on documents suggesting the presidency had allowed a Saudi Arabian delegate to make direct changes to a negotiating text being circulated on Saturday.
One expert said that allowing preferential access to Saudi Arabia – a country accused of blocking references to fossil fuels from being included in COP29 negotiations – risked “placing this entire COP in jeopardy”, according to the newspaper.
While intense conversations about the texts continued into Saturday, the presidency attempted to push on by beginning the final plenary – first turning to approving non-controversial technical items in front of confused party delegates.
In the meantime, Bloomberg reported that the US, the UK and AOSIS came to a behind-the-scenes agreement on a new draft version of the climate-finance text.
The presidency eventually dropped draft decision texts for the key negotiating issues in the early hours of Sunday morning.
The final plenary resumed, where the climate-finance was adopted – sparking furious condemnation from developing countries, including India and Nigeria, who described the outcome as a “joke”.
The presidency “clearly decided it would be OK to ‘stage manage’ the adoption” over India and Nigeria’s objections, whereas other interventions had not formally “objected”, said Dr Joanna Depledge, an expert on the international climate negotiations at the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance. She told Carbon Brief:
“The key thing is that NCQG was only objected to by India and Nigeria (which the presidency would have known). So, without a critical mass of countries or groups objecting, the presidency clearly decided it would be ok to ‘stage manage’ the adoption.”
The presidency attempted to reach consensus on the UAE dialogue – the text containing a reference to last year’s agreement to transition away from fossil fuels – but this ended in failure. The text will need to be taken up by parties once again at COP30 in Brazil.
COP29 eventually ended at 5.31am on Sunday 24 November, 35 hours over time.
US election fallout
Just days before COP29, Donald Trump won the US election on a campaign promising to roll back climate action and take the world’s biggest historical emitter out of the Paris Agreement once again.
The potential impact of his reelection on the summit’s negotiations – and multilateralism more broadly – instantly became a major focus on the global stage.
(Carbon Brief analysis earlier this year found Trump’s reelection could add 4bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, GtCO2e, to US emissions by 2030.)
Early on in the summit – before negotiations heated up – US climate envoy John Podesta held a press conference where he tried to reassure delegates that president Joe Biden’s outgoing team would continue to play their role at the talks.
At the same time, senior representatives of the EU, the UK and China suggested that their countries would be willing to step into a larger climate leadership role in light of Trump’s election.
The summit’s first week saw right-wing populist leader Javier Milei withdraw Argentina’s delegation from the talks, with some interpreting this as a bid to woo Trump.
The move ignited fears that Argentina might become the first country to follow the US in leaving the Paris Agreement, with some delegates suggesting to Carbon Brief that this could start a chain reaction of far-right governments withdrawing from the global climate deal.
The Argentinian government later clarified it had no plans to leave the Paris Agreement.
As negotiations got underway, the general sense was that all parties were continuing to work together in good faith despite the uncertainty caused by the US election result, one lead negotiator told journalists at a background briefing.
Some said this demonstrated “resilience” in the COP process, whereas others pointed out that it exposed how the talks are inflexible to react to major global events.
In public, countries made a show of reaffirming their commitment to multilateralism. A call for “strengthened multilateralism” was included in a statement from the G20 released during COP and several countries referenced its importance during plenary sessions.
Despite this, Trump’s victory and its hamstringing impact on US negotiators – who are usually viewed as the “powerbrokers” of the conference – was clearly visible in some of the major negotiating tracks at COP29, negotiators and observers said.
South African environment minister Dion George, who co-chaired negotiations on mitigation along with Norway, told Politico that the US was more “subdued” in these discussions, when “normally they talk a lot”.
The New York Times reported that Saudi Arabia, known to push back on new mitigation measures, were particularly emboldened in their stance against including the fossil-fuel transition pledge agreed last year in the COP29 negotiated text.
