The United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP29, will be held in the capital city of Azerbaijani, Baku, 11-22 November 2024.
This year’s conference will focus on financial problems fighting climate change, but is it enough to talk only about finances?
What should we expect from COP29?
In a month’s time, COP29 will be the most discussed issue of setting a new global target for financing developing countries to reduce CO2 emissions and build resilience to the impacts of climate change.
The new climate finance target is a successor to the last financial pledge of developed countries for the low-income, when they pledged $100 billion a year in 2009 to fight climate change. Countries have failed to achieve this goal, which has made the transition much more difficult for underdeveloped countries.
Energy as an important issue of the future
In addition to finance, an important issue that will be raised concerns the use of energy and how the energy sector can be improved in the period after 2030.
At last year’s summit in Dubai, the countries pledged to triple their renewable energy capacity by 2030. The presidency of COP29 presidency has asked the Governments to back a pledge to increase global energy storage capacity 6 above 2022 levels, reaching 1,500 GW by 2030, and to add or refurbish more than 80 million kilometres of electricity grids by 2040.
Other issues relevant to climate action, such as agriculture, food systems, rights on land, health, women and green jobs, will also be discussed.
Pact for the Future as a precursor to COP29
During the Summit of the Future, the Pact for the Future was adopted, which aims to unite the divided nations in the world in order to quickly implement the 56 actions of the agreement.
The Sustainable Development and Finance section of the pact addresses issues that will also be discussed at COP29 in Baku, where it calls for reflection on the need for countries to start considering how to advance sustainable development after 2030.
What is COP?
The COP is an annual meeting where UN member states meet to assess progress in tackling climate change and develop a plan for climate action that is in line with the guidelines of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The formal name of COP is the UN Climate Change Conference, although it is sometimes referred to as the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The first COP was held in Berlin in 1995.
Three years before COP1 in Berlin, countries joined an international treaty, the UNFCCC, to work together to limit the average increase of global temperature and to deal with impacts that were previously inevitable. By 1995, negotiations to strengthen global responses to climate change have been launched.
Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement are the most important international documents on climate change
The first significant result was the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, during the third UN Climate Change Conference in Japan. It was the first legally binding international agreement on climate change to be reached at the international level. At that time, countries committed to limiting and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in line with agreed individual targets.
The next major conference was in Paris in 2015, when the Paris Agreement was adopted – a document that was supposed to completely replace the Kyoto Protocol and regulate measures to mitigate climate change by 2020. The main goal of the agreement is to keep global warming as low as possible to below 2°C. To limit global warming to 1.5°C, companies, countries and organizations need to decarbonize as soon as possible.
The Republic of Serbia has signed the Paris Agreement, but are we sticking to the goal?
The Program for Adaptation to Changed Climate Conditions for the period from 2023 to 2030 states that the Republic of Serbia is warming more and faster than the global average. While the observed increase in global temperature is 1.1 ° C, Serbia is already at 1.8 ° C, while in summer it reaches as much as 2.6 ° C.
The need for decarbonization efforts is increasing, and therefore it is necessary to invest resources to reduce the temperature, which is currently above the allowed average.
The energy transition is one of the most important changes needed to mitigate the impact of climate change in the world. With the adoption of the Law on the Use of Renewable Energy Sources in 2021, the way to a more successful fight against climate change has been opened.
Photo: Unsplash/İltun Huseynli