While 2023’s climate questions depended largely on governments and big bankers, 2024 is one of those years where the fate of the world rests in the hands of ordinary people.
But not all its people. Because of the USA’s huge emissions, financial power and electoral system, our hopes lie largely on those in a few swing states – like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona.
In 2020, we spoke to grassroots campaigners trying to boost climate voter turnout in Georgia. They were crucial in swinging the Senate then, which allowed a huge climate bill to be passed in 2022. The planet needs the likes of them again.
1.Who will win the US election?
Of all the world’s elections, the USA’s is the one that matters the most for the climate. The policies of the world’s second biggest polluter swing wildly depending on who is in the Oval Office.
The vote on November 5 is likely to pit Joe Biden against Donald Trump. Polls and bookmakers currently suggest Trump is more likely to win.
That would put a major dampener on climate hopes ahead of Cop29, on November 11.
We know where both men stand. As president, Trump withdrew the US from the Paris agreement. Biden re-joined it on his first day in office and pushed through $369bn of green spending.
On the same day as the Presidential election, Americans will also vote for all the seats in the House of Representatives and a third of those in the Senate.
Republican control of the House of Representatives is a big barrier to US climate finance. Given Democratic turnout is usually higher when there’s a Presidential election, there’s a chance Democrats could win control and at least deliver on their $3 billion promise to the Green Climate Fund.
Donald Trump being sworn in as US president in 2016 (Pic: White House photo)
2.What will the new global finance target be?
Compared to fossil fuels, finance was low profile in 2023 – to the anger of developing countries.
But 2024 should be its year, as countries have to negotiate a new finance goal for 2025 onwards by the time they leave Cop29 in Baku in November.
Expect debate over who should pay and who should receive, as well as how much should be given and to what.
Separately, France and Kenya have launched a taskforce on how to get money for climate which isn’t just from governments.
Options include taxes on international shipping, aviation, financial transactions and fossil fuels.
The US, Germany and others will continue their push to squeeze more money out of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund for climate.
3.Will emissions finally start going down?
Almost every year so far, the world’s humans have pumped out more greenhouse gas than any year before, sparking depressing headlines about “record emissions”.
But 2023 could well be the last year of this. A report by Climate Analytics finds a 70% chance that emissions will peak in 2023 and start falling in 2024.
The International Energy Agency thinks something similar – but the US government’s forecasters are more pessimistic.
Whether emissions peak or not, the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere will keep going up. A bath tub doesn’t empty because you put less water in it each year – you have to pull the plug out.
Climate Analytics says emissions are likely to peak this year but how fast they decline depends on policies (Photos: Climate Analytics)
4.When will the loss and damage fund start spending?
Before rich nations agreed to a loss and damage fund at the end of 2022, they argued that it would take years and years to set up – too long to be useful.
After governments agreed on most of the details in 2023, 2024 may be the year they are proved wrong.
Regional groups are appointing their board members to the fund now.
Then the board needs to meet, agree policies, receive the money it’s been promised and start dishing it out.
What’s for sure is that there will be loss this year and there will be damage – droughts, heatwaves, storms and more. So the victims can’t wait.
5.Will countries firm up adaptation targets?
After two years of talks, at Cop28 this year governments agreed to draw up targets on adapting to climate change in areas like healthcare, food security and protecting nature.
They will now spend two years discussing whether there should be numbers attached to those targets and what those numbers should be.
Developing countries want the numbers – like a target to reduce adverse climate impacts on agricultural production by 50% by 2030.
But developed nations argue numbers can’t show how well you’ve adapted to climate change.
They will hash out this debate at Bonn in June and at Cop29 in Baku in November.
Seaweed farmers in Tanzania are having to move into deeper waters as seaweed-killing bacteria thrives in warming seas (Photo: Natalija Gormalova / Climate Visuals Countdown)
6.Will governments get rid of fossil fuel subsidies?
