COP29: The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference

The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (also known as the 29th Conference of the Parties, or COP29) is to be held from 11 to 22 November 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) hosted COP28 in Dubai in 2023 and will hand over presidency to Azerbaijan.

Key themes at COP29

Azerbaijan has outlined a framework for action for COP29, which comprises three main aims: limiting warming to below 1.5˚C, “enhancing ambition and enabling action”, and ensuring an inclusive process.

This second aim highlights the needs to increase international commitments to address climate change and to ensure that the tools and finance to deliver such commitments are in place. This is underpinned by the overarching aim of limiting warming to 1.5˚C, as well as ensuring that the mechanisms by which this is achieved are inclusive and just.

COP29 is the last conference before parties must submit (in 2025) new nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to cover the period up to 2035: these are national targets to support climate change commitments that increase in ambition every five years. At COP29, parties will also negotiate a new goal for developed countries (as defined by the United Nations) to deliver climate finance to developing countries.

Many stakeholders are referring to COP29 as ‘the finance COP’, with negotiations seen as critical to advance a range of financial tools and instruments to support actions to address climate change.

National emissions reductions targets

Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are national plans to address climate change. Countries that are party to the Paris Agreement are required to publish and revise NDCs every five years.

At COP28 in 2023, the first global stocktake of progress against the Paris Agreement found that countries were off track to meet the goal of reducing global emissions to limit warming to 1.5˚C.

At COP29, the focus will be on 2025, when countries are required to set the next round of NDCs. The global stocktake called for parties to come forward with ambitious targets to reduce emissions.

Setting a new goal for climate finance

Climate finance is recognised as necessary to help developing countries respond to climate change. It is required for both mitigation (reducing emissions, for example through large-scale investment in low carbon technologies) and adapting to the effects of climate change (for example, through making buildings more resilient or investing in flood defences). Climate finance also has a justice dimension; in many developing countries the effects of climate change are projected to be more keenly felt, yet developed countries have greater historic emissions and associated economic benefits.

At COP15 in 2015, developed countries jointly agreed to mobilise $100 billion a year in private investment by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries in responding to climate change. This goal was not met in 2020 or 2021, but it was met for the first time in 2022.

Despite this, there remains a large gap in climate finance between what is needed and what is currently available. In 2021, UN analysis identified financing needs set out in NDCs equivalent to $600 billion per year up to 2030. Looking ahead to COP29, the UN said that “governments must establish a new climate finance goal, reflecting the scale and urgency of the climate challenge”. Known as the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), this new goal will likely be a key part of climate negotiations.

Concerns about Azerbaijan’s presidency

There has been widespread media coverage of Azerbaijan’s production and use of fossil fuels and natural gas. In addition to this, criticism has also emerged around Azerbaijan’s human rights record and history of conflict, with critics calling COP29 ‘peacewashing’ of its image.