We are officially at COP29 in Baku. Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, visibly merges modern and ancient styles with beautiful architecture and amazing food. Being here for COP29 is a unique experience, not only because of the historic location but also because of the unprecedented themes that will shape this year’s conference. As the city itself fills with global climate leaders, organizations, students, and activists, the atmosphere is increasingly filled with energy and anticipation for what lies ahead. 

The COP29 venue is being held in the Baku Olympic Stadium. When our group arrived to check in and retrieve our badges early this morning, we were in awe of the stadium, which was lit up in green. Knowing that representatives from nearly every country in the world would gather here was exciting for all of us. During Opening Day today, the official negotiations have not yet started, but many organizations and pavilions have begun their programming. Throughout the day, the venue halls have gotten increasingly crowded with representatives from diverse countries. It’s inspiring to see people from diverse backgrounds who are brought here together with a shared commitment to climate action. 

Over the course of our travels to Baku and throughout the venue today, there’s been time to reflect on what’s at stake. The impacts of climate change are more present than ever, with more lives and livelihoods being increasingly threatened and challenged worldwide. Bold commitments made here in Baku will be critical. However, the challenge will be, as always, translating ambitious goals into meaningful action and agreements. The negotiations and decisions made here in Baku will have significant implications, especially for communities that are on the front lines of climate change impacts. 

The 2024 Global Peace Index indicated that more countries have been engaged in conflict since the last World War (Institute for Economics and Peace, 2024). At this year’s COP, the theme of peace stands out to me, and likely to many others. In his opening remarks today, the UN Climate Change Executive Secretary, Simon Stiell said, “Now is the time to show that global cooperation is rising to this moment.” It’s incredible to see how the global community is pushing for more peaceful, transformative, and cooperative approaches to climate resilience, and it’s needed. Climate solutions must go hand-in-hand with peacebuilding and security efforts, particularly in regions facing environmental degradation and conflict. In the next few days, I’ll attend events highlighting the connection between climate action and peace, and I look forward to sharing insights from these events in my next two blog posts.

For me, being here through the UNFCCC practicum course at Duke University is both exciting and humbling. As I explore the city and the COP29 venue, making connections with new people, I feel deep gratitude for the chance to be here and to be a part of this experience. I look forward to the insights COP29 will bring, the relationships I’ll build, and the inspiration that will fuel my work and studies after this conference ends.

References:

1. Institute for Economics & Peace. Global Peace Index 2024: Measuring Peace in a Complex World, Sydney, June 2024. Available from: http://visionofhumanity.org/resources (accessed 11 November 2024).

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.

Cop28 is over. The final text has been released, delegates are home, and my classmates and I are now Duke UNFCCC Practicum alumni. The day COP28 ended, someone in the researchers’ constituency group chat sent the link to this Guardian article about the winners and losers of COP28, and it seemed to sum up my own observations at COP pretty well. Among the winners: the fossil fuel industry and clean energy companies, and among the losers: scientists, youth… the climate. An interesting juxtaposition. 

I want to spend my last blog post reflecting on my experience as whole, on what I will say to people who ask what COP has been like, and on what will it take to actually fight climate change.  

First – what do I think about the agreements? It was disheartening to receive the news that fossil fuel phase out language was not included in the final document (although Luna’s blog brings up interesting points about translations and potentially celebrating incremental steps). It was also extremely frustrating to follow along with other scientists and researchers about the rocky negotiations regarding the Global Stocktake (GST), where the science was being misinterpreted, intentionally left out, and not acted upon. And this is all the more disappointing after spending the past week, after I switched with the second half of the Duke class on Dec 7, at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, surrounded by intelligent, passionate natural scientists who have dedicated their lives to understanding more about our planet and the impact we have had.  

The experience of attending even just part of COP28 in person has been crazy. I was in spaces that I have only dreamed about, listened to so many different talks about so many intersections within climate change, and learned from so many different people. Some of the most impactful sessions that I attended were those led by indigenous leaders and community members from regions around the world, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to learn from them and hear their stories.  

I’ve been thinking about who’s voice was not being heard at COP, who was a COP28 loser because they couldn’t even be here or couldn’t enter this space successfully. Ceci’s post talks about the very high barrier to entry, and from the language to the cost of being here to the lack of opportunity to get a badge, there were so many people who are being left out. And in that same vein, there were a few people whose voices were amplified, the COP28 winners.  

So what is next? Where do we go from here? What has become so apparent to me is the need for a full-frontal, multilateral and vertical effort from all people to fight climate change. From scientists to governments of all levels to farmers to artists to civil society to private companies to everyone – we all must address climate change and we must work together to do so. Dania’s post asks if COP is even the right method to keep going, and no one has all of the right answers. The past two weeks I have been inspired and disillusioned, excited and frustrated, but most of all resolved. We must fight for climate  action, for climate justice, for an equitable and just transition, for accountability and responsibility, for science-based action, for a livable future. COPs will not be the only solution, but I hope we can keep building off of the momentum from COP28. The titles (and contents) of Katie’s posts are words that I want to end on: the importance of thinking about who or what does your work serve and that the work continues after COP28. 

