Cop29: ministers told to ‘cut theatrics’, ‘move faster’ and ‘get down to business’ amid growing frustration at slow progress – as it happened

But before I go, here are the main lines from today’s non-action at the summit.

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  “Cut the theatrics,” UN climate chief Simon Steele told country representatives in Baku, after talks over the key issue of climate finance stalled, with developing countries insisting they need over $1tn a year and richer nations balking at the cost.

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  There was a lot of frustration at Cop29, with progress on a climate finance agreement very slow. Shirley Matheson, WWF global NDC enhancement lead, said: “There’s a lot of frustration in the room. There’s a lot of anxiety. There’s a need for parties to really get together and work through this.

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  One of Europe’s top human rights officials accused Cop29 host country Azerbaijan of jailing activists and journalists for their work and opposition to the authorities. Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, called for Azerbaijan to immediately release them.

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  Australian climate change and energy minister Chris Bowen said reaching an agreement before the week is out was proving difficult. Bowen said the finance goal needed to cover what he called “the big three” issues: the quantum, the contributor base and the structure of a funding agreement.

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  The internationally agreed goal to keep the world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is now “deader than a doornail”, climate scientists have said. Three of the five leading research groups monitoring global temperatures consider 2024 on track to be at least 1.5C (2.7F) hotter than pre-industrial times.

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  But senior US officials insisted the world can still meet the 1.5C target, but not without ambitious climate action from China. In recent days, the US and China have reaffirmed joint commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions other than CO2, a rare example of collaboration between the rivals.

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  Meanwhile, the UK and the US signed a new agreement for civil nuclear collaboration on the sidelines of Cop negotiations. The agreement aims to pool billions in research funds to speed up the development of new technologies such as advanced modular reactors.

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That’s about it. I’ll be back with you early doors tomorrow morning to kick the live blog off for another day of climate negotiations coverage.

“Now is the time to be brave,” Cop29 president Mukhtar Babayev has told the summit at the start of the second week, writes Damian Carrington, Guardian environment editor.

That is when ministers take over the negotiations from their officials and can take the political decisions needed to unblock progress. He said:

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People have told me that they are concerned about the state of the negotiations. Let me be clear, I’m also concerned that the parties are not moving towards each other quickly enough. It’s time for them to move faster.

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Politicians have the power to reach a fair and ambitious deal. They must deliver on this responsibility. They must engage immediately and constructively. The highest possible level of ambition is indeed difficult, and it requires courage. Colleagues, now is the time to be brave.

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Babayev announced that Brazil and UK ministers have been drafted in to help push forward the negotiations on the critical issue of the trillion dollars a year of climate cash needed.

That is in addition to the ministerial pairs already working on the specific issues. These pairs are always one from a developing country and one from a developed country.

G20 nations cause 80% of all emissions and it is rare for their annual meeting today to coincide with the climate Cop – that is an opportunity, said Bubayev:

Their leadership is essential to making progress. We cannot succeed without them, and the world is waiting to hear from them. We want them to provide clear mandates [to their negotiators] to deliver at Cop29.

The UN’s climate chief Simon Steele also rallied ministers to action:

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There is still a ton of work to do to ensure Cop29 delivers and [countries] to be moving much faster towards landing zones, particularly on the [climate finance goal]. I’ve been very blunt. Climate finance is not charity. It is 100% in every nation’s interest to protect their economies and people from rampant climate impacts.

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Ministers who have just arrived need to roll up their sleeves and dive into the hardest issues. Bluffing, brinkmanship and premeditated playbooks are burning up precious time. So let’s cut the theatrics and get down to the real business this week.

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Bubayev got two softball questions from journalists from Azerbaijan, where press freedom is essentially nonexistent. But Shauna Corr, from the Irish Daily Mirror, threw a tough one: “How many oil and gas deals have Azerbaijan done this year while leading these talks? And do you think that’s good leadership when the aim of Cop is to reduce fossil fuel use?” Azerbaijan is significantly increasing its gas production.

Bubayev, who formerly worked for Azerbaijan’s state oil company, gave a non-answer:

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The main oil and gas producing countries [have] already adopted decarbonisation programs. All of the world, and petrostates, I mean, the oil and gas countries – there is a good chance for these countries to demonstrate their leadership in this issue and to increase the investment to green energy transition projects.

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One of Europe’s top human rights officials has accused Cop29 host country Azerbaijan of jailing activists and journalists for their work and opposition to the authorities.

