Written by 
“Failure is not an option.” These were the foreboding words shared by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in Baku, Azerbaijan, to set the stage for COP29, the UN’s annual climate conference. (Whether Guterres knew he was quoting Arnold Schwarzenegger is anyone’s guess.) The climate summit’s last day is today, and for many people, it couldn’t come soon enough.
COP29 started with a kerfuffle. On November 11, Greta Thunberg wrote a scathing op-ed in The Guardian about the strange choice to host COP29 in Azerbaijan, a country whose economy is enormously dependent on the fossil fuel industry with a long list of human rights abuses, most recently the horrid Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Thunberg didn’t mince any words when she said Azerbaijan is an “authoritarian petrostate with no respect for human rights.”
The UN’s climate conference happened the same week as the 2024 G20 Rio de Janeiro summit. At both events, those who visited noted that the recent U.S. presidential election hovered over the discourse, casting an uneasy feeling of uncertainty about the next few years. Here are some of the most notable takeaways from the important global summits:
Nationally Determined Contributions could have new language about urban design and architecture.
Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, spoke at COP29 about how Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—the commitments countries make to slash carbon emissions—need to have more language in them pertaining to the built environment, which, as we know, contributes 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“In Glasgow, just 18 per cent of our NDCs have quantifiable targets for mitigation objectives in the building and construction sector. We can surely do better this time around,” Andersen said in a session with Ahmed Mohammed bin Thani, Dubai Environment and Climate Change Authority director general.
Toward that end, Esther An, chief sustainability officer at City Developments Limited, suggested including language in NDCs about “green roofs, living walls and urban rewilding.” An noted: “These features provide habitats for various species of native birds, insects, and plants, while isolating carbon and reducing the urban heat island effect. Research from the European Environment Agency indicates that green roofs can reduce a building’s energy use by up to 15 per cent.”
Carbon markets could help fund climate projects.
The phrase carbon market connotes a financial system where countries and corporations sell and buy carbon credits. One carbon credit equals “one tonne of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent amount of a different greenhouse gas reduced, sequestered or avoided.” Carbon markets are upheld by Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. At COP29, climate leaders discussed the potential for carbon markets to fund climate projects in the Middle East and North Africa (the MENAP region).
These negotiations culminated in a landmark deal between Tawazun, an independent government entity that works closely with the Ministry of Defense and security agencies in the UAE, and Cloverly, a U.S. company at the cutting edge of digital infrastructure for carbon markets. Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry signed an agreement with Peru that brokered a similar deal. Previously, Singapore signed similar agreements with Bhutan, Vietnam, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea, Zambia, and Ghana.
The Amazon Rainforest will stop being plundered by 2030.
Before COP29 wrapped up, Brazil president Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that, by 2030, there will be “zero deforestation” in Brazil, marking a huge win for climate activists. It’s well understood that the Amazon Rainforest plays an immense role in the planet’s health, but it was ravaged under the Bolsonaro administration, perhaps best captured in that photo Bjarke Ingels probably wishes could be scrubbed from the internet.
Thanks to Lula, this vital natural resource will be protected, for good. “We need to take care of the largest forest reserve in the world,” he said, “which is under our care. Trying to make people understand that keeping the forest standing is an economic gain.”
There’s a new global alliance to fight hunger.
Questions of hunger, poverty, and famine dominated much of the 2024 G20 Rio de Janeiro summit. There, Lula proposed a new partnership that would be charged with finding ways to implement pubic policies and develop social technologies that combat hunger. The Task Force for a Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty will be open to all countries, not just ones in the G20, officials said.
We need $1 trillion a year to protect the Global South from climate change, which could come from grants, loans, and tax levies.
The Global Solidarity Levies Task Force (GSLT) is a coalition led by France, Barbados and Kenya that aims to connect developing countries with capital in order to finance projects that will help them reach the 1.5-degree Celsius target. GSLT said it’s necessary to raise at $1 trillion or more every year by 2035 to meet that goal.
Pact for the Future was passed at the UN in New York in September, which is a start. Gutteres also announced that international banks have agreed to provide $120 billion annually by 2030 to help the cause. There would also be a new levy imposed on the shipping industry, which accounts for 3 percent of global emissions, and also the aviation industry, accounting for 2 percent. It’s “a down payment on a safer, more prosperous future for every nation on Earth,” not a “handout,” Gutteres said.
This pledge however doesn’t go far enough, critics said. Amb Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s Special Envoy for chair of the African Group of Negotiators, said: “The proposed target to mobilise $250 billion per year by 2035 is totally unacceptable and inadequate to delivering the Paris Agreement. The Adaptation Gap Report alone says the adaptation needs are $400 billion; $250 billion will lead to unacceptable loss of life in Africa and around the world, and imperils the future of our world. Moreover, it is no longer developed countries who are responsible under this formulation. It is rendered as a target for which all countries are responsible and where developed countries are taking the lead. This is unacceptable.”