As COP29 in Baku came to a close this past weekend, and as I, like many others, reflect on our time there, I have mixed emotions. It was incredible to be in rooms and meetings where key discussions and moments of progress occurred. It was inspiring to witness the passion and commitment of so many diverse voices and groups working toward climate solutions around the world. Yet, the final results coming out of COP29 have left some advocates with a sense of disappointment and confusion. It’s understandable, that as our world inches closer and closer to going over the 1.5°C limit, our minds grapple with the feeling of both optimism and pessimism. 

The vast, ambitious, and transformative changes and finance deals that many had hoped for, did not occur at the level at which was needed. The lack of a clear commitment to climate finance and the slow pace of negotiations were notable points of frustration for both observers and negotiators alike. There is a sense of disappointment around the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) for climate finance, which has left developing countries still waiting for increased support to help mitigate and adapt to climate change. These major negotiation topics of COP29 all feel like missed opportunities, and perhaps there truly is a disconnect between the urgency we feel and the pace of global negotiations.

Regardless, COP29’s outcomes don’t mean that all hope is lost. COP29 may not have produced all the progressive results many had hoped for, but the process itself of these negotiations is still vital. Every COP is a part of a larger effort to create meaningful agreements. Even outside of negotiation room doors, the networking and building of new coalitions are still crucial steps toward lasting change and action. I believe incremental progress is more important than we realize. 

The challenges seen at COP29 underscore the need for renewed commitment to climate action. It’s a reminder that action toward combating climate change cannot succeed without acknowledging and addressing the needs of those most affected by the crisis. Moving forward, our climate action must be coupled with social and economic justice. 

Despite the setbacks, COP29 still gave me opportunities for hope and provided a unique forum for addressing global climate challenges. COP29 celebrated the first submissions of Biennial Transparency Reports under the Paris Agreements, beginning a brand new chapter of global climate transparency. A coalition for health-climate action was formed at COP29, which will foster increased movement to health-resilient climate policies. COP29 provided lessons in the increasing empowerment of grassroots movements and local leadership, the importance of technological innovation and collaboration, and why we hold governments accountable. No matter the frustration from the COP29 results, individuals, organizations, governments, and the private sector coming together is never a waste of time. We now know what work lies ahead of us. The next COP, the next round of negotiations, and the next movement are each an opportunity to turn our disappointment and frustration into action. Moving forward, we are unified in knowing that the future of climate action is one of ambition and results.

I told some people that I met my Uncle Iroh (wise old man spiritual connection) at COP29 on the Climate Action Network (CAN) Communications team, and we discussed what it means to ignore real people at COP.

What was really interesting was that he told me that the climate space is the least toxic space he has worked in, compared to any other humanitarian organization, like those that support refugees. For some reason, people are able to come together and put their differences aside to focus on a common goal (climate.) And I said, I have an alternate but similar theory—it is less toxic because climate (not climate justice) is kind of a first-world problem and it is a more privileged space.

He said, absolutely! But climate’s removal from the people it impacts is what actually makes it less mentally traumatic and thus toxic to to the people working in it. Climate is so disconnected from the people it impacts, that it’s actually easier to focus on solving it and not feel like you’re drowning all the time. Climate is less stressful.

“We don’t think about the world outside, maybe that makes it easier for us.”

And I said, but isn’t that a problem? That we don’t center people? That we aren’t centering justice? That when people speak on press conferences they can’t tell a personal story but spit out the same numbers that have been repeated hundreds of times?

He said yes, but isolating climate makes people focus in on something they feel is solvable, because they can’t deal with everything else. But really, climate is interconnected and impacting people and related to all the other spaces that are more stressful. When we forget about people, we makes this space inaccessible and exclusive, too wrapped up in technical details. We lose our imagination, humanity, and intentionality behind the work. We become able to tolerate “sacrifice zones” for the “greater good” of climate action. We also have a harder time communicating why this work matters to everyone else. Rather than repeating the same systems/processes that caused the climate crisis, Xiye Bastida (at a side event) calls on us “to make our activism look exactly like what we want our future to look like.”

