As hardly any news emerged from the negotiating rooms, the focus in Baku yesterday was on other debates and less prominent issues.
There were many protests on the COP29 grounds – for a “fossil phase-out”, for five trillion dollars in climate funding and for the protection of life in the Global South through less fossil fuel extraction. But one issue is omnipresent in many of the protests: the war in Gaza. The reaction to the Hamas terror attack and the Gaza war divided the climate movement a year ago. Bernhard Pötter has investigated the internal conflict and the economic interests involved.
Also always present in and in front of the negotiating rooms: the NDCs. The countries’ next climate targets do not have to be submitted until February. But because some of them were already announced in Baku and have already come in for criticism, the pressure is increasing for all others to make their own targets 1.5-degree-compatible. Lisa Kuner analyzes what the NDCs for 2035 need to look like.
Plus: Lucia Weiß explains why climate action is not making progress in the DR Congo. In our News you can read how the debate on calls for reforms to the COP process continued. Not everyone agrees with the COP veterans who called for smaller climate conferences.
Tomorrow is a well-deserved day off in Baku. Get through the day safely and enjoy your weekend!
The international climate movement, united in the “Climate Action Network” CAN International, is acting much more defensively around COP29 than at previous conferences. According to CAN, the traditional demonstration on the first weekend of the conference will not take place. The organizers also complain that fewer activists were able to come to Baku due to visa restrictions and high accommodation prices. In contrast, the dispute over the movement’s stance on the Gaza war and criticism of Israel, which triggered serious internal debates within the movement at COP28 in Dubai, was defused, according to information available to Table.Briefings.
For the third time in a row, there will therefore not be the traditional large demonstration on the Saturday of the first week to build pressure on the negotiations. A climate march, as last held in Glasgow in 2021 with tens of thousands of participants, was not possible in Baku, CAN said. There will not even be a demonstration on the COP’s outdoor grounds, as was the case at the conferences in Dubai and Sharm-el-Sheikh, only gatherings on the COP grounds.
The dispute over the stance on Hamas’ attack on Israel and the Gaza war has now been settled by the CAN organizers. The issue had been the subject of much controversy, particularly between the German climate protection groups and a large part of the movement from the Global South. While the activists from the Global South describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide”, the Germans reject this formulation and emphasize Israel’s right to exist.
Neither the Germans nor the other groups like to talk officially about the issue. “It’s clear that German organizations have a special perspective on this because of history”, says Laura Schäfer from Germanwatch to Table.Briefings. Within this large international network, however, there are very different perspectives on many issues anyway. For Schäfer, it is important that there is “unity within CAN not to question Israel’s right to exist”.
In Dubai, this controversy had escalated to such an extent that there was no common position on the issue. The position of Greta Thunberg, the icon of the global climate movement, on this issue was also highly controversial. She has now also decided against traveling to Azerbaijan and instead protested against the climate conference in Georgia at the beginning of the week. She said that the COP would only give Azerbaijan a chance to “whitewash its own crimes and human rights violations”.
At the interim conference in Bonn, the head of CAN International, Tasneem Essop, was expelled for an unauthorized protest at the opening event. Her accreditation was withdrawn by the UN. Essop is accredited again for COP29.
In the meantime, the debate has calmed down considerably. CAN International has adopted new internal rules on how solidarity addresses should be written and who must be involved in such decisions. The structures of the organization, which represents 1900 organizations in 130 countries, have also changed: The committee for “political coordination” has now been staffed much more strongly with representatives from the Global South than before in order to create a “balance of regional, gender and expertise aspects”, as it says. CAN International now reflects the stronger voice of emerging and developing countries much more strongly than before. This means that the voices critical of Israel have been fundamentally strengthened.
In addition, according to Christoph Bals, political director of Germanwatch, his organization has formulated criteria that CAN statements on the subject of Gaza/Israel must meet:
The Germans now feed their positions on this less directly to CAN International, but primarily via CAN Europe. Its head Chiara Martinelli told Table.Briefings that there is “no dispute, but debate”, for which there is a dialog on how to stay together on the issue of climate justice. “As a movement, we are in solidarity with the victims of all conflicts, including of course the victims of the Gaza war.” She does not see the NGOs as any less effective because the large demonstrations are no longer taking place. They are sought-after interlocutors who use their influence in the negotiations, says Martinelli.
