Was COP29 a Cop-Out? Those Bearing the Brunt of Climate Change Say Yes

It’s easy to get lost in the statistics of the climate crisis — the highest global average temperatures on record, 12,000 climate-related disasters over five decades, trillions of dollars in damage, and billions of people affected.

Perhaps that’s why the head of the UN’s climate body, Simon Stiell, opened COP29 on a personal note, displaying a photograph of him hugging his neighbor on the Caribbean island of Carriacou, in front of her hurricane-destroyed house.

“At 85, Florence has become one of the millions of victims of climate change this year alone,” he said, adding that even though she was “knocked down” she was already “getting back up again”.

But the message of optimism and hope didn’t last. On day 2, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, whose country hosted COP29, decried the “fake news media” and “so-called independent NGOs”, insisting fossil fuels were a “gift from God”.

Aliyev’s comments were a blow to anyone at the summit in Baku hoping to actually achieve something concrete that could benefit the planet.

And none felt it more keenly than those from those countries currently bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.

“I cried because I realized that the Global North will never realize their mistake,” Patience Nabukalu, a climate, gender, and human rights activist from Uganda, told Adrian Goldberg on the latest edition of the Byline Podcast.

Nabukalu is a veteran of COP summits, and what reduced her to tears was seeing it turn from a “climate conference to a business conference.”

“This is what I saw — over 1,700 fossil fuel lobbies in this space. These lobbies were more numerous than civil society representations.”

Nabukalu’s home continent of Africa is in the grossly unfair position of carrying a disproportionately heavy burden of the climate crisis, despite only being responsible for less than 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The latest report from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) highlights just some of the effects facing the continent, including multi-year droughts and extreme floods.

“I come from a country where flooding, droughts, lost cultures, lost lives, lost traditions are the order of the day”, Nabukalu said.

“I come from a country where people like me don’t have hope for the next day because of the continued devastating impacts of climate change.”

Restoring that hope requires money, and COP29 didn’t deliver.

A last-minute deal brokered at the summit saw developed nations — who have by far contributed most to the climate crisis — commit to transfer $300bn a year to poorer countries by 2035.

While this may sound like a lot, it’s well below the $1.3tn that economists have calculated they actually need.

While hugely disappointing, Nabukalu points out that the outcome of the summit does make sense in a perverse way.

“The people that have contributed most to the climate crisis, they are at the center of deciding the solution to their own problem that they have created,” she said.

Fellow guest Professor Mark Maslin, from University College in London, explained that poorer nations were asking for $1.3tn in order to allow them to invest in their own greener future, as well as fighting the climate crisis in a way that developed nations themselves are suggesting.

“Developing countries were saying they need $1.3tn — which is actually still less than 1% of the world’s GDP — to basically allow them to skip fossil fuels and go directly to renewables,” he said.

“So in many ways, this COP was a deep disappointment, and I would say a failure.”

Compounding the disappointment of COP29, Nabukalu is confronted in her own country by the very things that will only exacerbate the climate crisis.

Since 2017, the European multinational company Total Energies has been constructing what will be the longest electrically heated crude oil pipeline in the world.

The 1,443 km-long East African Crude Oil Pipeline will transport crude oil from Uganda’s Tilenga and Kingfisher oil fields, to the Port of Tanga, Tanzania on the Indian Ocean.

“It is planning a climate bomb in the making”, Nabukalu said of TotalEnergies. 

“Over 100,000 people will be displaced by this single pipeline. A third of it is passing through Lake Victoria,” she said.

Nabukalu points to the example of the Niger Delta, where a series of oil spills have devastated the area’s ecosystem, and destroyed communities. 

“Almost 40 million people depend on Lake Victoria,” she adds.

Byline Times asked TotalEnergies about the concerns raised about the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, but had not received a response at the time of publication. 

Concerns over the climate crisis have only grown with the recent election victory of Donald Trump who has encouraged US oil and fracking companies to “drill baby, drill“.

But Professor Maslin insists all hope is not lost just yet.

“We have everything to play for. And yes, we’re going to lose the US for four years. Let’s just ignore them and move on,” he said.

“We don’t necessarily need the US, it is the biggest economy, but we need other countries to fill that void. We need them to actually take leadership on.”

And according to Professor Maslin, Africa has a leading role to play.

“Africa is where the greatest growth in resources, the greatest growth in youth, the greatest growth in all that economic power is going to happen in the next couple of decades,” he said.

One small bright spot at COP29 was the example being set by the UK. While its long industrial history makes it one of the top ten global contributors to climate change, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged to reduce UK emissions by 81% by 2035

The target has been lauded as an ambitious goal, and — with the US out of the fight for four years at least — could put it front of centre on the global stage in tackling the climate crisis.

“If the fifth largest economy in the world can go green, make money, and still support its population, then that’s a message to the rest of the world,” Professor Maslin said.

“That says ‘look, renewable energy is cheaper, cleaner, safer and more secure. The UK has done it. Guess what? So can you.’”

Listen to the full episode of the Byline Podcast, presented by Adrian Goldberg, here.