The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku was a wasted opportunity, concluding with an insufficient, unjust, and seemingly imposed deal at a time when climate crises are escalating across both the global south and the global north. While some of the blame for this failure can be attributed to context-specific factors — such as Azerbaijan’s presidency, diminished international attention for the climate crisis, and the absence of key western leaders — the core issues run deeper. This COP’s shortcomings starkly revealed how the structural realities of global inequality, alongside the flawed format and regulation of COP itself, continue to obstruct meaningful action on the imminent climate crises we face.
The necessity of COP29 resulting in an ambitious, robust, and future-proof deal should have been clear to everyone from the moment their (private) planes landed in Azerbaijan: 2024 will go on record as the warmest year in recorded history, and devastating floods in Spain, Nepal, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as several deadly tropical storms in Southeast Asia once again showed that the life-threatening effects of climate change are felt all around the globe. A report on the state of the climate in 2024, published by a coalition of over 15 000 scientists in October this year, did not beat around the bush either, warning that the world is “on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster.” On top of that, this year’s COP was held in the shadow of climate-sceptic Donald Trump’s return to the White House — the same Donald Trump who pulled the US (the biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gasses) out of the Paris Agreement in his previous term. COP29, held amidst an imminent climate crisis and looming political crises, was a chance for world leaders to take these signs seriously and finally show unity and decisiveness to take climate change as the pressing global crisis it is. COP29 was an opportunity not to waste a good crisis.
Expectations vs Outcomes
The central focus of COP29 was to reach an agreement on a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) for climate financing. This goal sets the annual amount of funds that developed states pledge to support developing countries in addressing the climate crisis. The NCQG will replace the current commitment of $100 billion per year, established in 2009 and set to expire in 2025. Experts and climate-affected states advocated an NCQG of at least $1 trillion annually to adequately address the climate crisis. Another critical issue on the agenda was the structure of these financial contributions, with developing nations calling for grants rather than loans to avoid falling into debt traps. Lastly, COP29 aimed to reassess whether countries like China and oil-rich Gulf states, which are significant contributors to current emissions, should be reclassified as ‘developed’ and thus required to contribute to the NCQG.
Despite the imminence of a global climate crisis, the outcome of COP29 is a disappointment, to say the least. Delegates settled on an NCQG of just $300 billion annually by 2035 — less than one-third of what experts deem necessary. This finance would come in the form of grants and low-interest loans. Seemingly aware of the deficiency of the NCQG, the agreement includes a somewhat vague commitment to “secure efforts of all actors” to mobilise $1.3 trillion annually by 2035 from public and private sources, including international financial institutions and multilateral banks. Fortunately, a silver lining to the otherwise unambitious and vague outcomes emerged from individual states such as the UK and Brazil. The UK committed to an 81% reduction in emissions by 2035, while Brazil unveiled a new national climate plan aiming to cut emissions by 59% to 67% from 2005 levels. These ambitious pledges position both nations as potential leaders in global climate mitigation. However, with no expansion of the ‘developed states’ list and unclear mechanisms for achieving agreed-upon goals, the outcome of COP29 remains vague, disappointing, and far from sufficient to address the climate crisis. This leaves the pressing question: what went wrong in Baku?
Context-specific Challenges
The disappointing results of COP29 stemmed from three context-specific challenges: the absence of key global leaders, the declining prominence of the climate crisis on the global agenda, and the role played by this year’s COP presidency. COP29 was marked by the absence of notable world leadersUrsula von der Leyen of the EU, US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, China’s leader Xi Jinping, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and Brazil’s President Lula da Silva, the host of next year’s COP30.
While these leaders typically have limited involvement in the key negotiations that underpin COP, their presence serves as a powerful symbol of commitment to climate action. Their attendance elevates the profile of the summit, draws political and public attention to the climate crisis, and reinforces the urgency of global cooperation. Reasons for their absence varied: from taking issue with Azerbaijan as the host country, focusing on domestic political issues, or personal reasons, to a broader decline in the prioritisation of climate policy. Yet, their absence signals a troubling lack of dedication to addressing climate change collectively. It degrades COP’s status, and perhaps most importantly affects the morale of other attending delegations. This effect is particularly acute given that the absentees represent some of the world’s most populous nations and largest polluters. In the end, if COP is to be the global summit for meaningful and cooperative climate action it is meant to be, world leaders need to show up to signal their commitment. At COP29, too many missed this opportunity.
The widespread absence of leaders at COP29 highlights another context-specific challenge: the diminishing prominence of the climate crisis on the global agenda. Geopolitical priorities have shifted toward issues of state sovereignty, security, and economic growth, driven by events such as Russia’s war in Ukraine, instability in the Middle East, and growing concerns over migration and cost of living. Domestically, political crises and the global rise of parties on the far ends of the political spectrum — many of which advocate retreating from climate commitments — have pushed incumbents to be more cautious in initiating ambitious climate policy, prioritising immediate political, security, and economic challenges over long-term climate solutions. As a result, the sense of urgency and collective dedication that defined previous summits have given way to a fragmented and subdued response, leaving COP29 without the momentum necessary to drive meaningful progress.