Overall, the attitude of German NGOs towards Israel’s military actions in the Middle East has also become much more critical over the past year. The Israeli army’s attacks on Gaza with tens of thousands of civilian deaths have contributed to this. There is also repeated criticism that Azerbaijan is “fueling” the war in Israel by providing around 40 percent of oil imports to Israel.
The campaigns via the CAN newsletter ECO have also calmed down. In its issues on COP29, it calls for “finance climate action, not genocide!” in the headline every day. In one issue, it quotes Palestinian groups calling for an energy embargo against “Israel genocide in Gaza”. Overall, however, the newsletter is once again much more focused on climate policy.
The compromise between the international and German climate protection groups also has an economic background. This is because many CAN International organizations and climate projects are largely dependent on European and German funding. In spring 2024, there were fears in the scene that the German government was exerting pressure on activist groups in the Global South to support Germany’s Israel policy.
However, when asked by Table.Briefings, neither CAN nor the German Development Ministry, which controls the finances, were aware of any such case in which funding was withdrawn from climate organizations as a result. According to the ministry, there is no support for organizations that “emphasize the right to armed struggle against Israel”. However, it is still uncertain what effect the new Bundestag resolution on anti-Semitism will have on this. With Lisa Kuner
The words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres were clear: To “keep global climate targets alive”, “every country must submit economy-wide nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that are oriented towards the 1.5-degree limit”, he said in a speech at COP29. The G20, as the largest emitters, must lead the way in this and in the fossil fuel phase-out. Global emissions must “decrease by nine percent annually by 2030”. A clear mandate to the countries to tighten up the current NDCs, which are valid until 2030, and also to set ambitious targets for the third round of NDCs (NDC 3.0), which will then be valid until 2035. At COP29, some countries have already submitted new NDCs – including G20 members Brazil and the UK. However, the results are rather mixed.
The problem: If all countries implement their current climate targets (NDCs), the world will warm by 2.6 degrees. This is the conclusion of a recent analysis by the Climate Action Tracker (CAT). With the policies currently being implemented, the world would end up with global warming of 2.7 degrees. “We are clearly not managing to flatten the curve. The closer the world gets to these dangerous climate thresholds, the more urgent the need for immediate, stronger action to reverse this trend becomes,” said the report’s lead author, Sofia Gonzales-Zuñiga of Climate Analytics. Many of the world’s largest emitters in particular are far from 1.5-degree compatible targets.
The UNFCCC’s NDC Synthesis Report also concludes that the implementation of all climate targets would result in global emissions in 2030 being 0.8 percent above the 2019 level, instead of falling by 43 percent as required by the IPCC.
The countries actually have to publish their new NDCs by February 2023. However, some countries are already publishing their climate targets around COP29, in particular the COP Troika countries:
The UK also announced its new NDC at the start of the COP:
According to the Paris Climate Agreement, countries must update their NDCs every five years. The current NDCs set reduction targets for 2030, the third generation will then set targets for 2035. The deadline for submission is February 2025. This is a “very soft” deadline, explains Alden Meyer from the think tank E3G. It is expected that many countries, including most EU states, will not publish their updated climate targets until later in the year.
According to Meyer, a good NDC is an ambitious one where it is not yet clear how it can be achieved, but which is then followed by realistic plans and measures. According to the UNFCCC Synthesis Report and the IPCC, global emissions must fall by 60 percent by 2035 in order to achieve the 1.5-degree target (or by 35 percent for 2 degrees). How the NDCs are structured is up to the countries. In theory, this should result in a “race to the top” in which countries set increasingly ambitious targets until the global targets are compatible with 1.5 degrees and net zero by 2050. However, last year’s Global Stocktake showed that there was a large ambition gap in the second generation of NDCs. For Meyer, it is therefore fine for countries to take a little more time, but then publish a truly ambitious climate target.
At COP29 on Friday, various NGOs presented a statement describing what they believe “robust NDcs” should look like. Among other things, they call for a stronger link to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and more support for systemic change. For the Climate Action Network (CAN), it is important that the new NDCs specify what the phase-out of fossil fuels should look like. So far, less than half of the NDCs contain such targets.
Meyer is also calling not only for targets on consumption but also on the promotion of fossil fuels. So far, these have often not been included. Civil society groups agree that the new NDCs must include reduction targets for “the entire economy”. So far, this has been the case for 81 percent of the targets submitted. In addition, the goal of tripling renewables by 2030 should also be included. Meyer also emphasizes that the new NDCs should not only contain targets for 2035 but also updates for the ambitions up to 2030.