In a letter published on Monday, Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, called for Azerbaijan to immediately release all jailed human rights defenders, journalists and civil society activists.

In the letter, dated 4 November but just released, O’Flaherty cites the cases of Akif Gurbanov, Alasgar Mammadli, Imran Aliyev and Anar Mammadli, all of whom were held earlier this year on charges of foreign currency smuggling, tax evasion and forging documents.

Since 2023, more than a dozen staff and journalists from three media outlets have been arrested on similar charges, he noted. Azerbaijan is one of the 46 members of the Council of Europe.

O’Flaherty said in his letter:

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I am concerned at reports that the criminal proceedings against these human rights defenders, journalists and activists were launched in regard to carrying out their legitimate activities …

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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 and to drop the criminal charges against them, as well as related restrictions, including a ban on travelling abroad.

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Furthermore, I note that there have been reports of ill-treatment and torture of several human rights defenders, journalists and activists while in police custody, as well as restrictions on the right of access to a lawyer of their choice.

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In a response, also dated 4 November, the Azerbaijani authorities told O’Flaherty that their country was committed to upholding its obligations under human rights law. Their letter added:

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The investigative authorities have undertaken proceedings in question based on credible suspicions of violation of certain articles of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan. It should be emphasized that no journalist or media representative is being targeted for carrying out their professional work in Azerbaijan.

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There is a lot of frustration at Cop29 today, with progress on a climate finance agreement seemingly very slow.

Experts have said a total of $1tn US dollars (£790bn) needs to be flowing into developing countries each year by 2030, bar China, to meet the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global heating below 2C.

But the first week of negotiations achieved limited progress and hit walls in talks on adaptation, cutting emissions and keeping previous commitments on track.

My Guardian colleague Fiona Harvey earlier reported that developed countries are dragging their feet on climate finance, as developing nations, many particularly exposed to climate disasters, grow increasingly desperate.

“Last week was a very tough week,” Mark Lutes, WWF senior adviser for global climate policy, told the PA news agency at Cop29 on Monday.

Lutes said discussions stalled as negotiators likely stuck to their given mandates amid “very difficult political issues”.

“It’s the ministers who always resolve these difficult issues,” he said.

Shirley Matheson, WWF global NDC enhancement lead, said: “There’s a lot of frustration in the room. There’s a lot of anxiety.

“There’s a need for parties to really get together and work through this.”

The internationally agreed goal to keep the world’s temperature rise below 1.5C is now “deader than a doornail”, climate scientists have gloomily concluded, writes Oliver Milman, environment reporter for Guardian US.

Three of the five leading research groups monitoring global temperatures consider 2024 on track to be at least 1.5C (2.7F) hotter than pre-industrial times, underlining it as the warmest year on record, beating a mark set just last year. The past 10 consecutive years have already been the hottest 10 years ever recorded.

Although a single year above 1.5C does not itself spell climate doom or break the 2015 Paris agreement, in which countries agreed to strive to keep the long-term temperature rise below this point, scientists have warned this aspiration has in effect been snuffed out despite the exhortations of leaders currently gathered at a United Nations climate summit in Azerbaijan.

“The goal to avoid exceeding 1.5C is deader than a doornail. It’s almost impossible to avoid at this point because we’ve just waited too long to act,” said Zeke Hausfather, climate research lead at Stripe and a research scientist at Berkeley Earth. “We are speeding past the 1.5C line an accelerating way and that will continue until global emissions stop climbing.”

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The climate crisis is right here, right now, taking lives and livelihoods across the world, as my story earlier today on supercharged extreme weather lays bare. That makes protecting people even more vital than ever, from flood defences to heatwave plans to resilient water supplies.

The UN climate chief Simon Stiell spelled out in forceful terms today – “the difference between life and death” – why it is critical that Cop29 delivers the funding for this adaptation, as part of the overall finance goal.

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“This year, we saw how every bit of preparation – every policy, every plan – is the difference between life and death for millions of people around the world. People, communities, nations want to act, to protect themselves and their loved ones, to strengthen their businesses and economies – but they do not have the means.

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And when nations can’t climate-proof their links in global supply chains, every nation in our interconnected global economy pays the price. I mean literally pays the price, in the form of higher inflation, especially in food prices, as savage droughts, wildfires and floods rip through food production. We must flip this script.

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[But] there is a stark financial gap we must bridge. Adaptation costs are skyrocketing for everyone, especially developing countries. Their costs could rise to $340 billion per year by 2030.