And so I asked him, how do we connect it to people? How do we shift the narrative and center the local communities/stories that all this climate finance stuff is actually supposed to support? How do we make COP feel less removed from the people it’s supposed to help? I don’t have any answers yet, but let me tell one story from COP for now.

Here is Adrian Martinez’s from La Ruta del Clima:

He is at COP because he believes that even developed nations see climate finance as charity, but it’s not charity, it is the right of developing nations to have that finance. It is not developing nations’ fault that their communities are being destroyed by climate change. Withholding finance is like if you broke someone’s things and didn’t pay for it.

For his nonprofit, he has to get small grants to do small projects and weave them together into a complex web of communities to do a bigger project—which speaks to the fundamentally flawed nature of nonprofit funding that is projects-based, small-scale, and short-term. What he used to do was case studies with local communities to document their climate losses because so many losses are invisible—they happen too slowly and also the younger generation doesn’t even notice because they didn’t know what life was like before. So, it has to be documented because it is their right to be paid back for what developed nations took away.

For example, he met some fishermen who had their houses right up to the high tide line. He, not being from the area, thought that was normal. But they told him it actually wasn’t normal, why would they do that, that was stupid. They usually built their houses 100 meters from the high tide line, but because of climate change, the tide was right up to their doorstep. He also spoke of similar houses in another community being made of expensive concrete due to a big loan they took out, and people (investors, outsiders) would see the houses right up against the water and think the community was stupid. But the community wasn’t stupid, the tide rose because of climate change.

It’s also not just physical losses. One Colombian village had a tradition of women bathing in the moonlight, but the river dried up and they lost that spiritual tradition. He also did education because the communities did not associate their losses with climate change. If communities aren’t educated on climate then they blame themselves for their loss, but it is not their fault. For example, a village in the Honduras had a festival centered around crabs but the crabs stopped coming and they didn’t know why, but it was because of climate change.

But he realized later on that case studies were too expensive so he decided to switch documentation strategies to data reporting, like in citizen science. So instead, he now equips them with tools and skills to report data that can be used to track loss and damages so they can (in the future) access funding.

However, he noted that he didn’t care where the funding came from, and the Loss & Damage Fund specifically looked less promising because of the lack of direct access for entities. In fact, part of his role at COP was trying to push for direct access mechanisms to the Fund so communities like the one he works with can get finance.

At a roundtable with other students and young people at the Climate Mobility Pavilion (thanks Gabriela for organizing!) we shared “our expectations” for COP29 and whether or not they had been met. I said I never believed in the COP process anyway, but there after being here I learned that there were some merits. The main sticking point is that COP gives smaller nations a platform that they do not have otherwise to express their voices/needs. It is allegedly the only space where people can come together across the world to work on climate solutions in a comprehensive, global way. No other space accounts for total global emissions and keeps track of global progress.

At the roundtable, a lot of the students and other young people had no idea what was going on with the actual negotiations. Many of them were running pavilion events all day, or there to network, or there to learn about some types of climate technologies, all useful to their work on climate. Therefore, they also expressed COP as a good space to meet other people and make connections so we can work on climate together. People refer to this dual purpose of COP as the “COP inside of COP” aka technical UN climate negotiations vs. everything else at COP (mainly networking and panels.)

A couple counterarguments that I was thinking about during the roundtable and on a conversation on the bus home:

