Article
The mood of COP29 in Baku can be characterised by global and national uncertainties and contradictions about achieving the net zero and 1.5-degree targets. Turkey's strategy can be similarly characterised.
COP29, the 29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), was completed last month in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.
Just as our ancestors gathered in Göbeklitepe at certain times of the year, immediately before they settled down and started agriculture, government delegations, experts, non-governmental organisations and activists from 198 countries come together at COP every year. But the world we live in now is different. In the intervening thousands of years, humanity has done so much that species have disappeared, ecosystems have been polluted, and the greenhouse gases emitted by industrialisation and the use of fossil fuels have led to climate change at the level of a global crisis.
When we imagine the meetings in Göbeklitepe, we usually think of an optimistic and magical atmosphere. How future generations will remember the COPs depends on how accurately humanity sets goals and achieves effective results in the fight against the climate crisis.
And the summit in Baku was a disappointment from this point of view. Why?
Possible Trump effect
The main scientific targets we have are those of the Paris Agreement of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius within our current century, but working towards keeping it below 1.5 degrees.
Another goal is for economies to reach net zero in the second half of the century. In other words, an equilibrium in which as much greenhouse gas as we emit can be recycled by sinks.
The election victory of Donald Trump in the USA, the country that has historically emitted the most greenhouse gases in the world, has made it harder to achieve the already difficult target of staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius. It is almost certain that Trump will withdraw from the Paris Agreement, as he did in his first term, and it is even rumoured that this time he may go further and leave the UNFCCC altogether. No one thinks he will honour national climate goals. Although American states and the private sector gave messages of determination in Baku, the effects of the federal government’s divergence from the world’s climate agenda cannot be underestimated. This may not only set a negative example for other states, but also the withdrawal of a giant like the USA from public climate funds will make it difficult to achieve global financing targets.
The main topic of COP29 was finance.
The three major finance topics on the agenda of COP29 were the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), which will determine the amount and nature of climate aid to developing countries, Article 6 on the establishment of carbon markets, and the Loss and Damage Fund established for assistance after climate-related disasters.
The NCQG negotiations were the most controversial topic and extended the summit by two days. They also drew a reaction to their conclusions.
The target was up for discussion in Baku because the commitment target (the amount of money that developed countries need to transfer to developing countries for them to reach their net zero targets) set in 2009 (at $100 billion per year) was set to expire in 2025 and a new one had to be set. At the end of the negotiations, the target had tripled to $300 billion, but given inflation and growth rates, it is hard to see this as a meaningful increase. A road map of $1.3 trillion has been determined for the total financing to be provided by all actors. Even the UN’s annual requirement for developing countries’ climate policies is in the range of 670–971 billion dollars. This includes mitigation and adaptation targets, but not the Loss and Damage Fund or the resources needed for nature conservation and restoration.
Six main discussion topics
The negotiations were not only about the target amount either. Carbon Brief lists the six main topics of discussion as follows:
1) No agreed definition of what counts as “climate finance.”
2) Climate finance accounting is not consistent or transparent.
3) Some climate funds do not serve the fight against climate change.
4) The reliance of climate finance on loans overestimates the impact of the funds transferred.
5) Countries can report money that they have pledged but which has not actually been transferred and therefore will never be spent.
6) Climate finance is used to boost the economic interests of donors.
Given that 198 countries had to reach a consensus in Baku, it is not surprising that the negotiations on the financial target, with so many variables, were so difficult.
As emphasised in Heinrich Böll Stiftung’s Debt Relief for Green and Inclusive Recovery Project, climate funds in the form of debt increase the burden on developing countries. It is essential to prioritise grants in the funds and alleviate the debt burden. African countries also argue that climate finance should be realised in a way that does not create new debt burdens.
Another controversial question is who will provide the funds. The Framework Convention classifies the responsibilities of countries as Annex-1 and Annex-2 countries according to their status in 1992. The fact that countries such as China, India and Gulf countries, which were not considered developed countries at that time, do not contribute to this fund today causes criticism.