Since 2009, governments have kept promising to get rid of subsidies for fossil fuels – but not really doing so.
At Cop28, a dozen nations including France and Canada joined a coalition to try and finally turn this promise into action.
They committed to drawing up an inventory of their fossil fuel subsidies by Cop29 in November.
Inventories can lead to action. When a Dutch inventory revealed they were spending $40bn a year subsidising fossil fuels, protesters braved water cannons to block off the country’s parliament, rocketing the issue up the agenda. Will the same happen elsewhere?
7.Will coal-to-clean deals keep disappointing?
Just energy transition partnerships (Jetp) faced a brutal reality check in 2023, as investment blueprints were finally unveiled.
Rich countries are offering most of their money as loans not grants. Ambitious plans to switch off coal plants early in South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam are now much more uncertain as a result.
As the money starts flowing in 2024, the implementation of the first few projects should give a flavour of how effective and just the transition will be.
The energy transition deal aims to wean Indonesia off coal, which now takes up nearly half of the country’s electricity mix. Photo: Kemal Jufri / Greenpeace
8.Will new treaty target plastic production?
Government negotiators are currently debating a draft of a new plastics treaty, which they hope to finalise by the end of 2024 – after meetings in Ottawa in April and Busan at the end of November.
One option being fiercely debated is whether to set limits on the amount of plastic each country can produce.
While the majority of European and African countries want limits, the US and Saudi Arabia are resistant.
Plastics are made from oil and gas. With electricity systems and vehicles transitioning to renewable electricity, oil and gas companies see plastics as a lifeline which this treaty could take away.
9.How will companies prepare for the EU’s carbon border tax?
Many developing countries have long seen the European Union’s carbon border tax and elements of the USA’s Inflation Reduction Act as unfair protectionist trade measures, dressed up in concern for the environment.
These complaints were high-profile at Cop28 – with China and others trying to get them put on the official agenda. The United Nation’s trade chief – Costa Rica’s Rebecca Grynspan – recently echoed these concerns and they’re likely to keep rising up the agenda in 2024.
The EU’s carbon border tax incentivises companies making certain polluting products outside of the EU to clean up their manufacturing – or at least to say they’re cleaning up. As the 2026 start date for the tax nears, we expect more stories about companies greenwashing to lessen their tax burden and about the impact of the tax on ordinary people in developing countries, aluminium workers in Mozambique for instance.
Bratsk aluminium smelting facility in Russia will be affected by the EU’s border tax (Photo credit: UC Rusal/WikiCommons)
10.Will carbon markets gain integrity?
Carbon markets – and the voluntary one, in particular – are facing a credibility crisis. Scandal after scandal has put the spotlight on the wildly exaggerated claims and environmental and social issues of many projects. Demand has slowed down as a result.
The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market – a new regulator-like body – is trying to steer buyers away from dodgy offsets and onto quality ones. It is expected to apply its quality label on the first batch of credits at the start of the new year.
After talks collapsed at Cop28 earlier this month, Article 6 negotiations will resume in Bonn in June. The US and EU are at loggerheads. Another bitter battle seems likely.
The post Ten climate questions for 2024 appeared first on Climate Home News.
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Stientje van Veldhoven is Minister of Climate and Green Growth for the Netherlands.
When we co-hosted the first-ever conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels (TAFF) this April, the world was reeling from the volatility in oil and gas prices due to the Hormuz blockade. Fossil fuels moved to the centre of the debate as country leaders scrambled to secure supplies for their people.
We saw the very opposite in Santa Marta. Nearly 60 nations came together with 2,600-plus participants from civil society and community organisations, businesses and scientists to discuss concrete solutions on how governments can shift away from fossil fuels. Together, we defined the ‘Santa Marta process’ to serve as an extra engine for the broader process of the UNFCCC.
