UN climate meeting to focus on emissions, financing

The 29th meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change starts Nov. 11 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The focus this year is on how to fund projects needed to meet goals of the Paris Agreement, which aims to cap global warming to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Ahead of the event, known as COP29, the UN released three reports—on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, plans to mitigate climate change, and countries’ ability to adopt the plans—that take stock of how the world is doing in achieving those goals. In each of the reports, researchers found that limiting warming to the target 1.5 °C will be difficult if not impossible under current trajectories.

In the emissions report, released Oct. 24, researchers says that GHG emissions are on track to cause temperatures to rise 3.1 °C by the end of the century. “Limiting warming to 1.5 °C is virtually impossible,” Anne Olhoff, chief climate adviser to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the editor of the report, said at a press briefing.

Current pledges to lower GHGs are inadequate, Olhoff said. To limit warming to the higher 2 °C path, emissions would need to drop 28% by 2030 and 37% by 2035 compared with 2019 levels. That would mean shaving emissions by 7.5% every year, she said. And to meet these goals, the world needs a sixfold increase in financing by 2035, UNEP executive director Inger Andersen said at the briefing. “We seem to find money for conflict when we need it,” she said. “This is the biggest conflict of all.”

On Oct. 28, UNEP released the Nationally Determined Contributions Synthesis Report, which examines current plans to curb GHG emissions and those plans’ impact on the volume of expected emissions in 2030. Researchers found that if current plans are completely carried out, the world will emit 51.5 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2030—about 2.6% below 2019 emissions. This is far short of the emissions cut that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says is needed.

“The next round of national climate plans must deliver a dramatic step up in climate action and ambition,” UN Climate Change executive secretary Simon Stiell says in a statement.

The third study, released Nov. 7, looks at the gap between climate adaptation plans that countries have started and what needs to be done, as well as at the funding required to put plans in place. Researchers found that funding to help lower-income countries combat climate change falls short by $187 billion–$359 billion.

During COP26, nations agreed to the Glasgow Climate Pact, which was to increase adaptation finance to a minimum of $38 billion by 2025. But meeting this goal would cut the adaptation finance shortfall by only about 5%. The researchers also found that more-affluent countries need to help other nations advance innovation and technology. In addition, the report says, organizations providing this aid need to ensure that it reaches the populations that most need it, including marginalized and underrepresented groups.

COP29 will run Nov. 11–22.