Thursday, November 14, 2024

COP29 primer: Canada’s priorities at the global climate talks, and the Trump impact

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Canada could be an important consensus builder at this year’s international climate negotiations, Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault said, while downplaying concerns that Donald Trump’s presidential election victory could hamper the talks.

“Our window to keep global average temperatures from surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius is closing fast on us, so we need everyone to be pulling in the same direction,” Guilbeault said in an interview ahead of the talks.

Observers expect the negotiations in Azerbaijan over the next two weeks to be contentious. Countries are set to map out new goals on climate finance and work toward new national climate plans.

Catherine Abreu, a leading Canadian climate policy expert, says there are reasons to be cynical about the outcome of those talks.

Despite 30 years of negotiating, the world’s emissions are higher than ever, around 80 per cent of the global energy comes from fossil fuels, and oil lobbyists have come out in record numbers at recent summits, she said.

Yet, the talks are still “a really importance space,” said Abreu, director of the International Climate Politics Hub.

“The agreements that have been made in (this) space are the bedrock of all climate policy almost worldwide,” she said.

Here is a guide to this year’s international climate talks being held in Azerbaijan, known as COP29.

What is COP29?

It’s the 29th annual conference of the parties that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, set to run from Nov. 11 to 22.

Many of the world’s most consequential climate agreements have come out of those talks. The Kyoto Protocol, the first international agreement to set binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, was adopted at COP3 in Japan in 1997. Nearly two decades later in Paris, the world agreed to try to limit global warming to well below two degrees and aim for 1.5 degrees.

Canada has hosted the talks once, nearly two decades ago in Montreal.

This year, in Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku, the negotiations are expected to centre on a new climate finance goal. In short, negotiators are deciding how much money wealthy countries, which have historically contributed the most planet-warming emissions, should pledge to other countries to help them tackle climate change.

What are Canada’s priorities?

Two of Canada’s major priorities are expected to be reaching an agreement on that new climate finance goal and pushing other countries to come up with ambitious national climate plans.

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