The final context-specific challenge at COP29 was its presidency by Azerbaijan. From day one of the conference, there has been widespread frustration with the presidency’s management style and approach to negotiations. tendency to push through deals and drafts without adequately addressing dissenting opinions, seeming more concerned with presenting an outcome than the actual contents of the outcome. The presidency’s slow pace of drafting and flexibility of deadlines further led to participants feeling a lack of urgency and leadership, culminating in sharp criticism during the final hours of the summit. The Indian delegation openly accused the host of “stage managing” the process, claiming its request to make a statement before the deal’s adoption was disregarded. This strained leadership not only created tension among delegations but also resulted in a divisive agreement that failed to secure consensus.
Structural Deficiencies of Global Climate Policy
While these context-specific challenges contributed to the disappointments in COP29, the root causes of its shortcomings lie in deeper structural flaws within COP’s framework and the broader design of multilateral cooperation. For three consecutive years, COP has been hosted by non-democratic petrostates — Egypt in 2022, the UAE in 2023, and Azerbaijan in 2024 — raising concerns about conflicts of interest and the legitimacy of COP. These hosts, reliant on fossil fuel revenues, may be pursuing double agendas, as evidenced this year when an Azerbaijani COP official was reportedly caught using their title to negotiate a fossil fuel deal. Furthermore, hosting the world’s leading climate summit in countries that structurally suppress human rights and exploit the COP platform for diplomatic disputes needlessly risks politicising the event, undermining its credibility, and diverting attention from the urgent issue of the climate crisis.
Moreover, climate-vulnerable states are not properly empowered within the current COP framework. This is for a large part due to the disproportionate presence of fossil fuel and agribusiness lobbyists — this year surpassing the combined delegates from climate-vulnerable nations, scientific institutions, and indigenous communities. These interest groups’ outsized presence and power skew COP’s priorities and erode transparency and trust in the process. While it is reasonable that the private sector, which is affected by the outcomes of COP, is also represented at COP, it is not reasonable that these representations far exceed those of climate-affected states. Additionally, the non-binding nature of COP agreements leaves no mechanisms to enforce commitments, leaving the climate-affected states disillusioned with a global lack of enforceable action.
All these structural issues were sharply criticised during COP29, with a group of prominent delegates and scientists known as the “Club of Rome” publishing an open letter calling for a full overhaul of the COP format. Indeed, addressing structural issues could mitigate context-specific challenges, such as weak leadership from the presidency and waning global commitment to tackling the climate crisis. It is imperative that future COP summits take these critiques and recommendations seriously to bring about lasting improvements in both the process and outcomes of the COP framework.
Yet, above all, COP29 revealed an uncomfortable truth about the future of climate action: COP summits cannot lead to consensual and ambitious outcomes as long as astronomic structural inequalities between states persist. This point was highlighted during tense negotiations on the NCQG, when Least Developed Countries (LDS) and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) temporarily walked out in frustration after western states had rejected their lowered bid of an NCQG of $500 billion. While a deal was eventually reached, their departure underscored the widening gap between developed nations, wary of heavy financial commitments, and climate-vulnerable states, which demand urgent and substantial support to literally keep their head above water. This growing divide not only stalls meaningful progress in climate negotiations but also risks making future collaboration increasingly impossible as inequalities deepen. COP29 thus laid bare how structural inequality between states currently stands in the way of effective cooperation on climate change, and therefore both proliferate this inequality and endanger the entire planet. The only way to break this deadlock is for developed nations to provide greater support to developing countries — not only in combating climate change but also in fostering sustainable and resilient local economies. Failing to act now will have far-reaching consequences that are bound to escalate in the coming decades.
Securing a green future?
As of today, the question of how to secure a robust future for COP and global climate policy remains. Swiftly adopting the recommendations of the Club of Rome certainly seems like a good place to start. However, it seems that further and more drastic reforms are necessary, for example concerning the status and enforcement of COP agreements in international law. Crucially, future climate policy must prioritise solutions that promote fairness and equity in addressing the climate crisis. Developed nations in particular must step up their leadership and recognise that actively investing in clean, sustainable economies and technologies in developing states — especially through grants — plays a pivotal role in ensuring global fairness. This approach is not only just but also essential for the future of cooperative global climate policy. Additionally, the international community must urgently phase out subsidies for hydrocarbon fuels, which globally amounted to an astonishing $7 trillion in 2022. Redirecting even a fraction of this funding toward clean energy technologies and sustainable development could pave the way for a cleaner, fairer future.
Finally, while the multilateral system faces significant challenges — arguably even a slow-motion collapse — this only highlights the urgency of embedding global climate policy into systems of governance. The international community must recognise that climate change cannot be effectively addressed without legally enforceable agreements. While achieving global enforcement under international law may not be realistic in the near future, efforts must focus on advancing legal mechanisms at the regional level through existing multilateral structures. Integrating firm commitments to combat climate change into the foundations of a reformed multilateral framework could be the key to ensuring that future COPs will not waste any more good crises but rather take steps toward securing the planet’s future.
Views expressed in ICDS publications are those of the author(s).