1. There are other networking spaces that connect local, grassroots climate organizers that are doing projects on the ground. COP doesn’t connect local organizers. Unfortunately, the recent lack of funding, conflicts, and existential crises in the climate movement have led to many of these spaces’ declines, e.g. PowerShift Network, Climate Nexus. (Some like Climate Xchange and Climate Advocacy Lab are still doing great though.) I think these spaces are a lot better than COP for serving as connection hubs because they require people to be more intentional with what they are looking for (as opposed to COP being just the largest, cloutiest climate conference.)
   1. There are similar spaces for the more tech/business side of climate as well, such as NY Climate Week, SF Climate Week, some climate tech slacks, etc.
   2. These networking spaces are also more flexible based on need timelines and exist throughout the year, whereas COP happens once a year. Therefore, COP is less conducive to facilitating long-term deep collaboration in a timely manner, as climate is a time-sensitive issue and many projects are time-sensitive.
   3. COP is expensive and a huge waste of resources. Someone told me that renting a pavilion space costs $60,000 (although I could not find a source to back it up), which is a full staff person’s salary for a year of climate work, not to mention all of the merch and decorations and equipment for each pavilion. To me, the cost-benefit analysis does not check out. The entire cost of the pavilion section at COP for “connections” could be funneled into projects that are actively making a difference. Also the emissions/costs to get everybody and everything there is insane.
   4. The quality of panels are kind of arbitrary. Some were very informative and helped people get connected to funders for awesome on-the-ground climate projects (I saw this happen with Climate Finance Access Network); others were poorly run and uninformative.
2. The COP process is totally arbitrary. It makes my imploded North Carolina coalitions look well-facilitated. There are too many people that study organizational strucutre/design, meeting facilitation, etc. for this to be the best that we can do, process-wise. The structure is also totally inequitable and dependent on the host country/Presidency. It may be the one platform where smaller, poorer countries have a voice, but that voice is by no means equal.
   1. “This is what always the developed world does to us in all multilateral agreements. They push and push and push until the last minute. They get us tired, they get us hungry, they get us dizzy, and then we come to terms with agreements that don’t truly represent the needs of our people.” – Panama’s climate envoy, Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez
   2. The texts that have been released by the Presidency are super imbalanced toward developed nations. They are able to pressure developing nations into accepting bad agreements because they need money.
   3. The Azerbaijani Presidency has been historically unprecedented (but similar to Denmark) in how opaque their facilitation is, which is actively harming the negotiation process.
      1. Sometimes civil society knows more than smaller country delegations because of our connections to richer country delegations. This is crazy to me, how are parties supposed to negotiate if they are kept out of the loop? Least-developed countries (LDCs) and small island states (SIDs) have complained about not being consulted as well.
      2. At the Just Transition technical consultation toward the end of Thursday (11/21), the co-facilitators basically said that parties were only allowed to discuss bracketed options. The Presidency put forward a text on Thursday morning that no one had agreed on yet; it was just an attempt at compiling viewpoints. Some paragraphs have “bracketed options” or “options” or “brackets,” which are different options that the parties can choose from. There are a couple problems with this process:
         1. The parties never agreed on the rest of the text that was not formatted as options–the Presidency wrote them. Rather than letting the parties go line-by-line through the text to agree on each part, the co-facilitators only let them discuss the “options.” This means the Presidency maintained control of the vast majority of the text. Every party was upset about this.
         2. The options provided were often extreme. For the Thursday NCQG text, the Presidency provided options that were redlines for either side (for example, an extreme option in favor of developing nations that developed would definitely not agree to, and vice versa.) There were compromise texts that existed and had been drafted by parties in collaboration, but they were not included. By only including extreme options, the Presidency set the text up for failure because they knew that each option was unacceptable to some party.
         3. The Just Transition consultation was also at 10:30 PM and not announced until after I had left the COP venue around 7 PM. Talk about inaccessible.
         4. In fact, the parties were so upset with the facilitation of the Just Transition Work Programme, Brazil ran its own parallel consultation process, which may not have been super helpful because the work done was not recognized by the Presidency, which wanted control of the text.
      3. The Presidency monopolized consultations as well, and forced parties to consult them one-by-one or in subgroups/groups whenever things went awry. This centralization of control hampers any negotiation process.
