COP29 IN BAKU: OIL AND MONEY STAIN CLIMATE TALKS

It is indeed ironical that the UN Climate Conference, also known as the Conference of Parties (COP), chooses to hold their jamborees in capitals that are the hub of fossil fuel interests.

- GURBIR SINGH

The World, desperately fighting Climate Change and global warming, held its 200-nation gathering in December 2023 in Dubai; and now COP29 has just concluded in Baku, Azerbaijan, the oldest oil exploration town existing since 1840!

The President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, opened COP29 on 11 November, embarrassingly referring to the country's oil wealth as "the gift of God" to his people. What could he say? Oil represents 90% of Azerbaijan's exports.

It was billed as a 'finance conference'. The focus of the summit this year was to get the developed world to agree to a new target of funding pegged at $1.3 trillion a year. It was to help the poorer nations to move away from fossil fuels and to repair the climate change havoc wrought on communities around the world.

There's been a history of skirmishing between the rich and poor nations on who will pay for the environmental damage. With much back-and-forth, a deal was finally reached in 2009 at the Climate Conference in Copenhagen when the rich nations agreed to raise $100 billion by 2020.

Expectedly, the developed world reneged from its commitments, and it was only in 2022 that the target was met when funding touched $106 billion. Much of this was disguised low-interest loans, something the poor nations had not bargained for.

Poor compromise