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Environmental and climate lawyer, Brazil/NY | PhD | LLM | Partner | Board Member | Law Professor | Stanford Woods Rising Environmental Leaders Fellow | LSE W50 | Make Our Planet Great Again Laureate | ESG CFA | B20/G20

[COP 29 OUTCOMES] I’m back from #COP29, and here’s my yearly summary of highlights: 💰 Climate Finance/NCQG: Developed countries have agreed to "take the lead" to channel at least $300 billion a year into developing countries by 2035 - without accounting for inflation, this is three times the Copenhagen 100 bn, set to expire in 2025, but still largely insufficient to address mitigation, adaptation, and L&D financing needs. Beyond the numbers, there is noteworthy wording as to sources (calling on “all actors” to scale up funds from “all public and private sources”, including MDBs, to “at least $1.3tn” by 2035) and contributor base (encouraging developing countries to contribute to climate finance “on a voluntary basis”).  Aiming to close the finance gap, the Baku to Belém roadmap to $1.3 tn is tasked with producing a report on how to scale up finance at COP30 in Brazil. Much finance work lies ahead: to define what actually counts as climate finance; to develop models that don’t drive countries further into debt; to review subsidies; and, perhaps more importantly, as the IPCC AR6 found there is no shortage of global capital, to redirect the money pipeline to the climate transition. 📈 Carbon markets: COP29 broke a decade-long stalemate and delivered on both Article 6.2 (country-to-country trading), where high-level decisions with regard to authorizations, registries, and integrity/a process to identify and correct inconsistencies were reached; and Article 6.4 (Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism), with the establishment of a mandate to Subsidiary Bodies to ramp up implementation, mandatory human rights checks, and alignment with the “best available science”. ⚡ Energy transition: COP28 agreed on “transitioning away from fossil fuels” language, but at COP29 there was no decision on how to implement this transition, and no explicit mention of fossil fuels in the outcome documents.  📊 GST: there was no agreement on how last year’s global stocktake/UAE Dialogue should move forward. 🌎 Geopolitics/governance: negotiations were overshadowed by the likelihood of the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement/the Convention, criticism of the Azerbaijani COP presidency, Argentina recalling its delegates, and accounts of Saudi Arabia changing a text under negotiation. There were calls, including by former UNSG Ban Ki-moon, for reform of the COP process. COP29 delivered a mixed bag of incremental progress and challenges. 2024 is likely to be the hottest year on record, and extreme climate events have cost over US$2 trillion in the last decade, a context that makes COP29 results look paltry. But I won’t join the “Flop29” chorus: by striking deals on key agenda items, COP29 is still a step forward, and reaffirms climate cooperation in a world fraught with geopolitical and economic tension. As imperfect as climate multilateralism is, we’re worse off without it. Watch this space for a more detailed account and updates on legal topics I discussed in Baku.

Mayra Souza

Global Trade Leader | Board Member | D&I Champion

1mo

#iwontjointheflop29chorus 🙋🏻♀️

Miriam Mazza

Senior Counsel - Environmental - ESG Legal @ Abbott

1mo

Thanks for the great summary, my friend Alessandra Lehmen

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