In fact, China already provides certain amounts of climate funds to Southeast Asian and Pacific countries. However, the details of these funds are not known and it is seen that a significant portion of these funds are again provided as loans, not grants. In its research, the World Resources Institute points out that China provides a considerable amount of climate funds to developing countries. China is an economy that can no longer be considered to be behind the West, both in terms of its current power and its historical emission totals. Although the UNFCCC’s list of donor countries has not been expanded, it was decided to include South to South voluntary aid from “developing” countries such as China within the scope of climate funds. In addition to the $300 billion set for developed countries, the $1.3 trillion demanded by developing countries was set as a weak, less binding target. This targeted will be aimed at through broader participation.
Linda Schneider, Senior Programme Officer at Heinrich Böll Stiftung, stating that the language used in the final text obscures the responsibility of developed countries that the Paris Agreement established, points out that COP29 has made history with this backward step.
In the end, an agreement was reached through the Belem Roadmap process, which was designed to develop agreed bilateral targets and financing opportunities, and the ball was kicked into the long grass of COP30.
The last bastion of multilateralism is being tested
Geopolitical tensions played a decisive role in the weak leadership-level attendance and funding target of COP29. At the very beginning, the location of the summit was largely shaped by Russia’s veto: with other EU and NATO member states in Eastern Europe no longer an option, the organisation was left to Azerbaijan, with relatively limited diplomatic capacity. Observers agree that this had an impact on the way the negotiations proceeded.
Factors such as Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections, making the major player a lame duck in international climate policies, the collapse of the government in Germany and the early elections, the government crisis in France, the budget burden imposed on the West by the war in Ukraine, and the general state of economies must have put downward pressure on the funds.
No wonder that a multilateral diplomatic mechanism – perhaps the last bastion of multilateralism – is under such strain in a world dominated by geopolitical tensions, national polarisations and transactional relations.
Apart from the NCQG, another financial headline was the Loss and Damage Fund. This fund was established at COP28 in addition to the adaptation and mitigation targets, which are the two main pillars of global climate policies. Spearheaded by the countries that are most vulnerable to climate change, this fund aims to compensate for the loss and damage arising from natural disasters caused by climate change. However, no financial commitment was made for the Loss and Damage Fund at COP29.
Another issue in the negotiations was related to Article 6 of the Paris Agreement on the establishment of international carbon markets. The negotiations, which began with the controversial move of the COP presidency on the first day, resulted in a compromise. In this way, in the ninth year of the agreement, all the pillars of Article 6 have been largely completed with the adoption of rules regulating country-to-country trade under Article 6.2 and a new international carbon market under Article 6.4.
However, some observers believe that weak mechanisms carry great risks. The logic of carbon markets is that they act as a financial penalty–incentive mechanism for countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Countries that emit more greenhouse gases compensate for their emissions by purchasing carbon credits from countries that emit less greenhouse gases or sequester more greenhouse gases. However, due to legal gaps and lack of supervision in carbon markets, back doors are opened for countries with high emissions and fossil fuel companies.
Criticisms of carbon markets as a “false solution“ are both based on lived examples, such as the sale of phantom certificates, and are seen as distracting governments from focusing on mitigation targets. Details on Article 6 will continue to be discussed at COP30.
Turkey pavilion
During the delegation negotiations at COP, side events are organised where policies against climate change are discussed. In these events, scientific reports are announced, policies that local governments follow/may follow are evaluated, and climate-related issues from agriculture to public health, from women to children, from security migration are discussed at length. Countries, companies, NGOs and international organisations both explain their climate policies and organise sectoral or thematic discussions with the activities they organise in their pavilions. Turkey’s pavilion was also a point of interest for its simple and elegant design featuring the country’s monumental trees and endemic plants, and also for its Turkish coffee. At a time when hundreds of thousands of trees have been cut down to open mining areas in the Ida (Kaz) Mountains, the monumental tree exhibition at COP could have been organised as a protest. Likewise, while Turkey is the largest plastic waste receiver in Europe, a Zero Waste Campaign was launched and a Sustainable Development Goals board made of plastic buttons was placed in the pavilion. The small size of the panel area and the audience was the subject of complaint. This was perhaps a metaphor for the shrinking democratic spaces in the world.
A small surprise was the Nasreddin Hodja figure contributed by Konya Municipality. It provoked the question of whether we are giving a message to humanity that “with our economies based on fossil fuels and unlimited consumption, we are cutting the branch we are sitting on.”
Turkey participated at the presidential level in the summit, which otherwise had low participation from world leaders. Erdoğan summarised the country’s climate policies with a mitigation projection based on the triple pillar of renewable energy, energy efficiency and nuclear energy.
