LONDON: Protecting the planet is a global endeavour that only works if countries agree to take collective action.
Judging by how the most important climate negotiations went this year, things aren’t going well.
In 2024, talks to halt plastic pollution, protect biodiversity and end desertification all failed.
Meanwhile, a deal at the COP29 summit left developing nations unhappy with the amount of money agreed upon to help them battle global warming and avoided mentioning the need to move away from fossil fuels.
“It has become increasingly more difficult to come to an agreement that is ambitious yet feasible and that will address the problem at hand,” said Maria Ivanova, director of Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs.
“Issues like climate change and plastic pollution are inherently systemic, cross-sectoral, and embedded in economic structures.”
Global environmental agreements have never been simple. But political polarisation, the growing influence of multinational corporations and strained government budgets have made countries less willing to compromise.
“By the time we get to a text or to an agreement that has a consensus, it is so diluted that ultimately it’s almost nothing,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey-Gomez, Panama’s special representative for climate change, who attended all four major international climate negotiations this year.
Here’s a look at how some of the main global talks around climate and the environment fared in 2024.
Nearly 200 countries agreed in Baku, Azerbaijan, to triple funds available to help developing countries confront rapidly warming temperatures at COP29 in November. But the talks were at times openly hostile and produced an agreement that even many supporters saw as insufficient and disappointing.
Rich countries pledged to provide at least US$300bil annually by 2035 through public finance as well as bilateral and multilateral deals.
The agreement also calls on nations to unleash a total of US$1.3 trillion a year, with most of it expected to come through private financing.
The talks kept “the multilateral system alive,” Monterrey-Gomez said in Baku.
Yet the failure to deliver on key promises means efforts to to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 celcius are “dead,” he said.
Despite overwhelming public and business support, negotiators in Busan, South Korea, failed to reach consensus on cutting plastic production and phasing out dangerous chemicals at what was supposed to be the culmination of two years of talks on a global plastics treaty.
Progress was blocked by oil suppliers including Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Boosting the use of plastics, which are made from fossil fuels, is a crucial growth area for the industry as electric vehicles and renewables erode demand for crude.
Countries fighting for a legally binding treaty admitted they need to do more.
“We should have improved our coordination,” Camila Zepeda, Mexico’s chief climate and biodiversity negotiator, said in Busan. “We are realising that we need the attention of everyone.”
Negotiators aim to reconvene the talks next year. There is rising support among the majority of countries to limit the production and consumption of plastics, restrict harmful chemicals and phase out single-use products like cutlery.
The COP16 meeting in Cali, Colombia, ended without an agreement to advance a landmark biodiversity-protection pact adopted two years ago.
Countries disagreed about the creation of a new global nature fund and delegates started to leave as the meeting ran into overtime. The summit did achieve some of its goals. Countries will move forward with a new Cali Fund to protect nature, to be paid into by companies that sell products based on genetic data collected from the natural world. — Bloomberg
