BAKU, Azerbaijan — The same week Donald Trump won his second U.S. presidential election backed by billionaire climate deniers and vowing to “drill, baby, drill,” the 29th United Nations Climate Conference (COP29) kicked off across the world in the petrostate of Azerbaijan. Skepticism ran high. 

Average global temperatures have continued to march upward regardless of who occupies the White House, and climate activists noted how after the United Arab Emirates hosted COP28 in 2023, led by the head of the country’s state oil company, the resulting deal was “full of loopholes for the fossil fuel industry” instead of clear plans for setting global emissions targets. 

Not to be outdone, the number of oil and gas lobbyists attending COP29 exceeded that of any other delegation. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Heydar was vice president of his country’s state oil company for nearly 20 years until he took over from his father as the country’s autocratic leader in 2003. Fossil fuels now account for 90% of exports and 60% of government revenue. In what climate scientists called a “sick joke,” Azerbaijan recently announced plans to raise gas production by a third. 

Like COP28 and COP27 before it in Egypt, there was pressure from human-rights groups for the host country to release political prisoners. Some boycotted COP29 alto­gether due to Heydar’s crackdown on environmental activists and critics and Azerbaijan’s 2023 military occupation of the Nagorno-Karabakh region that forced out 100,000 Armenian inhabitants after 30 years of separatist rule.

Those who attended the summit in the capital city of Baku along the Caspian Sea came on government visas with strict conditions. Most stayed in the tourist zone and rode shuttle buses to the sprawling COP29 conference center ­erected in the parking lot of a massive soccer stadium. Unlike past years, flags from UN member nations did not line the entrance. Once inside, long corridors stretched out from a central hub in different directions to Zones A, B, C, D and E, each with its own meeting rooms behind security guards. One room was named for Nagorno-Karabakh, which ­Armenians call the Republic of Artsahk. 

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“Many people feel these COP negotiations are increasingly disconnected from reality,” said Akram Al-Khalili, a protester from the Palestinian delegation. Midway through the two-week conference, he joined hundreds in a demonstration where participants were limited to humming and clapping while holding up banners for an allotted time and then left in groups for security reasons. 

With so much at stake, activists and NGOs combined their strength as civil society to navigate restrictions and organize a constant series of events and actions to push delegates to negotiate a deal in which long-polluting rich countries would finance mitigation and adaptation to the climate crisis — seen in a historical perspective as “climate debt” — and everyone agreed to limit carbon emissions to keep global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures.

Frontline nations and indigenous community leaders scarred by climate disasters spoke with great urgency about avoiding ineffective solutions like carbon capture and nuclear energy. 

“A lot of people died,” said Carolina Santos, a climate activist from Brazil, when recalling the impact of global warming-fueled heavy rainfall that led to floods in the southern part of her country in 2023. “A lot of people lost their houses, everything they had, especially poor people, and they’re still recovering.”

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called for “drastic measures” after global warming-fueled heavy rainfall led to floods that killed hundreds in his country in late October, saying, “We need to undergo decarbonization, adapt our towns and ­infrastructure.” 

Colombia’s Environment Minister and COP29 ­Delegation Chair Susana Muhamad discussed her country’s plan to phase out fossil fuels despite being a major exporter of coal as well as its suspension of coal exports to Israel. “We are calling other countries to not supply … fossil fuel energy that is used in genocide,” Muhamad, who is of ­Palestinian heritage, told Democracy Now!

“The same fossil fuel companies that profit from the destruction of the environment are also profiting from the genocide being committed against the people of Palestine,” noted Al-Khalili.  

On the final official day of the conference, activists held out hope for a good deal. “If we don’t seize this opportunity, Baku will be remembered as a place we failed to rise to the occasion,” said Mohamed Adow of Kenya, who has been participating in COPs since he founded PowerShift ­Africa in 2018 to shift energy policies to zero carbon. “This is the worst COP in recent memory,” he later concluded.

COP29 ended with a “bad deal” in which wealthy countries — including the United States, the biggest historic polluter — rejected a $1 trillion proposal from developing countries facing the greatest impacts of climate change. They instead agreed to a $300 billion climate finance deal that activists called “a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed.” 

“For two weeks, rich, developed countries didn’t put a figure on the table until the final day. That meant there was very, very little opportunity to be able to interrogate that figure or to find out more detail,” Asad Rehman, executive director of War on Want and lead spokesperson for the ­Climate Justice Coalition, told Democracy Now!

“Now with Brazil coming up,” Rehman continued, “there is an opportunity, not only because of the Lula presidency, which has said that it’s committed to tackling climate, but that also we as civil society have social movements in Brazil. And of course we’re able to exert pressure both on the outside and on the inside.”

Trump says he will again withdraw the United States from the legally binding international treaty called the ­Paris Agreement that underlies the COP talks. Thus Americans working in a federal capacity are unlikely to attend COP30 in Belem, Brazil, near the mouth of the Amazon River. For the first time in several years, the city will also host a ­People’s Summit similar to counter-conferences organized at past COPs. 

“I appeal to governments to see this agreement as a foundation — and build on it,” said U.N. Secretary-General ­António Guterres as COP29 wrapped up. He com­mended “all the delegates, young people, and civil society representatives who came to Baku to push parties for maximum ambition and justice.” 

Guterres urged countries to deliver new economy-wide national climate action plans aligned with the 1.5°C goal well ahead of COP30 and demanded that “the biggest emitters must lead.”

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