Some observers speculated that the diminished position of the US – who reportedly helped to convince parties including Saudi Arabia to agree to the fossil-fuel pledge in Dubai – could have played a role.
Trump’s victory also had repercussions for COP29’s biggest aim of agreeing to a new climate-finance goal, others said.
The summit saw developed countries agree to give $300bn in climate finance to developing countries by 2035, an outcome that left many global-south nations bitterly disappointed. (See: New climate finance goal.)
Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for AOSIS, told Politico that Trump’s victory “changed” what the US “could have provided” – as the outgoing Biden team were in no position to commit to an uptick in spending.
A European diplomat added that the looming arrival of the Trump administration made it “more important” for developing countries to agree to a climate-finance deal at COP29, telling Politico:
“The developing countries [were] saying that it is better to have no agreement than a bad one…Normally, that is true, but, in this case, with the upcoming presidency in the US, it should be crucial for them to have an agreement now.”
However, Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins, a senior campaigner at the charity War on Want, said that the “threat of the Trump presidency [was] being used” to try to convince developing nations to agree to a finance deal, exposing shortcomings in developed nations’ approach to multilateralism. He told Carbon Brief:
“People [were] saying: ‘Well, you better take this money, because when Trump comes, you’re not going to get any money’. And I think that’s a damning indictment of the failure of the political systems in the global north to appreciate that you can’t have a global climate response without global climate justice.”
Moving forward, it is clear that Trump’s victory will continue to affect climate negotiations, observers said – with his administration set to be in place for COP30 in Brazil, a summit being billed as a major moment for increasing global efforts to cut emissions.
New climate finance goal (NCQG)
COP29 launched a new global target for climate finance that will see developed countries “take the lead” in raising $300bn a year for developing countries by 2035.
This is the core of the “new collective quantified goal on climate finance” (NCQG), which nations agreed at COP21 in Paris to establish, by 2025, something to replace an earlier goal of $100bn per year.
The new target mirrors the previous one by including money from a “wide variety of sources”, including public funds, development-bank loans and private finance “mobilised” by government spending.
Finance has consistently been one of the most divisive issues in international climate politics. (For a detailed breakdown of the key disputes ahead of COP29, see this in-depth explainer by Carbon Brief.)
Nations in the global south will need trillions of dollars to transition to cleaner economies and protect their populations from climate change. It is broadly understood that a large chunk of this money will need to come from developed countries.
Under the UN process, only 24 “developed” parties, including the US, the EU and Japan have had to provide climate finance to “developing” countries. They have sought to ease their financial burden by trying to draw in other contributors and the private sector.
This is reflected in the second part of the final NCQG agreement. Developing countries were adamant that they needed $1.3tn a year, exclusively from developed countries. Instead, the text calls on “all actors” to scale up funds from “all public and private sources” to “at least $1.3tn” by 2035.
Unlike the $100bn goal, the new finance goal also leaves the door open for “voluntary” inputs from developing nations that have not previously provided official climate finance, such as China.
These outcomes were the result of intense negotiations that went into overtime, including a walkout by climate-vulnerable nations and last-minute objections by India and others.
Before COP29, the co-chairs overseeing NCQG preparations had whittled down parties’ divergent ideas into a nine-page “substantive framework for a draft negotiating text”. It captured two major options, based on two years of negotiations, “expert dialogues” and meetings between government ministers.
One, favoured by developing countries, involved a target broadly in the trillions that developed countries should channel into developing countries.
The proposal included an option for an inner goal consisting of hundreds of billions of dollars “provided” – meaning public funds. The rest would come from money “mobilised” by these developed countries, which includes private investments triggered by public spending.
There was also an option to only include funds in “grant-equivalent” terms, meaning loans, which make up the majority of climate finance, would not be counted in full.
The other option, backed by developed countries, included a smaller amount of money provided or mobilised for developing countries, but also a larger “investment” goal.
