COP29: What was achieved and the Road to Rio

As 2024 comes to a close, we wanted to reflect back on this year’s climate COP that took place last month, as well as take a look at some of the campaigns we worked on this year to accelerate positive change.

*COP President bangs the gavel at the COP29 Closing Plenary. Credit: COP29 Azerbaijan.*

Today COPs are easily beaten down by the media. Again, this year it was hosted by a petrostate and like before there were a number of no-shows from the world’s biggest polluters. Yet, despite these setbacks there were rallying cries for action - of which the UK seemed to lead.

Of course, COP isn’t the only mechanism to drive global climate action, and it is likely that as the climate crisis becomes more urgent we can expect other international meetings like G20 and IUCN World Conservation Congress to step up.

Legislation for businesses is also strengthening and broadening; it’s focussing on how businesses measure, report, and reduce the impact they’re having on the planet, and how the planet is impacting them. Legislation’s direct impact on the biggest businesses is then trickling down to smaller businesses in their supply chain. Verification and disclosure frameworks (e.g. Carbon Disclosure Project, GRI, Ecovadis, SBTi, B Corp) are also starting to align, either formally or informally, both with each other and the leading legislation such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).

And we’ve seen that consumers are shifting their buying behaviour. Products marketed as reducing their impact on the planet are increasing their market share, and now make up 17.3% of purchases compared to conventionally marketed products - despite the current high inflation rates around the world. Products making ESG-related claims accounted for 56% of all growth in the last 5 years.

Imagine how much more quickly business and societal behaviour would continue to change if we saw strong and effective leadership from global governments.

So, back to the COP.

This year was dubbed the ‘finance’ COP.

When struck with Covid-19, advanced economies marshalled $8tn over the course of just 48 months to support their citizens and businesses. Would it be foolish to hope for a similar response to the most existential crisis of our time? Let’s find out…

What happened at COP29

Week 1

Nationally Determined Contributions

Approaching the January 2025 deadline for Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) - we expected a ‘ratcheting up’ of language and commitments at COP29.

The UAE announced its new NDC aiming to reduce emissions by 47% from 2019-2035.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that the UK will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 81% by 2035, relative to 1990 levels.

Brazil announced its new commitment to reduce emissions between 59% and 67% by 2035, as compared to its 2005 NDC.

But like so many of these announcements, it is not enough and it’s all far too slow. The Climate Action Tracker report puts temperature rise at 2.7°C with current policies and action, and 2.1°C when looking at pledges and targets.

Renewable Energy

Renewable energy capacity needs to increase threefold by 2030. China has done most of the heavy lifting here so far, but we hoped that there might be some serious pledges and commitments made in the COP29 arena.

The Global Energy Storage and Grids Pledge was announced, which aims for a sixfold increase in global energy storage to 1500GW and a significant grid expansion by 2030. It was backed by the UK, Uruguay, Belgium, and Sweden. This is the kind of government support that is needed to help renewable energy completely displace fossil fuels, not just coexist with them.

Under the IEA’s more optimistic view of global energy, renewables are currently on track to grow 2.7-times greater by 2030 - just short of the commitment made by world leaders to triple renewables by the end of the decade. So, we’re getting there…

Climate Finance

At this ‘finance’ COP, parties were anticipating significant commitments of climate funding.

Currently, finance flows to enhance adaptation efforts are not remotely close to what is needed (particularly in climate-vulnerable developing countries) to keep up with the rapidly intensifying impacts of climate change, according to the latest UNEP Adaptation Gap Report. The world is far off track from what is really needed, estimated at around $359 billion a year.

*António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, speaks at a press conference during COP29. Credit: COP29 Azerbaijan.*

Week 2

Climate Finance

Week 2 started off a bit rocky. Instead of setting a global goal for at least $1tn in new funds for developing countries to tackle the climate crisis, the text contained only an “X” where numbers should have been.

What was ultimately agreed by the end of the summit was $300 bn of climate finance annually for developing countries by 2035. This commitment falls far short of the tripling target, when adjusting for inflation. This led many to be disaffected at the outcome.

Carbon Markets

By the end of week 2, countries had agreed on rules for a global carbon market to buy and sell carbon credits - that proponents say will mobilise billions of dollars into new projects to fight global warming. Parties struck an agreement that will allow a centralised UN trading system to launch as soon as next year. Negotiators also spent time trying to work towards a system for countries to trade directly. We are yet to see how this will play out, but know that Article 6.2 is now ‘greenlit’ to move forward.

The Global South is on the frontline of the climate crisis. We must remember that climate change relates acutely to social justice. It is an incredibly uneven problem - those least responsible are paying the price. We hope that future COPs see the climate crisis increasingly through this lens, to ensure that its process leads to a fairer, just world.

As we look to COP30 we can hope that sufficiently ambitious NDCs will be set, the phase out of fossil fuels will be ratified, and the Amazon - and what it represents - will take centre stage.

A look at MSQ/Sustain

At MSQ/Sustain we believe that creative ideas can accelerate positive change.

Here are some examples where we’ve worked with broad coalitions across the major tenets of COP, from nature to the carbon market.

Reduce & Invest

The voluntary carbon market has taken a beating over recent years. It’s been widely criticised as a form of indulgence where polluters can pay to have their sins absolved.

We were tasked with changing this narrative, because research shows that actually more direct emissions reductions are made by companies that invest in the VCM, compared to those that don’t.

The voluntary carbon market isn’t about making false carbon neutral claims. It’s about climate action that goes above and beyond decarbonisation.

Just as any company can (and should) reduce their emissions year on year, they should also account for what they haven’t managed to reduce each year.

We came up with ‘Reduce and Invest’ as the mantra for every CEO to follow in a climate crisis. We posted ads in the FT and are creating a booklet for CEOs to read.

The market isn’t perfect, but every investment provides additional climate finance that our world sorely needs.

Nature Positive

We have been trying to get nature on the climate agenda for a long time. It is finally breaking through. We are seeing the term ‘Nature Positive’ in more places than ever.

This year our work headlined at NYCW and COP16 (Biodiversity Summit) and featured in Baku too.

In a move to put nature at the heart of policy and investment, we centred this year’s campaign on promoting the ways nature-based solutions could be used and activated. Essentially, we communicated ‘how’ nature-based solutions can draw down 10 gigatons of carbon, as a build to providing ‘why’ nature matters. We will continue this comms strategy into the future for COP30.

The campaign __with Nature promotes all the mechanisms, actions, and solutions policy makers and finance can leverage to draw down carbon. For example, ‘Invest with Nature’.

These are just 2 campaigns we’ve worked on for COP and beyond.

Next year we all need to keep pushing, accelerating what we can, with our fingers crossed that world leaders will deliver more at the next COP.