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It’s easy to become slightly anaesthetized by all these numbers, especially at this finance-focused COP. But let’s never allow ourselves to forget: these figures are the difference between safety and life-wrecking disasters for billions of people.

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Almost half the human population live in climate vulnerability hotspots, where people are 15 times more likely to die from climate impacts. Personally, I find that fact deeply disturbing, practically offensive in some ways. It certainly keeps me up at night, and I’m guessing it also does so for many of you.

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We can no longer rely on small streams of finance. We need torrents of funding. The funding exists. We need to unlock and unblock it.

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A small tax on just seven of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies would raise $15 billion in the first year alone to help the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries pay for the escalating cost of damage caused by the climate crisis.

New analysis from Greenpeace and Stamp out Poverty shows a minimal tax on companies which have seen their profits spiral in recent years would see the UN’s Loss and Damage fund rise by more than 2000%.

Abdoulaye Diallo, from Greenpeace International’s Stop Drilling Start Paying campaign said: “Who should pay? This is fundamentally an issue of climate justice and it is time to shift the financial burden for the climate crisis from its victims to the polluters behind it.”

She said the analysis revealed the scale of the urgent need for innovative solutions to raise the funds to meet it.

“We reject Big Oil’s assault on people and democracy and call on governments worldwide to adopt the Climate Damages Tax and other mechanisms to extract revenue from the oil and gas industry.”

The ‘Climate Damages Tax’ would see a global tax put on every tonne of carbon emitted by the coal, oil and gas extracted – starting at $5 per tonne and rising each year thereafter.

If it was imposed on ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, TotalEnergies, BP, Equinor and ENI it could raise $15 billion in the first year alone, the study shows.

Currently, just $702 million has been pledged to the loss and damage fund, while the combined profits of those fossil fuel companies exceeds $148 billion.

The briefing also highlights the financial costs of some of this year’s worst climate driven weather events, which caused at least $64 bn in damage and represent just a fraction of the global cost of loss and damage over the last year.

David Hillman, Director of Stamp Out Poverty, said: “While oil and gas giants keep raking in grotesque levels of profit from exploiting resources, the damages resulting from the industry’s operations are disproportionately borne by people who did not cause the crisis. A climate damages tax – along with other levies on fossil fuels and high-emitting sectors – will make polluters pay for the cost of climate impacts, as well as supporting workers and affected communities in the transition to clean energy, jobs, and transport.”

There are reports from AFP that the UN secretary general António Guterres yesterday called on the G20 leaders who are gathering in Rio de Janeiro to rescue the stalled concurrent UN climate talks in Azerbaijan by showing “leadership” on cutting emissions.

“A successful outcome at Cop29 is still within reach, but it will require leadership and compromise, namely from the G20 countries,” Guterres, who will attend the summit of the world’s biggest economies starting Monday, told a press conference in Rio.

AFP reports: “The annual UN talks in Baku are deadlocked at the midway point, with nations no closer to agreeing a $1 trillion deal for climate investments in developing nations after a week of negotiations.

The talks are stuck over the final figure, the type of financing, and who should pay, with Western countries wanting China and wealthy Gulf states to join the list of donors. All eyes have turned to Rio in the hope of a breakthrough.

“The spotlight is naturally on the G20. They account for 80 percent of global emissions,” Guterres said, calling on the group to “lead by example.”

Climate was an issue advanced by several of the leaders as they converged on Rio.

US President Joe Biden, making a stopover in the Amazon, talked up $11 billion in bilateral climate financing his administration has allocated this year.

He also – in a reference to President-elect Donald Trump taking over from him in two months – declared that “nobody” could reverse the “clean energy revolution” directed by his government.

European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Rio jointly launched a campaign to boost renewable energies in Africa.

“Tripling renewables globally until 2030 would mean a cut of 10 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions,” von der Leyen said at an event put on by the advocacy group Global Citizen.

She said the EU was increasing investment around the world for the building of infrastructure of renewables, “specifically in Africa” through the bloc’s Global Gateway program – designed to rival China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The European Union is the world’s biggest contributor for climate financing, most of which goes through multilateral funds.

Chinese President Xi Jinping – whose country is the planet’s biggest polluter – made his own plea for the G20 to step up international cooperation against climate change.

The leaders of the world’s biggest economies should coordinate efforts in areas such as “green and low-carbon development, environmental protection, energy transition and climate change response,” he said in a tribune published in Brazil’s Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.

