“$2.4 trillion to kill each other is not too much, but $1 trillion to save lives is unreasonable?”
In many ways, peace and security had never enjoyed a higher profile than they did at COP29 in Baku and yet developed countries failed fragile and conflict-affected states. Ellie Kinney takes stock of what happened at COP29 and looks ahead to COP30 next year.
A failure of ambition
Ahead of COP29, we wrote that this COP would inevitably be judged on its climate finance outcomes. By this benchmark, COP29 was far from a success. In its closing hours, governments agreed to increase the annual climate finance ‘goal’ to developing countries from $100 billion to $300 billion, alongside an ‘aspiration’ to mobilise $1.3 trillion a year from public and private sources by 2035.
As the gavel came down, some countries were still waiting to voice opposition to a text that the Climate Action Network called “wholly inadequate”. Despite the Azerbaijani presidency’s attempts to place the blame entirely on Western governments, delegates complained that it had been one of the hardest presidencies to work with; the UK and Brazil were eventually brought in to keep the process from collapsing.
Disappointment in COP29’s outcome centred in it locking in unambitious climate finance for the next decade: developing countries had called on developed countries to step up and provide an ambitious goal made up of grants. The final text contained no commitment on how much of the goal would be provided through grants, and the aspirational $1.3 trillion specifically called for the mobilisation of private finance, which risks worsening debt crises in developing countries.
But the devil lay in the detail — or rather the lack of it. The initial text for the new climate finance goal was a hefty 34 pages long, and states refused to negotiate the text until it was dramatically cut down. This meant that in the final days, valuable details like the need to improve access to climate finance for fragile and conflict-affected states was cut, to the disappointment — but not surprise — of civil society, who had been calling for such action.
World peace in our time?
Climate finance ambitions fell far short of needs, but did the Azerbaijani presidency at least achieve its ambition to create the first ‘COP of Peace’? Mentions of the presidency’s COP Truce fell quiet around the time that it was due to begin at the start of November but the sound of the guns did not. The Truce was ultimately signed by 131 states, but the notable absence of many belligerents meant that world peace didn’t feel any closer in November than it did in October. Peace processes are unique, complex and crucially, collaborative process between the parties involved. This blunt and temporary truce proposal at a time of such global fragility, from a government that launched a full-scale military offensive on its neighbour little over a year ago, felt both hollow and performative.
That said, the COP29 presidency’s decision to continue the peace agenda was welcome. COP29’s Relief, Recovery and Peace Day was marked with the launch of the Baku Call on Climate Action for Peace, Relief and Recovery. The call seeks to build on the momentum of the COP28 Declaration on Climate, Relief, Recovery and Peace by encouraging states to turn commitments into action.
The Baku Call could have been an opportunity to fill the gaps in the earlier Declaration — namely any mention of the role that military actors must play in preventing climate and environmental damage — but sadly the Call fell short. Responsibility for this lies with the presidency, in spite its claims that the drafting process had been ‘highly inclusive’, key stakeholders from the humanitarian, peacebuilding and development sectors were not given the opportunity to contribute to the Call’s development. There is considerable expertise within civil society on the intersection between peace, conflict and climate, and future COP presidencies would benefit greatly from taking a more collaborative approach to harness this.
“Plant the seeds for peace”
While the COP29 presidency may have shied away from addressing the environmental and climate impacts of militaries, many states were keen to use this global platform to do so. The World Leaders Summit in the opening days of the conference set the tone. Many states drew attention to ongoing conflicts. Turkey spoke of the “humanitarian and environmental disaster” of Israel’s attacks on Palestine and Lebanon. Sudan highlighted its conflict’s “impacts on people and the environment”, which include “unsustainable practices due to the war, such as the felling of trees, an increase in pollution, and the destruction of infrastructure”. Yemen drew attention to its own “major crises”, “due to the war ongoing for 10 years”. Poland highlighted that “Russian aggression against Ukraine has shown us that armed conflicts result in serious environmental damage and pollution”. A number of other delegations also drew attention to the conflict-climate intersection, addressing, as Belarus noted, the “more than 50 conflicts in the world that have harsh effects on the climate and on our planet”.
Alongside highlighting specific conflicts, others pointed to the juxtaposition of record breaking rises in military spending alongside inadequate climate finance commitments. Panama called out the absurdity of the situation: “Global military spending stands at about $2.5 trillion yearly; $2.4 trillion to kill each other is not too much but $1 trillion to save lives is unreasonable.” Serbia called for states to “invest much more in peace; otherwise we will have to put more money into armament instead of investing hugely in instruments to fight climate change.” Others, like Nepal, called directly for action, insisting that “the vast resources spent on arms should be redirected to mitigation efforts”, while Mexico, which has dedicated 1% of military spending to a reforestation programme, said: “…the proposal is simple but clear: the aim is to give fewer resources for war to plant the seeds for peace.”
Compared to previous COPs, this was a step change in visibility for the intersections of peace, conflict and climate change. It’s a tragedy that it has taken multiple large-scale wars and sky-high military spending to begin to trigger a shift in the discourse but it does feel as though the scales are tipping. It is vital that states now show leadership and turn their words into specific and actionable policy changes at the national and international level.
