By Gary Cuneen, Seven Generations Ahead
November 10, 2024
COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan (Nov 11-22) will be the first COP hosted in the Caucasus – a mountainous isthmus of land sandwiched between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and including parts of Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey and Iran. Seven Generations Ahead is excited to introduce our 5 youth delegates for COP29, who you will hear from each day over the next week.
COP29 comes with many backdrops, including rising global temperatures and rising global GHG emissions (40.6 billion tons) and more intense and frequent extreme weather events. Some of the more recent extreme events include floods in Spain in late October and a few days ago killing hundreds; Brazil rain and floods last week killing 100 people and displacing 230,000; heat wave in India reaching 115 degrees Fahrenheit; heaviest rainfall in the United Arab Emirates in 75 years claiming lives and halting air traffic; flooding and landslides in Kenya killing 228 and displacing 212, 630; and recent intense US hurricanes including Milton costing $50 billion. It also comes with the backdrops of intensified geopolitical wars and the US presidential election of Donald Trump, whose day 1 agenda includes “drill baby drill” and who continues to call climate change a “hoax”. Analysts say that staying within a 1.5 degree Celsius increase in global temperatures from pre-industrial levels (a big emphasis at the past few COPs) is unlikely and that this measure will be breached in the next few years.
COP29 President H. E. Mukhtar Babayev, Minister of Ecology and Resources, Republic of Azerbaijan, has stated that COP29 will emphasize gender equality and youth empowerment that will integrate across all COP29 topic areas. Climate Finance will be a key theme of COP29, with initiatives including the Climate Finance Action Fund (50% for developing countries and 50% to support COP members with Nationally Determined Contributions – NDCs). I will discuss other finance initiatives in subsequent blogs. At COP30 in Belem, Brazil next year, NDCs (which are GHG emissions reduction commitments by country) – will be due from all members, meaning that COP29 will need to make progress on transparency, GHG emissions tracing, technology and resources to support emissions tracking, and apples to apples measurement.
Each day at COP29 will have a particular focus on themes. This year’s themes will include:
Nov 11 – Opening and Goals for COP29; Nov 12-13 – World Leaders Climate Action Summit (focus on Loss and Damage Fund operationalizing and US-China Methane and non-CO2 Summit); Nov 14 – Finance, Investment and Trade; Nov 15 – Energy, Peace, Relief, Recovery; Nov 16 – Science, Technology, Innovation and Digitalization; Nov 17 – Rest Day; Nov 18 – Children & Youth, Health, Education; Nov 19 – Food, Water and Agriculture; Nov 20 – Urbanization, Transport, Tourism; Nov 21 – Indigenous Peoples, Gender Equality, Biodiversity, Oceans; Nov 22 – Final Negotiations.