      4. They were also more strict on what was open to the public or not, and had many negotiations behind closed doors. I heard that in Dubai, more sessions were public, also because the rooms were bigger and had less capacity constraints.
      5. The Presidency monopolized the writing of the text. They would drop new texts on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday that were written by themselves based on what they thought was a good compilation, with no sort of public negotiation/agreement process in between.
      6. The Just Transition Work Programme ultimately failed to get adopted and got kicked to COP30…yet there were many things parties agreed on, such as concrete outcomes, that I believe could have been passed if the process were different.
   4. “Nearly 30 years on, the entire rules of procedure remain in draft form, although they are applied at each COP session, as if they were adopted.” – Dr. Joanna Depledge
      1. The parties could not agree on the rules for voting at the beginning (Rule 42 ), so this entire process (and decision-making) has been conducted under “Provisional [Draft] Rules of Procedure” since 1992 and defaulted to a consensus process. If parties don’t come to a consensus, then it goes to Rule 16, which means that the issue gets automatically passed on to the next session (unless otherwise decided by the COP.)
      2. The Azerbaijani Presidency gaveled through most decisions at COP29 without proper procedure (but I suppose there is none.) On the NCQG decision, he ignored the Indian delegation’s request for making a statement before the decision, proposed the decision, and put the gavel down without waiting for objections. Afterward, numerous countries objected (Bolivia, Cuba, Malawi on behalf of LDCs, India, etc), but it was too late and the decision was adopted. That is just bonkers to me. What is even crazier is that this is not even the first time; there is precedent for “consensus” decisions getting adopted despite objections at previous COPs! For a while, people were unsure whether or not to even call the decision because of the chaotic and undemocratic process…how do countries let this happen?
   5. Also, the negotiations (that I have sat in on at least) are so unstructured. They often talk in circles with no ostensive agenda or respect for time and I am shocked they are able to get anywhere at all. There is even a running joke that all the parties can agree on is to “thank the co-chairs or co-facilitators” because they spend 15+ minutes thanking each other every time.
   6. The Presidency’s choice to call a plenary a “Qultunary” (which Wikipedia will tell you is a term based on Turkic/Mongol assemblies) epitomizes how arbitrary the entire process is. Whether and when they choose to schedule technical consultations, contact groups, informals, plenaries, etc. all seemed pretty arbitrary to me too.
3. The amount of funding that is actually being discussed at COP is pretty sad compared to other finance flows (both climate and not climate) and what the world needs (trillions). To me, there seem like there are better spaces to discuss climate financing that 1) deal with more money total 2) are less bureacuratic and more streamlined 3) more connected to projects on the ground through direct access mechanisms and 4) are more well-rounded, locally-led/-driven, and need-based rather than based on technical processes or market calculations. By well-rounded, I mean address intersectional issues with climate, such as gender, education, and poverty.
   1. Climate Finance Access Network: I talked to someone at COP who will soon have secured $130 million for her island nation’s climate projects in just one year by writing grant proposals to various regional and direct access entities.
   2. WECAN funds great local projects without any of this COP money.
      1. E.g. the Itombwe reforestation project, which has been going for almost 10 years and is a long-term, women-led, community-led solution. They’ve grown close to 1 million trees by hand and allocate 25% of the trees for human use (home, food, etc.) As a result, communities no longer go into old-growth forest (which are more effective carbon sinks than new-growth) to harvest natural resources. They have thus created a circular and sustainable relationship with the forest that allows human flourishing. Osprey, founder of WECAN, emphasized the point that the money required to do this project was actually not that much and it was self-sustaining. But the money was grant-based. She also acknowledged that loans can be done well and effectively, but indigenous communities and developing nations are owed finance based on historical harm (reparations)– which is an argument toward COP’s existence: to facilitate reparations.
   3. Another person on that same panel from the UN Environmental Programme also emphasized the need to look at smaller bodies for funds, not just global funds like the ones dealt with at COP. These smaller bodies can be more easily accessed, are more connected to locals, and have less barriers.
   4. So maybe, what we need, is to build up smaller regional funds, like SPC, which will take (waste) less time/energy/bureaucracy than COP to do. We need to implement direct access mechanisms (in and out of UNFCCC funds) and build capacity, putting trained people in the right places to channel funds to local communities. All of these aforementioned really cool projects made me question if we really do need a COP-style climate finance goal through funds like the GCF/GEF that are highly inaccessible, slow, etc. but those funds are designed to have equitable boards that represent developing nations.