This could cover all sorts of finance, including private investments that have nothing to do with governments. Parties such as the US had even proposed including domestic spending and said it could cover “all global investment” – not just money for developing countries.
Experts say driving climate-related investment in developing countries is essential. But developing countries argue that it is simply beyond the remit of the UN climate process, as AOSIS finance negotiator Michai Robertson told Carbon Brief:
“Right now, we need to be focused on what we agreed to in Paris, which was about providing support to developing countries. If we have a discussion about investments, that has to be some time after we have clearly agreed to this goal.”
Developed countries also wanted this wider goal to include money from relatively wealthy, high-emitting countries that are classed as “developing” in the UN climate system.
US climate finance is likely to drop under president Donald Trump. Meanwhile, many European nations have cut their aid budgets, while possible right-wing gains in elections from Germany to Canada next year could further weaken nations’ appetite for overseas climate action.
These major climate-finance contributors have been on the lookout for new donors to fill gaps in a future finance goal. During the first week of COP29, Jacob Levine, special assistant to the US president and senior director for climate and energy at the White House, told Carbon Brief:
“When you consider the magnitude…We need people to contribute, to do their fair share and to recognise the opportunity that we have to work together.”
However, many developing countries have been very clear that they do not want to blur the lines between developed and developing countries in the UN climate process.
In theory, the “substantive framework” could have formed the basis for the negotiations at COP29.
However, as the event started, there was talk among delegates of parties being deeply unhappy with the document. These grievances were comprehensively aired during the opening NCQG talks on the first Tuesday.
Developing countries unanimously rejected the “substantive framework”, with the G77 and China stating that it would not accept the text and requesting a new one. The group pointed to various issues, including the need to exclude certain loans and focus on developed countries providing money, rather than “investment”.
This position was backed by all the key developing-country groups, from the small, climate-vulnerable groups to relatively wealthy, high emitters. For the first time, all the developing countries also coalesced around a demand for $1.3tn per year – a figure first proposed by the African group and LMDCs in 2021.
Some developed countries also expressed dissatisfaction with the text. Many underlined the importance of an investment-based goal in order to ramp up ambition.
The co-chairs agreed to return with a new text, based on parties submitting 65 pages of feedback. By the next morning, a new document had begun circulating and this one had massively increased in size to accommodate all the new inputs.
The text was generally regarded as too large to form the basis of negotiations. Jacob Werksman, the lead EU negotiator, told a press conference that “we are very worried”.
He noted that “literally more than a year of preparation” had gone into the starting nine-page text, only for it to be rejected.
Parties agreed that the co-chairs could try to streamline the document, but must not add or remove any of the key ideas. The new text that emerged that night was just one page shorter. “Clearly, we are way off a landing ground,” Werksman said.
Parties undertook closed-door meetings and, on Friday and Saturday, the co-chairs circulated two versions of a draft text that were shorter, but showed little progress on key issues.
Avantika Goswami, climate programme manager at the Centre for Science and Environment India, told a press briefing that the first week saw “a lot of wasting of time”, with a focus on relatively uncontroversial issues, such as access to finance.
The Saturday text was passed on to the presidency as the first week drew to a close and government ministers arrived to take over the negotiations. Parties were tasked with focusing on “three key issues” – how the goal is structured, how big it is and who has to contribute.
Frustration grew over developed-country groups failing to propose any hard numbers. This was exacerbated by a “declaration” from the G20 summit that merely “look[ed] forward to a successful NCQG outcome in Baku”, rather than providing any firmer guidance.
There was pressure on the EU – the largest provider of climate finance – to step up. Luca Bergamaschi, director of the thinktank ECCO Climate, told journalists that the EU should be a “first mover” and “put something concrete on the table”.
For their part, developed countries argued that they did not want to set a number until they knew who would contribute and what kind of funds would count. EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told Carbon Brief that, while “affluent” developing countries bore responsibility for providing climate finance:
“For countries, it is typically difficult to leave entrenched positions and move officially from one category to the next. So, a potential solution could be indeed…without leaving these classic positions, to…move into a space of voluntary contributions.”