The World Resources Institute has also defined five priorities for the next generation of NDCs:
The NDCs of developing countries often contain “conditional” promises that they can only implement with the support of international climate finance. If the negotiations in Baku do not produce a result or only a minimal compromise on the NCQG, it is likely that some of them will submit much less ambitious targets. It is also important that the countries actually follow up on NDCs with measures and close the implementation gap that exists to date.
Ahead of the start of the 29th World Climate Change Conference (COP) in the Azerbaijani capital Baku, the Ebuteli Institute, a policy think tank based in Kinshasa, has published a report showing the state of climate financing in the DR Congo. This much can be revealed in advance: It is not good.
There are many indications that this will not change at this COP. This is because both the USA and Germany are attending with government representatives who will not be in office for much longer and have little room for maneuver. It would be extremely important for the Global South in particular to take robust measures against climate change now. The example of the DR Congo makes this abundantly clear.
The authors of the Ebuteli study have identified a clear gap between demand and the funds received to date:
At the same time, the DR Congo is struggling with structural problems that are not helping to close the gap between needs and funds quickly. The researchers from the Ebuteli Institute identify several problems that make the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) unattractive for climate financing:
The study concludes that for these reasons, the DRC is unable to attract sufficient funding – despite its great potential to stabilize the climate worldwide. Relations with donor countries and the international community are also strained by the fact that some are critical of the extraction of natural resources in Congo. In addition to timber and palm oil, this primarily concerns oil deposits in the forest and moorland areas.
This conflicts with climate action measures. This is because the contribution that peatlands make to the climate is enormous, as scientists have recently discovered. A study led by scientists from the University of Leeds and published in the journal Nature Geoscience in 2022 showed that the DR Congo is even more important for the climate than previously assumed.
This is because the DR Congo is home to the largest contiguous tropical peat bog in the world. At around 16.2 million hectares, this peatland area in Central Africa is even larger than the previously considered largest tropical peatland in the Orinoco Delta in Venezuela, which covers around 16 million hectares. The peatland systems in Central Africa are estimated to store between 26 and 32 billion tons of carbon. According to the study, they reach a thickness of up to 6.5 meters. Despite their enormous size, however, the Central African peatland systems have hardly been researched.
As hardly any news emerged from the negotiating rooms, the focus in Baku yesterday was on other debates and less prominent issues.
There were many protests on the COP29 grounds – for a “fossil phase-out”, for five trillion dollars in climate funding and for the protection of life in the Global South through less fossil fuel extraction. But one issue is omnipresent in many of the protests: the war in Gaza. The reaction to the Hamas terror attack and the Gaza war divided the climate movement a year ago. Bernhard Pötter has investigated the internal conflict and the economic interests involved.
Also always present in and in front of the negotiating rooms: the NDCs. The countries’ next climate targets do not have to be submitted until February. But because some of them were already announced in Baku and have already come in for criticism, the pressure is increasing for all others to make their own targets 1.5-degree-compatible. Lisa Kuner analyzes what the NDCs for 2035 need to look like.
Plus: Lucia Weiß explains why climate action is not making progress in the DR Congo. In our News you can read how the debate on calls for reforms to the COP process continued. Not everyone agrees with the COP veterans who called for smaller climate conferences.
Tomorrow is a well-deserved day off in Baku. Get through the day safely and enjoy your weekend!
The international climate movement, united in the “Climate Action Network” CAN International, is acting much more defensively around COP29 than at previous conferences. According to CAN, the traditional demonstration on the first weekend of the conference will not take place. The organizers also complain that fewer activists were able to come to Baku due to visa restrictions and high accommodation prices. In contrast, the dispute over the movement’s stance on the Gaza war and criticism of Israel, which triggered serious internal debates within the movement at COP28 in Dubai, was defused, according to information available to Table.Briefings.
For the third time in a row, there will therefore not be the traditional large demonstration on the Saturday of the first week to build pressure on the negotiations. A climate march, as last held in Glasgow in 2021 with tens of thousands of participants, was not possible in Baku, CAN said. There will not even be a demonstration on the COP’s outdoor grounds, as was the case at the conferences in Dubai and Sharm-el-Sheikh, only gatherings on the COP grounds.
The dispute over the stance on Hamas’ attack on Israel and the Gaza war has now been settled by the CAN organizers. The issue had been the subject of much controversy, particularly between the German climate protection groups and a large part of the movement from the Global South. While the activists from the Global South describe Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide”, the Germans reject this formulation and emphasize Israel’s right to exist.
