In 2024, global climate action was marked by both ambitious agendas and critical shortcomings, highlighted by the outcomes of COP29 and other key environmental summits. This article provides a comprehensive overview of climate action in 2024, highlighting key achievements and shortcomings of climate financing, and predicts pivotal developments in 2025, keeping in mind recent geopolitical developments.
Introduction
With Donald Trump pulling the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement, debates have once again begun on the future of climate action. As one of the biggest non-traditional security threats, climate change grows in severity each year. Since the UNEP’s formation, joint international efforts to combat this challenge have occurred annually through environmental summits. However, climate politics is not without its own set of challenges as countries choose their national interests of economic development over unanimously fighting a peril that threatens the very existence of mankind. The logic is simple: economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions are directly proportional to each other, therefore bringing down one would mean compromising on the other too, making countries reluctant to abide by strict emission targets.
Thus, all climate change summits struggle to balance growth and sustainability, navigating between the demands of Global South countries – historically disadvantaged in development due to colonial exploitation – and the responsibilities of Global North countries, the advanced industrialized erstwhile colonizers. In this context, this article aims to comprehensively analyse climate action in 2024 to scrutinize the efforts, outcomes, and impacts of the latest global climate negotiations and predict what the world can expect in 2025.
“The Finance COP” of UNFCCC: Was it True to its Nickname?
The highest international bodies on combatting climate change are the United Nations Framework for the Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity (UNCBD), and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). In 2024, all three summits occurred in successive rounds from October to December. Thus, as the year wrapped up with heated discussions on global climate action and climate financing, the outcomes of the summits require a closer look to gauge how far countries could walk the talk.
The most significant body is the UNFCCC since it encompasses a broad approach to tackling climate change through emission targets and is a platform for climate financing negotiations. As the 29th Conference of Parties (COP29) of the UNFCCC, took off from 11th to 22nd November in Baku, Azerbaijan, with the participation of 200 countries and 55,000 civil society members, it sought to build on the efforts of the previous COP28. Popularly known as the “Finance COP”, the most awaited aspect of its agenda was to make progress in its climate financing negotiations, but how true did it stand to its nickname? The summit concluded with a pledge of $300 billion annually from developed countries by 2035. While this target is triple that of the $100 billion pledge made at the previous COP, the original calculated demand put forth by developing countries stood at USD 1.3 trillion per year. Thus, while it is a step forward, COP29 failed to make the anticipated leap that global climate action requires to match the rate of climate change impacts.
Moreover, the pledged amount was to be financed through both public and private sources of funding. Thus, 2024 witnessed an innovation of including the private sector in global climate financing. On the one hand, this step allows for newer sources of financing and reduces the load on developed countries, allowing them to contribute larger amounts to climate funds. On the other hand, private sector financing introduces the question of paying a premium to companies, much like an insurance policy. As explained by Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change: “…it only works – if premiums are paid in full, and on time.” However, this mechanism adds to the debt burden of developing countries, further increasing their dependency on developed countries.
Recommitting to the Paris Agreement: Carbon Trading and Transparency
Despite the mixed results of climate financing, COP29 reiterated two important aspects of the Paris Climate Agreement, namely carbon trading and transparency. The Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism under Article 6 was scrutinized and various provisions were finalized. Where previous Conferences of Parties failed, COP29 was able to standardize the mechanisms of country-country carbon trading under Article 6.2 and decide the process through which countries can authorize and track the trade of carbon credits. This was significant as it ensured that countries carried out compulsory checks on environmental and human rights protection. For developing countries, where infrastructure projects are a common policy, COP29 brought forth a provision that allows for a project to carry on only with the agreement of Indigenous people. Further, it gives the right to anyone affected by any project to file a complaint and an appeal. These measures – although dependent on how strictly they are implemented within each country – indicate a more inclusive approach by global environmental platforms to be sensitive towards vulnerable communities.
The other important aspect addressed in the COP29 was the question of transparency under Article 13 of the Paris Agreement. A key pillar of climate action is the transparent communication of the progress as well as shortcomings of environmental initiatives in individual countries without which global climate efforts are fruitless if countries are not on the same page to deliver on their promises. Therefore, Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRVs) are crucial components of global climate action. At the 2010 Cancun Agreements, the UNFCCC decided on a system of MRV in which developing countries were to submit Biennial Update Reports (BUR) that included reporting on mitigation action, greenhouse gas inventory, domestic MRVs, and the needs and support received. This report would then undergo an international consultation and analysis (ICA) i.e. a technical analysis. Similarly, for developed countries, the process was the submission of Biennial Reports (BR) and their international assessment and review (IAR).
