Author: Sameer Swarup

In order to deal with the chaos of COP, and per the request of my client (Sustainable Ocean Alliance) and my personal interest in AOSIS, I have been focusing primarily on Loss and Damage negotiations. 

As of time of writing, Loss and Damage negotiations are stalled due to the slow progress being made on the NCQG. Parties have yet to discuss the quantum and there is a quiet understanding in the Loss and Damage negotiation room that finances cannot be discussed without having a specific NCQG quantum in mind. Additionally, in the NCQG negotiation room there is a quiet understanding that the US cannot be making promises on annual financial commitments given the election results. Lastly, to add another layer to this, there is also an unspoken understanding that the pressure is on negotiators to make some substantial progress so that this year’s COP is not deemed a failure by the general public.

Observers are invited to these negotiation spaces to make interventions – however, parties have been content with letting the unspoken conflicts go unaddressed. The interventions from parties have typically followed the format of thanking the chair for moderating, reiterating the importance of Loss and Damage and the progress made in ‘huddles’ and using that as a starting point. None of these points give a useful entry point for observers to make interventions. Moreover, it does call into question the effectiveness of these ‘public’ negotiations if the compromises are made in late-night or early-morning huddles, away from the public eye. Additionally, these huddles are not crossing the binary – Annex 1 countries have yet to huddle with non-Annex 1 countries. This lack of substantial progress in week 1 is frustrating to see, given that the major challenges of negotiating the quantum, contributor base and fund allocation have all been put aside for week 2 and even then there are still matters to be negotiated before we get to those big 3 goals.

It is also apparent that this method of skirting around the conflict is starting to show cracks. An example of this was at the end of week 1, where parties were asked to draft a negotiation text for Loss and Damage for week 2. The Annex 1 countries kept the focus on finance vague which drew the ire of the Africa Group, who expressed their concern that if not done now, time would be wasted in discussing finance items to be negotiated. A back-and-forth happened between the Africa Group and the European Union where both parties reiterated their points, albeit in separate manners every time, and failed to reach a consensus by the end of the meeting, which really drew the frustration of Kenya who requested for parties to stay back until they could reach a consensus. I do believe all negotiators want to come away with at least one tangible outcome on climate finance – a concrete NCQG quantum, an operationalized Loss and Damage fund or a bolstered Adaptation fund. However, there is a larger conflict at play between the receding timeline and the general theme of conflict aversion that may lead to some sparks in week 2.

Your first day at your first COP might very well be similar to mine: exhaustion punctuated by moments of wonder. Fighting through jet-lag, a large part of your first day will be about familiarizing yourself with the venue (both physically and emotionally). You will walk over 20,000 steps as you navigate meeting rooms, transit stops, cafeterias and auditoriums all while your ears pick up on snippets of conversation on climate finance, carbon markets and energy transitions. And just as you start to feel that you have had enough sensory stimulation, you step into the pavilion space.

This is where you truly feel the whole spectrum of cultures that are on display. As my friend Sadie put it, through the concept of an ‘elevated IKEA showroom’, these pavilions will meld culture, geopolitics and messaging all into one.

Having arrived early, most of the pavilions were still applying their finishing touches. As a result, the China pavilion invoked some surprise, both with its relatively immense size and its preparedness in being the first country pavilion to have an event (that too with Noura Hamladji, executive deputy secretary for climate change at the UN). The event was focused on China’s South-South partnership, and all the money it had provided to developing countries for green investments. The message was clear: China was here to lead, an assertion that was all the more important after the election results of November 5th. China’s pavilion stood tall in its contrast with the US pavilion, who were running a day behind schedule and were relatively empty in design and attendance. A RINGO meeting with the US delegation confirmed that they were flooded with figuring out their messaging post-election results, delaying their pavilion.

The pavilions of African nations highlighted their biodiversity while emphasizing the stability of their politics and economy. Zambia and Rwanda both plastered their message of being a stable economy for green investments and climate finance on the front of their pavilion. Economic plans for past and future nature-based solutions and energy transitions were displayed all throughout the African pavilions. With the emphasis on climate finance at COP29, it very much seemed that the African delegations were looking to attract as much investment from all sources of finance.

Lastly, for Asian countries with climate-resilient economies (eg. Singapore, Malaysia, Japan), the pavilions took on a solutions-oriented theme. Technology, urban planning and energy solutions were front and center, with representatives ready to talk in detail about each solution. I found Japan’s pavilion in particular to be interesting – all of the CO2 removal, CO2 storage and battery capacity solutions it proposed were from the private sector (Hitachi, Panasonic etc.). Additionally, it was company representatives who were present, something which was in contrast to the mostly government officials who staffed the other pavilions. Japan’s emphasis on public-private partnerships came through in the technology pitches they made, an emphasis that was similar to the messaging present at the Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand pavilions. This emphasis spoke to the larger attention on obtaining climate finance from public and private sources, presenting a potential direction in which the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) negotiations may be headed.