Trump shadow on the Baku climate summit

India should learn from its experience at the Paris COP in 2015. It locked itself into commitments that it could not reverse when Trump, in his first term, pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement

- Shyam Saran

The 29th Conference of Parties (COP 29) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Baku, Azerbaijan, that begins today will have its most consequential negotiator sitting in the United States (US), influencing its outcomes without being present. On the eve of the second term of Donald Trump's presidency, his declared intention to walk out, once again, from the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change will inevitably alter the negotiating briefs of delegates attending the Baku conference.

The world's largest producer of oil and gas is set to abandon the key decision taken at COP 28 that the world must "transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero emissions by 2050". This implies that such a transition will now not only be more costly for other parties but also put them at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis the US. Trump has pledged to remove restrictions on oil and gas exploration and production in the US, including in ecologically sensitive areas. There will be little rationale left for other existing and potential fossil fuel producers to transition away from current energy systems. This is a huge setback to the already anaemic global effort to tackle the climate crisis before its relentless advance puts the planet in peril.