Showing leadership
Actionable change from states leading by example was a key theme at CEOBS’ side event: Transparent military emissions reporting and the path to military decarbonisation. The event showcased the progress being made by the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Slovenia and the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) in their efforts to increase the transparency of military emissions in national reporting.
Military emissions reporting to the UNFCCC remains voluntary for states and as a result, these emissions are largely absent from international reporting. As militaries become increasingly aware of the impact that climate change will have on their operations, some are choosing to address this directly by mitigating their emissions. Decades of underreporting of military emissions, compounded by UNFCCC reporting exemptions, has left the sector lagging behind in its ability to measure and manage its emissions, and it’s critical that spaces are created to reset norms in the sector and learn from those leading the way.
CEOBS was also proud to join Ukraine and the Initiative on GHG Accounting of War for a side event titled: Measuring climate impacts across the cycle of armed conflicts. The event launched new guidance for estimating the climate impact of conflicts, drawing on the work of the Initiative on GHG Accounting of War, which has been estimating the impact of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The event demonstrated how research on this topic is progressing and broadening by also featuring research estimating the carbon footprint of Israel’s attacks on Gaza.
Accurately estimating the climate costs of conflicts is critical not just for climate action but increasingly for questions of accountability and responsibility. The International Court of Justice is currently considering states’ international obligations in respect of climate change, a process initiated at the request of the UN General Assembly in March 2023. Palestine’s passionate intervention called on the court to provide specific guidance in its advisory opinion on state responsibility for the emissions resulting from armed conflicts and occupation, detailing how these are currently missing from UNFCCC reporting. This historic moment goes to show how critical and timely this area of research is.
Missing in action
While this year’s World Leaders Summit provided some moments of hope in an otherwise bleak conference, there were some surprising absences. Of the G7 leaders, only the UK’s Keir Starmer and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni attended, which was perhaps indicative of developed countries’ lack of ambition for the COP’s outcome. But it wasn’t just government leaders missing in action, new NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was also absent from the first COP under his premiership.
At COP26, his predecessor Jens Stoltenberg announced that NATO was “…developing a methodology to map military emissions across the Alliance. So we can cut them”. At COP27, he shared a NATO Summit agreement to “cut emissions from NATO bodies and commands by at least 45% by 2030, and towards net zero by 2050”. This target was reiterated at COP28, with the addition that “…by 2050, we should be net zero also in the armed forces”. For COP29, NATO didn’t even issue an official statement.
On COP29’s ‘Relief, Recovery and Peace Day’, Rutte was on a trip to Eastern Europe, visiting Poland, Latvia and Romania to watch NATO military exercises. Does this signify how much climate action and military emissions mitigation has dropped down NATO’s agenda? Rutte has subsequently called for NATO members to “turbo-charge our defence production and defence spending”, an objective currently incompatible with military emissions reductions.
Protests where possible
While global leaders were missing, global civil society flocked to Baku to demand action. It was yet another COP where protesting outside the venue would have been unsafe or illegal, so activists held protests inside the COP venue. These authorised protests had to be approved by the UNFCCC beforehand, with limits on what activists could say, do, and on noise levels. In spite of these limitations, actions constantly took place to draw delegates’ attention to topics, like militarism, that were not on the official agenda. On ‘Relief, Recovery and Peace Day’, CEOBS joined Peace Boat, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and many others to highlight the missing military emissions at COP and to call out increasing military spending at the cost of climate action.
Actions also took place in solidarity with those affected by conflicts, militarism and human rights abuses. For 30 minutes each morning and evening, activists read from a scroll naming each of the Palestinian civilians killed by Israel’s attacks on Gaza, and numerous actions throughout the conference called on governments to ‘defund genocide’. CAN International’s infamous ‘Fossil of the Day’ was awarded to Russia to commemorate 1,000 days of the full-scale invasion, while Palestine and Ukraine separately received a ‘Global Solidarity Award’ in acknowledgment of their wartime resistance. COP29 may have left conflict-affected countries out of its final text, but they certainly weren’t ignored by attendees.
The road to COP30 in Belém, Brazil
The Brazilian presidency faces a tall order. Many of COP29’s agenda items stalled and were pushed back to the June 2025 UNFCCC intersessional meeting in Bonn. This included how to progress the outcomes of last year’s global stocktake, potentially making for an already loaded agenda for Belém at the end of 2025. Furthermore, the conference risks being overshadowed by Trump initiating the US’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. Inspired by Trump’s election, Argentina withdrew its negotiators days into this year’s COP. Is it possible that other populist leaders may follow Trump’s destructive path?
Although many civil society representatives are looking forward to a COP finally taking place in a more progressive host country, Brazil remains one of the deadliest countries in the world for environmental defenders. While the country might not have the same relationship to inter-state wars that the UAE and Azerbaijan have, armed violence is highly relevant in the Brazilian context, and the country is the top military spender in Latin America and the Caribbean. Historic sensitives over protecting the Amazon and environmental security framings have contributed to a degree of reticence around the climate security agenda, so it critical that civil society remain willing to push for peace to feature on COP30’s agenda.
Ellie Kinney coordinates CEOBS’ climate advocacy.
