Alice C. Hill and Priyanka Mahat
Negotiators from across the globe will gather in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the twenty-ninth annual UN climate change conference on November 11. Their goal almost thirty years after the first Conference of the Parties (COP) in Berlin remains the same: increase international ambition to curb global warming below 1.5°C (2.7°F) pre-industrial levels to avoid catastrophic harm to the planet. Yet the world is perilously close to breaching that limit. At this year’s COP, countries will focus on pushing for more ambitious emissions reductions and identifying new sources of finance.
What’s at stake at this year’s summit?
COP29 takes place in the shadow of the upcoming deadline for nations to provide updated plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris Agreement by February 2025. These commitments, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), lie at the heart of the Paris Agreement’s goal of curbing the rise in global temperatures. To date, these voluntary commitments have not set the world on course to contain heating to 1.5°C, much less 2°C. Current policies put the planet on track to experience approximately a 2.6-3.1°C rise by 2100, according to UN estimates. Yet, with every tenth of a degree of warming comes much more extreme weather. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide and methane accumulation in the atmosphere is at the highest level ever recorded. The burning of fossil fuels by humans accounts for about 90 percent of these emissions. According to the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the scientific group that advises the UN process, insufficient commitments paint a “bleak picture” for the future.
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