For Turkey, the most important development at COP29 was the publication of the 2053 Long Term Climate Strategy. The document, presented by Minister Murat Kurum, is actually a road map for the net zero target set by the government for 2053.
An announced but undocumented target to leave fossil fuels behind
Prof. Dr. Semra Cerit Mazlum from Marmara University states that Turkey has changed its position, moving away from demanding financing this year and not following a clear position among the main parties of the finance negotiations. Although she finds the document’s emphasis on renewable energy appropriate, she underlines that we do not see “a clearly quantified and traceable roadmap for emission reductions.” After all, for net zero, you either need to reduce fossil fuel use and thus your emissions, or you need to develop your carbon sink areas – for example, forests. If you cut down forests or mine coal and produce energy from it, you should at least say how long you will continue to do so. If this is not done, the seriousness of the net zero target becomes questionable.
Ümit Şahin, Climate Change Cluster Coordinator of the Istanbul Policy Centre, who introduced the “Coal Exit and Just Transition in Turkey” project at COP29, pointed out that the strategy does not include an “absolute emission reduction target” and “coal exit policy,” which means that the country “has not made a commitment to reduce energy emissions, the most important part of its emissions.” According to Şahin, Turkey needs to reduce coal in the next 10 years and then completely phase out coal in the energy sector: “Unless it does so, the energy transition that has already begun will turn into an unplanned and unfair transition, to the detriment of coal workers, their families and communities. This will damage Turkey’s economy and risks creating a public backlash against climate policies.”
Özgür Gürbüz, a member of the Ekosfer Association and writer for Birgün newspaper, says that Turkey’s strategy does not answer many questions: “We have learnt that renewable energy will be 50 percent, we have learnt that 30 percent will be nuclear, we have not learnt whether the remaining 20 percent will be hydrogen, whether that hydrogen will be green, or whether it will still be supplied from fossil fuels. We have also not found an answer to the question of why Turkey is turning to nuclear energy, which is three times more expensive than renewable energy and twice as expensive as renewable energy with batteries.”
Kıvanç Görkem Üçlertoprağı, Chairman of the Board of Transpasifik Enerji, states that coal is no longer competitive in many parts of the world and will be out of the equation as solar and wind energy become more efficient. He also points out that another problem with coal is its extremely high water consumption rate. It seems that the “unplanned and unfair transition” dynamic pointed out by Şahin, i.e. the inevitability of moving away from coal due to market dynamics, is also expected by the private sector.
After the presentation, Minister Kurum also answered questions. In response to a question from Berkan Özyer from Greenpeace Turkey, he unexpectedly stated that the use of fossil fuels will be ended “in time.” Thus, for the first time, an official in Turkey has declared a goal to phase out fossil fuels.
What about nuclear?
One of the arguments in favour of nuclear energy is energy supply security. In other words, the question of where energy will come from when there is no sun and wind in a country. The Dunkelflaute in Germany, where nuclear power plants have been shut down, causes energy prices to rise sharply and affects neighbouring countries. Gürbüz also points out that Turkey is lucky in terms of geography for renewable energy: when wind and sun are not available in one region, they can be available in other regions. According to Ümit Şahin, nuclear energy is an obstacle to renewable energy, and as such, there is a contradiction between the two pillars of the long-term strategy.
Üçlertoprağı, a private sector representative, also points to the same contradiction: “These are base load power plants. Base load is no longer very desirable. We need more flexible power plants that will come into operation when there is no sun and no wind.”
According to Prof. Dr. Semra Cerit Mazlum, the increasing global political interest in nuclear energy arose as a result of the Global Stocktake (GST) decision taken at COP28.
In this, nuclear energy was listed as one of the sources that should be increased in order to reach the 1.5 degrees Celsius target, together with renewable energy. Turkey has joined the ranks of countries that have announced a goal of tripling the global nuclear power capacity by 2050, and there have been reports of talks with US officials for both large and small modular power plants. Mazlum believes that Turkey’s interest may be linked to the need for energy investment and international financing for energy.
In the face of these global and national uncertainties and contradictions on how to achieve the net zero and 1.5 degree targets, one cannot help but wonder whether Nasreddin Hodja’s actual COP29 message was “What if it works!”
