‘Extremely disappointing’: Watts blasts countries for blocking negotiations

Ministers have arrived in Baku, Azerbaijan for the second week of the COP29 climate summit and picked up where their diplomats left off on Saturday night – battling over work to accelerate global reduction of climate pollution.
New Zealand’s Climate Change Minister Simon Watts was among the developed and island nation ministers who lashed out on Monday at the countries that are seeking to block climate action. It comes after a week of frustrating negotiations on the Mitigation Work Programme came to nothing on Saturday, as the discussion was largely punted to June next year.
Some countries are hopeful, however, that a deal on the summit’s main goal of climate finance could put progress on the Mitigation Work Programme back on the table. The COP29 President, Azerbaijan’s Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Mukhtar Babayev, has appointed the environment ministers of Norway and South Africa to carry discussions forwards.
The pair chaired a ministerial round table on mitigation on Monday morning, where countries like New Zealand, Samoa and the United Kingdom pushed for greater action while Saudi Arabia and Bolivia said they would not be dictated to on how to decarbonise.
“Climate change is already the single biggest threat to the peoples of the Pacific, of which New Zealand is part of. We are not on track to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement,” Watts said in his statement at the round table.
“We need to scale up urgent action this decade and in this context, it is extremely disappointing to see some countries refusing to discuss mitigation. This is a finance COP but it also must be an action COP. Alongside the main outcomes of the NCQG on climate finance, we must have outcomes on mitigation.”
Watts also outlined New Zealand’s climate progress, including a highly renewable power system and the Government’s targets to double renewable generation by 2050 and build out an EV charging network.
The messages from ministers were not surprising, as they largely echoed the points made by officials in a session that ran into Sunday morning at the close of the first week of the summit. But they reveal the depth of feeling from some quarters on the importance of advancing progress on cutting emissions at a COP where the attention has largely been on finance so far.
Some parties are hopeful that a deal on finance will unlock progress on mitigation. This theory suggests that countries are holding other negotiations hostage in order to gain leverage in the all-important finance talks.
Others say even a major win on finance won’t be enough to swing the countries most reliant on fossil fuels, like Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are understood to have been furious at the decision in Dubai last year to “transition away” from fossil fuels and have spent the past year preparing to undermine and nullify that decision and any other push against oil and gas.
Countries have gone through this song and dance twice before, at the two COPs since the Mitigation Work Programme was agreed at COP26 in Glasgow. Each time, progress has been blocked by the likes of Saudi Arabia. Will pressure this time reach the sufficient level?
Finding a way through the impasse has the backing of Babayev, the COP29 President.
“As the world’s highest forum on climate change, COP29 cannot and will not be silent on mitigation. We will address the matter from every direction,” he said at the plenary session on Monday.
In addition to mitigation, the finance goal, Article 6 carbon trading and climate adaptation have all been assigned ministerial pairs by Babayev to make progress.
Australia’s Chris Bowen and Egypt’s Yasmine Fouad are charged with stewarding the global finance goal. They’ll speak with other ministers over Monday and Tuesday on three critical questions: The structure of the goal, the amount of money it will cover and who should contribute to it.
These are the key questions on the global goal, as Newsroom’s deep dive on climate finance explains.
Watts and Singapore’s Grace Fu will lead discussions on carbon trading. They hope to consult with ministers over the course of Monday and make rapid progress from Tuesday. If Article 6 can be resolved, that will leave more room for the monumental task of finding agreement on climate finance.
A report back from all the ministerial pairs will be due to Babayev on Tuesday evening, he said. The Azerbaijani minister has also called on Brazil and the United Kingdom to support him as he guides the various streams of negotiations, given Brazil will host next year’s COP and the UK is the most recent developed country host.
The clock is now ticking. There are just four days to the end of the summit, if it finishes on time. (They usually don’t.)
While diplomats in the first week were not empowered to make decisions that need political authorisation, that has changed with the arrival of ministers. The Presidency is hoping parties won’t play games with the time that remains and break out of their corners.
“I urge you, wrap up less contentious issues as early as possible this week, so there is enough time for the major political decisions,” UN climate chief Simon Stiell said Monday.
“We can’t lose sight of the forest because we’re tussling over individual trees. Nor can we afford an outbreak of ‘you-first-ism’. Where groups of parties dig in and refuse to move on one issue, until others move elsewhere. This is a recipe for going literally nowhere.”
Reuters reported a welcome breakthrough on climate finance negotiations after a week of little progress at COP29. The breakthrough, however, came not in Baku but in Rio de Janeiro, where the G20 is meeting for its annual summit. Countries have found an agreeable compromise on a way forward on one of the thorniest issues of the negotiations: Whether emerging economies like China should face finance obligations.
“Early Sunday morning, negotiators agreed to a text mentioning developing nations’ voluntary contributions to climate finance, stopping short of calling them obligations, according to two diplomats,” Reuters reported. Now eyes shift back to Baku, to see if the progress on this element can unlock progress on the rest of the global climate finance goal.
Have a look at a map of the route from Israel to Azerbaijan. If you don’t want to double or even triple the length of your flight, you’ll have to travel either through Iranian or Turkish airspace. For Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, who wanted to attend last week’s leaders’ summit in Baku, going over Iran was obviously not an option.
Multiple reports now suggest that when Herzog asked for permission to fly through Turkish airspace instead, it was refused. Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has championed the Palestinian cause since the start of the Israel-Gaza War last October. He even took time out of his own speech to the climate summit to denounce the environmental impacts of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
COP29 President Babayev held a press conference Monday, after the opening plenary of week two, taking questions on the way forward for the negotiations. Alongside some tough interrogation over Azerbaijan’s recent gas deals, Babayev got lobbed two softballs by local media. One asked whether Babayev agreed that COP29 was a success and would be a turning point in how successful COPs can be.
It was a reminder that independent press doesn’t exist here. Another reminder came a short while later, when it was revealed Europe’s top human rights official had written to Azerbaijan urging the release of imprisoned journalists.
“I ask the relevant authorities in Azerbaijan to immediately release all human rights defenders, journalists and civil society activists who are imprisoned for their legitimate work or for expressing dissenting or critical opinions,” Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, wrote.
Azerbaijan responded the same day, saying those imprisoned were accused of breaching the law and their prosecution had nothing to do with their professional work.