My final, final words – thank you again to our fabulous TAs Ina and Gabriela and our incredible instructor Jackson. Biggest hugs to my wonderful classmates who clearly (from all of my links) inspire me and push me to think more and be better – I’m ending my COP28 experience with gratitude and passion because of you all. 

Climate change litigations are ongoing across the globe: from domestic courts to regional human rights courts, from The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to International Court of Justice. Never had I expected such litigations would be discussed in the COP28, a place for negotiating international climate change agreements.

On the morning of Dec. 10, I attended a high-level dialogue between Chief Justices, Supreme Court Justices, and experts explored approaches and solutions to climate change-related disputes arising before domestic or regional courts across the globe. The judges came from Supreme Courts of Nepal, Pakistan, South Africa, Brazil, as well as International Court of Justice (ICJ). Indeed, this is the first time that senior judges have had an official event at a climate COP.

On the afternoon of Dec. 10, in the the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)Pavilion, several high-profile experts, including Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, and Christina Voigt, Chair of IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law, also held a panel on “Islands Driving Forward Climate Change Law.” This panel mainly discussed how small island states brought climate change disputes into international courts in the form of advisory opinions. Given the significant of the ITLOS and ICJ opinions, such advisory opinions would have a significant, long-term impact regarding states’ obligations.

Given the seriousness of climate crisis as well as the legislative delay, it is easy to understand the judicial activism in domestic states across the globe. Importantly, the COP28 provide an international platform for judges from different countries to share their unique practices, to talk with each other, to listen each other, and to learn from each other. These judges are practicing transnational judicial dialogue, referring to exchanges among courts and judges that belong to different national and international legal regimes.

Such possibility of transnational judicial dialogue at the COP28 should be attributed to the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law, which has prepared the submissions and acting as legal counsels for related climate change litigations. However, IUCN may have some conflicting roles in organizing the transnational judicial dialogue and in acting as legal counsels for related climate change litigations.

Indeed, the fascination of international climate change law lays in this aspect: the transnational judicial dialogue can test the limits of many aspects of law: constitutional law, torts, administrative law, international human rights law, law of sea, and etc. The COP28 provides a perfect opportunity to observe this “dialogue” in real, in person.

The Global Stocktake has revealed that the world is falling far short of the greenhouse gas emissions cuts required to avoid the worst effects of climate change. States have to deliver greater emissions reductions. Then how do we move from current greenhouse gas emissions trajectories toward net-zero emissions by mid-century?

Trade can offer such a policy tool – indeed, one that has been largely under-appreciated.  Indeed, the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), holding the Presidency of COP28, has declared the first ever thematic Trade Day in the 30-year history of the climate change summit meetings. The Trade House Pavilion held many events on the intersection between international trade and climate change. At COP28, two projects explored how to reconfigure international trade toward a sustainable future.

First, the Remaking Global Trade for a Sustainable Future Project – representing a world-wide network of academics and other researchers – has generated a WTO reform agenda under the banner of the Villars Framework for a Sustainable Trade System. At COP28, I had luckily attended its organized event “Remaking the Global Trade System for a Sustainable Future: From COP28 to MC13” in the Trade House. Through the talk afterwards, I learned that how the founding partners of this project set up a team, slimmed their agenda, elevated this project to international forum, built international consensus, and reform international trade agreements.

Second, the Making the Trade System Work for Climate 2.0 Project also shared its report in the Global Alliance of Universities on Climate Pavilion. It explores three emerging models of cooperation relating to Border Carbon Adjustments (BCAs), namely the G7 Climate Club, the transatlantic talks on a Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminium (GASSA), and the Inclusive Forum on Carbon Mitigation Approaches (IFCMA) launched by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD); and assesses the prospects for each model.

Compared with the second project, the first project is more systematic, strategic, action-oriented. Indeed, these two projects of reconfiguring international trade aligning with climate change demonstrate two approaches to international law-making. This first is the build-up approach: one group of scholars/policy makers tries to illustrate the need to incorporate new principles/content into existing international agreement; and the second is regional experimental approach: regional state parties would like to make agreement among their small circles and hope their reginal agreement could accepted globally in the future. In the face of the most serious challenge—climate change, these two approaches are ongoing at the same time.

International trade could help to ensure that green technologies, projects, and infrastructure get disseminated across the world at speed and scale. Only with the disseminated green technologies, projects and infrastructure, could the oil-dependent economies transition away from fossil fuels and embrace renewable energies.