The G20 should “provide more funding, technology and capacity-building support to Global South countries,” he said.

Brazil is hoping to channel the focus on climate in the two-day G20 summit for it to feature prominently in the meeting’s final declaration.

Marina Silva, Brazil’s environment minister, said it was “fundamental” that the G20 participants “do their homework” and see to it that the COP29 negotiations move forward.

We are now embarking on the second week of talks in Azerbaijan, and critics have been calling Cop29 “stuck”, “logjammed”, “on a knife edge”, and “foundering”. One respected commentator, Mohamed Adow, director of the Power Shift Africa thinktank, said: “This has been the worst first week of a Cop in my 15 years attending these summits. There’s been limited progress … I sense frustration, especially among the developing country groups here at Cop. The presidency isn’t giving any hope for how the world will strike the right compromises.”

This kind of weariness is understandable, especially from people stuck in windowless rooms for 18 hours a day. And the frustration of developing countries is real – climate finance, the subject of this Cop, is a matter of life and death for them, and rich countries are certainly dragging their heels on coming up with the sums needed.

It has been a gruelling week, beginning last weekend with a tedious row over the agenda as countries led by Saudi Arabia – predictably and reprehensibly – tried to sideline discussions of the “transition away from fossil fuels” that was agreed last year, as a way of unpicking that resolution. That led to long nights, even at an early stage.

Added to that, world leaders failed to turn up in the numbers expected, with many of them – Biden, Scholz, Macron, von der Leyen and Trudeau among them – facing troubles at home. The Cop process itself has come under attack, with a group including a former UN secretary-general, a former UN climate chief, and a former UN climate envoy, calling for reform.

But to be too gloomy about these talks at this stage would be wrong. There is a deal to be struck here – and as Germany’s respected development minister Jochen Flasbarth warns today, putting it off to next year means trying to run these talks with Donald Trump in the White House.

This is my 18^th Cop – my first was Cop10 in Buenos Aires in 2004, in the distant days when Argentina was a developing world climate champion. From my perspective, the first week of Cop29 has not seen great movement, but nor has the Cop shown signs of falling apart – unlike the infamous Copenhagen Cop15, in 2009 which was already a shambles by the midway point. With negotiations lasting two weeks, progress on breaking down the key obstacles will inevitably be limited, at the halfway mark.

The Cop presidency has made some missteps – rolling out the red carpet to oil companies; the Cop chief executive appearing to offer facilitation of fossil fuel deals to an undercover journalist. But it has not allowed the agenda to spiral out of its control, as the Danish prime minister’s office did at at Cop15, which ended in mayhem. (Though also with a useful deal, which many people forget.)

We must all remember, too, that Cop29 is breaking new ground, so it’s not surprising this is turning out to be tricky. This is the first time there have ever been substantive negotiations on finance at a Cop.

When the totemic target of ensuring $100bn would flow to developing countries each year by 2020 was put on the table, in the last days of Copenhagen, it was done with only brief prior discussion. (The finance announcement took even the UN by surprise – Ban Ki-moon, when I interviewed him just after he had stepped off the plane at Copenhagen, confidently told me that developing countries must resign themselves to leaving Cop15 without promises of cash. When the story appeared, he was promptly shot down by the Cop presidency and told to recant – so he claimed to have been misquoted. He wasn’t.)

Finance ministers don’t even come to Cops, under normal circumstances, or make only occasional brief appearances – these meetings are usually run by environment ministers or foreign ministries. To get an idea of how constrained other ministries are by the finance department, take the speech by UK foreign secretary David Lammy this September. Lammy wanted to announce the UK’s return to climate leadership on the global stage, in contrast to his Conservative predecessors. But he was not allowed to confirm the UK’s pledge of £11.6bn of climate aid, set out under the previous government – because the UK’s finance minister, Rachel Reeves, would not set out the UK budget until the following month.

That constraint is fairly typical across governments – no other ministries may preempt Treasury decisions. So the involvement of finance in this year’s talks is an added complication for many.

Finding the money to put developing countries on to a green path makes sense for rich countries, and for rapidly developing economies such as China, as much as it does the poor. Not only would it prevent climate chaos, help stem climate migration, and prevent the reversal of development in stricken countries – it would also open new markets for countries with low-carbon expertise to sell into. A trillion dollars a year is only about 1% of the global economy, and is less than a third of the amount spent globally on energy every year. These talks are not a lost cause. A deal at Cop29 would lift everybody, and it is there to be grasped.