China, and many other emerging economies, already provide billions of dollars each year towards climate-related projects in developing countries. However, this money is not considered “climate finance” under the UN system.
With China sending positive signals that it was prepared to be more transparent about its overseas climate-related spending, some delegates thought formally recognising these contributions could ease the pressure on the EU and others. (See: China at COP29.)
Bergamaschi told Carbon Brief that, as this money was already being provided, “it’s a political recognition of the reality, essentially, that we need”. AOSIS finance negotiator Robertson told Carbon Brief that counting such money was an “accounting trick” as these contributions are “happening already” and including them would not generate new funds.
With COP29 entering its final days, developing countries proposed a range of core “provision” goals between $440-900bn. These would come exclusively from public, grant-equivalent funds and the rest of the $1.3tn would be “mobilised” by developed countries.
Meanwhile, a potential figure of $200-300bn had begun to circulate, based on Politico reporting of anonymous EU officials. When asked about this target in a press conference, senior figures in the LMDC and G77 groups laughed, asking; “Is it a joke?”
Within the $1.3tn goal, small-island states had also said they wanted $39bn a year carved out for them – and the LDCs asked for $220bn a year. Together, their demands would account for virtually all of the target reportedly being considered by the EU.
The G77 and China had been clear that they wanted “all” developing countries to have equitable access and, when asked by Carbon Brief, African group chair Ali Mohamed said he did not agree with “cherry-picking” certain groups.
As the final Thursday – theoretically, the penultimate day of COP29 – arrived, the presidency published a new text, to widespread disapproval. It contained two options at the more extreme ends of both developed and developing-country positions – and still no numbers.
Civil-society groups said they feared developed countries were holding off on proposing a target as a tactic to ramp up pressure in the closing hours. Linda Kalcher, executive director at the thinktank Strategic Perspectives, told Carbon Brief that the EU’s diverse member states complicated its position:
“If you only get one shot at calling 27 finance ministers, you better get that right and do it at the end.”
On Friday afternoon, mere hours before the COP was officially due to close, a “presidency text” for the NCQG was released, which for the first time contained specific numbers.
The core target was $250bn a year, comprising the same sources as the $100bn and therefore including both “provided” and “mobilised” funds. The broader $1.3tn goal was also included. (Carbon Brief assessed this text in that week’s issue of the Debriefed newsletter.)
While a US state department official said in a statement that the $250bn would require “extraordinary reach”, the goal was viewed as wholly inadequate by developing countries. A rallying cry of “no deal is better than a bad deal” rose up among activists in the corridors.
Analysts pointed out that planned aid spending and existing multilateral development bank (MDB) reforms would already boost climate finance well past $200bn by the 2030s, meaning the goal would require little extra effort from developed countries. Others noted that inflation would wipe out much of its additional value anyway.
The next day, various unofficial leaked texts circulated, including one that increased the core target to $300bn, a move reportedly backed by the EU, the US, the UK and Australia. But, behind closed doors, the G77 and China was pushing for a core goal of $500bn.
A final text emerged at around midnight on Saturday, following urgent diplomatic efforts between major economies and key negotiating blocs. It contained a core goal of “at least $300bn”, as well as the wider $1.3tn from all sources.
Apart from the amount of money, there were a handful of technical details that negotiators were arguing about until the bitter end.
The final text “encourages” – rather the slightly more forceful “invites” in the previous draft – developing countries to contribute climate finance “on a voluntary basis”, and also refers to “voluntary” counting of outflows from MDBs, which developing countries pay into. This wording seeks to address the previously intractable issue of the contributor base.
Technically, developing countries were already “encouraged” to contribute to climate finance under the Paris Agreement. However, language around the $100bn goal itself only specifies “developed” countries should contribute.
This means nations would have had to shed their “developing” identity in order