On the contrary, speaking to those in Climate Action Network’s (CAN) Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) Working Group presented the opposite view, that COP is necessary. The debate at COP29 was if the JTWP would be actionable items and concrete implementation vs. a knowledge sharing platform.

What I learned was that by “actionable items,” CAN and other nations mean that they want countries to submit proposals on

1. governance, how the JTWP is going to be run (e.g. a separate body from the UNFCCC)
2. decisions that can be acted upon soon
3. decisions that require more time to decide.

(And these “decisions” are things like guidance for the just transition and recommendations for implementation.)

So reductively….“actionable items” means countries will submit proposals on principles to guide a just transition (and other things). As an American, this was ridiculous because civil society in America has already come up with principles for a just transition from the grassroots and climate justice movements that we are actively using to implement our just transition. Why can’t we just have a locally-led just transition that follows grassroots principles so we can get this done because we don’t have time left?

And then I got schooled by one of the working group leads. She was like yeah, I get it, you’re from America, you have the IRA, and you have a just transition and it’s going great. But for countries in the Global South, they can try to request financing for a just transition but then the WTO or whatever bank led by the United States will just reject their request because they don’t consider just transition as part of climate finance. A lot of global funds/banks have “just transition” principles but they are greenwashing and support business-as-usual, so when they claim to support “just transition” they don’t.

And she also told me, of course this is your opinion, the US is the big player in the room and doesn’t care about what the JTWP will say. This platform, at the UNFCCC is the only platform in the world where smaller, developing nations who need that finance can actually have a voice and make sure that their “just transition” principles embody a just transition.

For example, if you requested financing to pay the salaries of laid-off coal workers in a developing nation, that’s not climate finance. That doesn’t fall under adaptation, mitigation, or loss and damage, and any multilateral fund (led by the Global North) would tell you no, you can’t have climate finance. But it should be climate finance, which is why it is up to the Just Transition Work Programme to set those principles and definitions so that things like that can actually count as climate finance and get climate finance.

Developing nations also have totally different situations, with economies that are dependent on fossil fuels and require a lot more support and careful thought to transition, whereas the US is not like that. Many nations don’t have just transition principles or a history of just transition and social justice like the US does, and so if we tell them to do a “just transition” they won’t know what that means OR they just won’t do it in an actually just way. Part of our privilege in the US is our ability to speak out about things without fear of consequences (relatively speaking, compared to say South America, “the most dangerous continent to be a climate defendant” – Majo Andrade Cerda). But for other countries, the JTWP principles would give them a legitimate framework to advocate around, that their governments had signed on to.

So the JTWP does matter for other nations, even if it seems like abstract recommendations and doesn’t matter to the US because we are working on the just transition and don’t care what the UN says.

Hello directly from COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan!

Whenever I told people I was going to Azerbaijan they would make a funny surprise face and check if they were listening right. I also have never imagined being in Azerbaijan before. My journey here started almost a week before COP started because I attended COY19, the Global Conference of Youth on Climate by YOUNGO (the official Children and Youth constituency inside the UNFCCC).

Every year before COP, COY happens in the same country as the UN Climate Conference and is a space for young people to meet and plan for the next two weeks of advocacy and so much work. So I had almost one week to adapt to Baku: the cold streets, the “salams”, the groceries in Azerbaijani, and the unfamiliar faces with caring and familiar smiles.

Before even COP started, I found people who felt like family early on.

Every night, we would leave the COY venue to have dinner and discover which restaurant had the best-fried eggplant (if you ever go there, please try this!). I also had the chance to meet the team I was going to work with in person as part of the client component of this class one day before COP in a much more informal environment. I am a volunteer for the negotiations team of the WWF International. After that, I also attended my first CAN (Climate Action Network) alignment meeting which was a nice reminder of the things we achieved last year in COP and the the things we wanted to achieve.

Different from most of my peers, this is not my first COP. But this is the COP I am most prepared to be here. I attended COP28 in Dubai as well and this was my first experience in this space. I had a really significant experience last year and I bring so much of it to this year. I learned to navigate this space in a huge venue with at least double the number of participants we have this year.