In 2015, the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) replaced the Cancun MRV. As per Article 13 of the Paris Agreement, the new system subjected all countries to the submission of Biennial Transparency Reports BTRs followed by a Technical Expert Review (TER) and a facilitative multilateral consideration of progress (FMCP) as soon as possible. However, the deadline for submission for developed countries was 31 December 2022 while developing countries, except Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs), were to submit their first BTR by 31 December 2024. These BTRs aimed to declare the national greenhouse inventory, the progress made in the implementation of a country’s NDCS (Nationally Determined Contributions), impacts and adaptation to climate change, and financial and technological support needed and received, thus helping to predict the investment requirements in climate action and maintaining transparency in international cooperation. While countries such as the USA, Europe, Japan, and Australia have submitted their BTRs, many developing countries have missed the 2024 deadline, including India, China, North and South Korea, Pakistan and even Russia. This does not bode well for climate action as missing deadlines not only hinders the whole process of climate negotiations but also exposes loopholes in multilateral climate agreements where a lack of consequences leads to ineffectiveness. Moreover, when leading countries such as India and China who claim to be the voice of developing countries, fall behind on their promises, their actions undermine the cause of the Global South in climate action.
What to expect in 2025?
The shortcomings of climate action in 2024 will inevitably lead to carryovers in 2025. Firstly, the most significant event to look out for is the NDC 3.0. i.e. the submission of Nationally Determined Contributions by all countries every five years since the concept’s introduction in 2015 at the Paris Climate Accord. In 2025, the deadline being in February, it is left to see how far countries can set targets for themselves to limit the world to 1.5 degrees Celsius of temperature rise. As the first Global Stocktake (GST) in 2023 reported that the world was not on track to achieve this vision, countries must increase their individual NDC commitments to reduce GHG emissions domestically and integrate climate action with their developmental plans. At the global level, climate action needs to be backed by better climate financing, a mission the COPs failed to achieve across all three UNEP frameworks in 2024. How far will NDC 3.0 deliver on its promises remains to be seen.
Secondly, global climate action in 2025 will await the submission of BTRs by developing countries that missed the deadline in 2024. As some of the biggest contributors to both climate change and climate action, such as China, India, and Russia begin to report on their domestic mitigation efforts, technical assessments thereafter will indicate what changes need to be made in greenhouse gas emissions targets as well as international collaboration to help the countries inch closer to those targets. Without the submission of these MRVs, further action in combatting climate change remains uncertain.
Other targets in the 2025 climate checklist include adopting the Lima Work Programme on Gender and Climate Change at UNFCCC COP30 which was extended for 10 years at COP29. This will push for gender action in climate change, which is often an unexplored area. On the list is also scrutinising the Carbon crediting mechanism by the Supervisory Board of the UNFCCC to chalk out the details of the system under the Paris Agreement. Finally, although COP29 initiated the discussion on the adaptation efforts of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), the second five-year assessment of their National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) is to be held mainly in 2025.
Finally, the most awaited moments of 2025 will be the Conferences of Parties of each, UNFCCC, UNCBD, and UNCCD. While a common theme across all three frameworks in 2024 has been the failure of climate financing, it remains to be seen whether the upcoming COPs will address the lacunae in each of their summits. Funding pledges need to be met with the demands of countries in need, and not just to push forward the rhetoric of climate financing. As observed in 2024, it was not the lack of ambition in agenda setting that undermined the progress of the COPs but rather the failure of global policymaking to turn that agenda into reality.
Trump Factor: Will it Undermine Climate Action?
Although expected, probably the biggest curveball that global climate action will have to tackle is the withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement initiated by President Donald Trump. The absence of the second-largest emitter in the world will cause ripples in international efforts, yet counterintuitively, the withdrawal of the US during Trump’s first term had not stopped the other countries from moving ahead with climate action. Europe, China, and India had even increased their push almost as if filling the vacuum left by the US. Therefore, this time around, one might expect the same. Moreover, as renewable energy becomes an economically viable step across the world, countries such as China might double their efforts to take over the international EV market for their profits, indirectly benefitting global climate efforts. Thus although legally binding the US in combatting climate change will most definitely be the biggest challenge, the world will not come to a standstill.
Conclusion
Overall, 2025 will be a year to watch out for the delivery of failed promises of the previous year. While climate action in 2024 was more of what didn’t happen rather than what happened, the upcoming year has to go into the finer details of international cooperation and domestic efforts rather than only setting ambitious agendas. Instead of speaking in broad terms, environmental summits have to get their hands dirty and go into the uncomfortable details of climate financing. Countries need to deliver on their NDC targets, discuss alternative financing mechanisms to reduce debt burdens of the Global South caused by loans, and institutionally align the three COPs. Without these steps, climate change efforts will continue to be more noise than action.
Bishwarupa Kar is a post-graduate student at the Department of Politics and International Studies at Pondicherry University. Her areas of interest include Climate Change, Climate Action and Climate Financing, Global South, Terrorism, and Polar Studies. Views expressed are the author’s own.
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