The Santa Marta process will see expert groups and committed countries develop national roadmaps, chart pathways to overcome financial constraints, and drive economic transformation. We made a multi-year commitment to take this process forward. With Tuvalu and Ireland taking over as co-chairs for 2027, transitioning away from fossil fuels is now moving from words to action.
European nations signal support for fossil fuel roadmap, says COP30 president
Work gets underway
At the opening of the Santa Marta conference, my co-chair Colombia’s then energy minister Irene Veléz Torres and I repeatedly stressed one thing: that the forum was not a space for negotiations, but a forum for countries and other partners to discuss practical steps to move away from fossil fuels.
Since then, we have seen three roadmaps already submitted: by France, Germany and our own. Pacific Island ministers also recently announced their intention to develop a regional roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. And I called on the European Commission to do the same for the European Union.
On top of this, numerous countries are already working on parts of the transition, such as phasing out coal or ending fossil fuel subsidies. More countries are expected to follow soon.
Workstreams were launched in early August, followed by sign-ups from countries willing to take a larger role and lead on organising different activities. Each workstream has an assigned lead organisation (or madrina). Each has its own working structure.
When the oil companies leave, who pays?
Across the world, communities facing the decline of fossil fuel industries are demanding a Just Transition that gives them a say in what comes next. Establishing a strong mechanism at COP31 could help them secure itCOP31 Bulletin Day 1: Agenda settled as COP urged to “supercharge solutions”
An agenda row is averted at the opening session, where the UN climate chief said strong results are needed from the talks to boost “real-world outcomes”
Workstream 1 focuses on supporting countries in developing and implementing flexible, country-owned national roadmaps. It operates as an open, collaborative hub that coordinates partner institutions to provide tailored technical, financial and policy support directly aligned with each country’s specific needs and existing frameworks. The consortium, which functions as a hub, currently consists of the NDC Partnership, the Powering Past Coal Alliance, the World Resources Institute and the newly established Science Panel on the Global Energy Transition.
Workstream 2 focuses on mobilising collective coalition power to tackle national and international financial constraints, debt-related barriers and macroeconomic dependencies that hinder the transition away from fossil fuels. Starting with a scoping phase, it will deliver transparent, actionable recommendations and reform solutions to support countries’ structural fiscal needs at global fora. Its madrinas are the International Institute for Sustainable Development and Transforma, a Latin American think-and-do-tank.
Workstream 3 focuses on driving economic transformation by mapping green partnership potential, decarbonising trade balances and building competitive, mutually beneficial clean markets. It aims to help countries, especially producers, diversify their economies, scale domestic value creation, and unlock collective trade opportunities. The madrina is the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development working together with the South Centre.
Incorporating Santa Marta into COP
What was abundantly clear in Santa Marta is that our coalition’s efforts are a strong support to, rather than a replacement for, the COP process. Over the past decade or so, the focus at COPs was on setting goals. Now we must focus on implementation. The COP31 presidencies have previously indicated their willingness to incorporate elements of the Santa Marta process into COP31 outcomes. We look forward to seeing how we can achieve this together.
The Brazilian COP30 Presidency delivered its global roadmap on the transition away from fossil fuels – a voluntary toolkit for countries that want to move ahead – just before the COP started in Antalya on Monday. During the coming two weeks, it’s critical that we see more concrete, actionable roadmaps for the fossil fuel phase-out. These documents can be crucial for a strong second Global Stocktake of national climate plans in two years’ time.
Brazil’s fossil fuel roadmap sketches out first global timetable
At COP31, a variety of TAFF-related events will be hosted, focusing on next steps within the Santa Marta workstreams. We welcome any leader and expert from around the world to take part as they work to develop their roadmaps, identify the fossil fuel subsidies they need to phase out, or establish green/clean markets at home.
Only by reducing fossil fuel demand and replacing it with clean electricity to run our economies can we all become more economically resilient and sharply cut the pace of climate change.
The post COP31 outcome needs to prioritise transition away from fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP31 outcome needs to prioritise transition away from fossil fuels
An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.