My first impressions of COP29 were regarding the venue. The entrance was not different from what I had already seen last year, excluding the fact that we could hear some traditional music from Azerbaijan at the entrance and we were greeted by kind young volunteers. But as you step into the security, you realize we are in the middle of a vast, cold, empty stadium with a strong whiff of petrol. The tents are built in a way that you can see sunlight in a few spots, but mostly you enjoy artificial lighting in a closed shoe box. And most importantly to note, the action spaces were too small and too limited. Actions were the most important aspect of my experience last year and this broke my heart to see. I wonder if this was built for this purpose: to impede big civil society actions to happen. Is it even safe for civil society to protest inside this venue? I don’t know.

But even without sunlight, the overly hot heating, and the limited action zones, we are all here listening, acting, observing. We will fight despite the limitations because there is no other option.

Keep tuned for more blog posts from us in the next few days and some updates directly from Baku stadium featuring 196-country climate scrum during the Biggest Game of the season!

Salam!

Vanessa

As I write this on the plane on my flight from Frankfurt back to Durham, I’m reflecting on the whirlwind that was COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. It was a mix of inspiring ideas, urgent discussions, and the familiar frustrations that come with global negotiations. While there were moments of progress, it’s clear that much work remains to ensure equitable and effective climate action. In this blog, I’ll talk about the main highlights of COP29, including climate finance, ideas from the pavilions, and the importance of including gender in climate action.

Climate Finance

One of the central issues at COP29 has been climate finance. After widespread rejection of an initial $250 billion-a-year proposal, a late-night meeting among wealthier nations led to a revised $300 billion-a-year target by 2035. While this marks progress, it remains far short of the $1.3 trillion per year that vulnerable nations say they need to address the climate crisis.

What’s troubling is that many of the poorer countries most affected by climate change were not in the room during these critical discussions. As one negotiator put it from the Politico article that our classmate Felicia kindly shared with us, “This isn’t only about money—it’s about survival.” This phrase really stuck with me! The process left questions unanswered: Will the funding come as grants or loans? How can it avoid adding to the debt burden of developing nations? And how can it reach those on the frontlines who need it most?

Pavilions

Amid these tense negotiations, the pavilions offered a completely different energy. They were spaces of innovation and collaboration, showcasing solutions that could transform how we address the climate crisis.

One standout session I attended was a World Bank panel on climate solutions in agrifood systems. It focused on the potential of agriculture to become a force for environmental healing while ensuring food security. The discussion highlighted nature-based solutions, sustainable irrigation, and the need to shift subsidies toward low-emission foods. What struck me most was the idea that agrifood systems could be redesigned to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050—an ambitious but achievable goal with the right investments and political will.

The Gender Lens

One of the most powerful moments for me at COP29 was the “UN Women: Gender and Climate: Synergies and challenges” press conference.

According to the speaker, it was evident that gender had not been a priority for this year’s presidency, but thanks to relentless advocacy from feminist groups, she shared the good news that it was brought to the table in the second week of negotiations.

The speaker passionately outlined how the care economy—largely invisible and disproportionately shouldered by women—is central to resilience in the face of climate shocks. For the first time, at the time of the conference as the speaker was mentioning, the draft text included references to the care economy and informal sectors, but she also noted that ambition remains far from what is needed. She continued to say that the inclusion of this language feels like a small step forward, but there’s still a long way to go toward ensuring gender-responsive climate action.

What stuck with me the most was the staggering imbalance of power at COP29 that the speaker mentioned: fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered the delegations of the 10 most vulnerable countries by a ratio of more than 1073 to 10. This imbalance undermines the credibility of the negotiations and highlights the systemic barriers faced by those who are most affected by the climate crisis. The speaker went on to say that the links between fossil fuel extraction and gender-based violence, particularly against Indigenous women, are undeniable, yet these issues are too often sidelined in climate discussions.

This blog is just the second chapter of my reflections on COP29, and I know I’ll have more to write as I process everything I’ve experienced and continue following the outcomes of the negotiations. While there is much to criticize, there is also much to fight for! The solutions are within reach, but the gap between what is discussed in the pavilions and what is agreed upon in the negotiation rooms must be bridged!