Neither the Germans nor the other groups like to talk officially about the issue. “It’s clear that German organizations have a special perspective on this because of history”, says Laura Schäfer from Germanwatch to Table.Briefings. Within this large international network, however, there are very different perspectives on many issues anyway. For Schäfer, it is important that there is “unity within CAN not to question Israel’s right to exist”.
In Dubai, this controversy had escalated to such an extent that there was no common position on the issue. The position of Greta Thunberg, the icon of the global climate movement, on this issue was also highly controversial. She has now also decided against traveling to Azerbaijan and instead protested against the climate conference in Georgia at the beginning of the week. She said that the COP would only give Azerbaijan a chance to “whitewash its own crimes and human rights violations”.
At the interim conference in Bonn, the head of CAN International, Tasneem Essop, was expelled for an unauthorized protest at the opening event. Her accreditation was withdrawn by the UN. Essop is accredited again for COP29.
In the meantime, the debate has calmed down considerably. CAN International has adopted new internal rules on how solidarity addresses should be written and who must be involved in such decisions. The structures of the organization, which represents 1900 organizations in 130 countries, have also changed: The committee for “political coordination” has now been staffed much more strongly with representatives from the Global South than before in order to create a “balance of regional, gender and expertise aspects”, as it says. CAN International now reflects the stronger voice of emerging and developing countries much more strongly than before. This means that the voices critical of Israel have been fundamentally strengthened.
In addition, according to Christoph Bals, political director of Germanwatch, his organization has formulated criteria that CAN statements on the subject of Gaza/Israel must meet:
The Germans now feed their positions on this less directly to CAN International, but primarily via CAN Europe. Its head Chiara Martinelli told Table.Briefings that there is “no dispute, but debate”, for which there is a dialog on how to stay together on the issue of climate justice. “As a movement, we are in solidarity with the victims of all conflicts, including of course the victims of the Gaza war.” She does not see the NGOs as any less effective because the large demonstrations are no longer taking place. They are sought-after interlocutors who use their influence in the negotiations, says Martinelli.
Overall, the attitude of German NGOs towards Israel’s military actions in the Middle East has also become much more critical over the past year. The Israeli army’s attacks on Gaza with tens of thousands of civilian deaths have contributed to this. There is also repeated criticism that Azerbaijan is “fueling” the war in Israel by providing around 40 percent of oil imports to Israel.
The campaigns via the CAN newsletter ECO have also calmed down. In its issues on COP29, it calls for “finance climate action, not genocide!” in the headline every day. In one issue, it quotes Palestinian groups calling for an energy embargo against “Israel genocide in Gaza”. Overall, however, the newsletter is once again much more focused on climate policy.
The compromise between the international and German climate protection groups also has an economic background. This is because many CAN International organizations and climate projects are largely dependent on European and German funding. In spring 2024, there were fears in the scene that the German government was exerting pressure on activist groups in the Global South to support Germany’s Israel policy.
However, when asked by Table.Briefings, neither CAN nor the German Development Ministry, which controls the finances, were aware of any such case in which funding was withdrawn from climate organizations as a result. According to the ministry, there is no support for organizations that “emphasize the right to armed struggle against Israel”. However, it is still uncertain what effect the new Bundestag resolution on anti-Semitism will have on this. With Lisa Kuner
The words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres were clear: To “keep global climate targets alive”, “every country must submit economy-wide nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that are oriented towards the 1.5-degree limit”, he said in a speech at COP29. The G20, as the largest emitters, must lead the way in this and in the fossil fuel phase-out. Global emissions must “decrease by nine percent annually by 2030”. A clear mandate to the countries to tighten up the current NDCs, which are valid until 2030, and also to set ambitious targets for the third round of NDCs (NDC 3.0), which will then be valid until 2035. At COP29, some countries have already submitted new NDCs – including G20 members Brazil and the UK. However, the results are rather mixed.
The problem: If all countries implement their current climate targets (NDCs), the world will warm by 2.6 degrees. This is the conclusion of a recent analysis by the Climate Action Tracker (CAT). With the policies currently being implemented, the world would end up with global warming of 2.7 degrees. “We are clearly not managing to flatten the curve. The closer the world gets to these dangerous climate thresholds, the more urgent the need for immediate, stronger action to reverse this trend becomes,” said the report’s lead author, Sofia Gonzales-Zuñiga of Climate Analytics. Many of the world’s largest emitters in particular are far from 1.5-degree compatible targets.
