For some years we have seen vested interests grabbing the COP. This started through heavy sponsorship by fossil fuels companies, and metamorphosed into taking the driving seat, presiding over the COP a defiant way of showcasing climate denial.
With COP29 in Azerbaijan it will make three COPs in a row to be held in petrostates that have scant tolerance for human rights and dissent. We saw civil society being corralled and hemmed into marching within the COP premises at both Sharm El Sheikh and Dubai. That sort of insulation and blunting of the purpose of the Global Day of Action will inevitably occur again at COP29 because the COP has willingly constricted the possibility of full enjoyment of human rights and open and free expression dissent. The COPs have become carbon theatre for keeping carbon fossils on life support for as long as possible.
COP28 stumbled into an outcome that barely whispered the transitioning away from fossil fuels for energy. The celebrated Loss and Damage Fund couldn’t garner up to 2% of funds needed annually to tackle the harms occasioned by climate impacts. Will COP29 in Azerbaijan to be presided over by someone embedded in the fossil fuels sector engender real climate action?
No. With a fossil fuel big shot presiding over the COP there will be no agreement to phase out fossil fuels as leaders and the fossil fuel lobby think more about profit and care nothing about their actions incinerating the planet.
No, because the Article 6 game will continue in the pathways of promoting false solutions like carbon capture, utilisation/storage and diverse modes of geoengineering. Fossil gas will still be pushed as a transition fuel and carbon offset deals will elevate land grab in Africa and accompanying carbon colonialism.
Moreover, parties will continue to jump on the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) treadmill, promoting weak voluntary emissions reduction, pursuing phantom net zero targets while the temperature levels shoot beyond 3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
COP29 will be a slap on the face of youths, coming generations and vulnerable peoples due to the continue regress from real climate action.
Is there hope for the future? Yes. COP30 to be held in Brazil holds a glimmer of hope if grassroots movements forge a global alliance that can decisively affect the nature and pattern of negotiations and decision making. COP30 holds the possibility of being a radical version of the Peoples Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth that was held in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2010.
Nnimmo Bassey is Director, Health of Mother Health Foundation (HOMEF)