The UNFCCC’s NDC Synthesis Report also concludes that the implementation of all climate targets would result in global emissions in 2030 being 0.8 percent above the 2019 level, instead of falling by 43 percent as required by the IPCC.
The countries actually have to publish their new NDCs by February 2023. However, some countries are already publishing their climate targets around COP29, in particular the COP Troika countries:
The UK also announced its new NDC at the start of the COP:
According to the Paris Climate Agreement, countries must update their NDCs every five years. The current NDCs set reduction targets for 2030, the third generation will then set targets for 2035. The deadline for submission is February 2025. This is a “very soft” deadline, explains Alden Meyer from the think tank E3G. It is expected that many countries, including most EU states, will not publish their updated climate targets until later in the year.
According to Meyer, a good NDC is an ambitious one where it is not yet clear how it can be achieved, but which is then followed by realistic plans and measures. According to the UNFCCC Synthesis Report and the IPCC, global emissions must fall by 60 percent by 2035 in order to achieve the 1.5-degree target (or by 35 percent for 2 degrees). How the NDCs are structured is up to the countries. In theory, this should result in a “race to the top” in which countries set increasingly ambitious targets until the global targets are compatible with 1.5 degrees and net zero by 2050. However, last year’s Global Stocktake showed that there was a large ambition gap in the second generation of NDCs. For Meyer, it is therefore fine for countries to take a little more time, but then publish a truly ambitious climate target.
At COP29 on Friday, various NGOs presented a statement describing what they believe “robust NDcs” should look like. Among other things, they call for a stronger link to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and more support for systemic change. For the Climate Action Network (CAN), it is important that the new NDCs specify what the phase-out of fossil fuels should look like. So far, less than half of the NDCs contain such targets.
Meyer is also calling not only for targets on consumption but also on the promotion of fossil fuels. So far, these have often not been included. Civil society groups agree that the new NDCs must include reduction targets for “the entire economy”. So far, this has been the case for 81 percent of the targets submitted. In addition, the goal of tripling renewables by 2030 should also be included. Meyer also emphasizes that the new NDCs should not only contain targets for 2035 but also updates for the ambitions up to 2030.
The World Resources Institute has also defined five priorities for the next generation of NDCs:
The NDCs of developing countries often contain “conditional” promises that they can only implement with the support of international climate finance. If the negotiations in Baku do not produce a result or only a minimal compromise on the NCQG, it is likely that some of them will submit much less ambitious targets. It is also important that the countries actually follow up on NDCs with measures and close the implementation gap that exists to date.
Ahead of the start of the 29th World Climate Change Conference (COP) in the Azerbaijani capital Baku, the Ebuteli Institute, a policy think tank based in Kinshasa, has published a report showing the state of climate financing in the DR Congo. This much can be revealed in advance: It is not good.
There are many indications that this will not change at this COP. This is because both the USA and Germany are attending with government representatives who will not be in office for much longer and have little room for maneuver. It would be extremely important for the Global South in particular to take robust measures against climate change now. The example of the DR Congo makes this abundantly clear.
The authors of the Ebuteli study have identified a clear gap between demand and the funds received to date:
At the same time, the DR Congo is struggling with structural problems that are not helping to close the gap between needs and funds quickly. The researchers from the Ebuteli Institute identify several problems that make the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) unattractive for climate financing:
The study concludes that for these reasons, the DRC is unable to attract sufficient funding – despite its great potential to stabilize the climate worldwide. Relations with donor countries and the international community are also strained by the fact that some are critical of the extraction of natural resources in Congo. In addition to timber and palm oil, this primarily concerns oil deposits in the forest and moorland areas.
This conflicts with climate action measures. This is because the contribution that peatlands make to the climate is enormous, as scientists have recently discovered. A study led by scientists from the University of Leeds and published in the journal Nature Geoscience in 2022 showed that the DR Congo is even more important for the climate than previously assumed.
This is because the DR Congo is home to the largest contiguous tropical peat bog in the world. At around 16.2 million hectares, this peatland area in Central Africa is even larger than the previously considered largest tropical peatland in the Orinoco Delta in Venezuela, which covers around 16 million hectares. The peatland systems in Central Africa are estimated to store between 26 and 32 billion tons of carbon. According to the study, they reach a thickness of up to 6.5 meters. Despite their enormous size, however, the Central African peatland systems have hardly been researched.
