There may never have been a worse time for the United Nations to conduct negotiations on climate change. Post-pandemic inflation has upended countries around the world, straining public budgets and diverting governments’ attention from climate action. Conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to rage, confusing the priorities of powerful countries like Russia, Iran and the European Union. To top it all off, the United States just elected Donald Trumpwho called climate change a “hoax” and withdrew the United States from the 2015 Paris climate accord during his first term.

Nevertheless, in a few days, thousands of negotiators and activists will gather in Baku, Azerbaijan, to try to advance the global fight against climate. This year’s conference, known as COP29, is widely recognized as a transitional affair without the landmark importance of the 2015 Paris negotiations – or even last year’s summit in Dubaiwhich saw the nations of the world finally agree to move away from fossil fuels. Nonetheless, next week, negotiators plan to tackle key issues that could determine both how the world mitigates carbon emissions and also how it addresses the growing toll of climate disasters in developing countries .

Here’s what to watch out for:

A new goal for international climate aid

The main item on the COP29 agenda is the what we call the “new quantified collective objective” a target stipulating how much climate aid money rich countries should send to poorer countries. This funding is supposed to help developing countries transition to renewable energy and adapt to climate impacts such as droughts and sea level rise. Negotiations will be tense, as rich countries have reneged on past commitmentsand much of the money they to have sent was in the form of expensive loans, or was questionable value for the climate fight. All this adds up to the fact that developing countries and many experts say current aid commitments are not low enough. A UN report published earlier this week found that adaptation efforts in particular are underfunded to the tune of $180 billion to $360 billion per year.

“It’s not just about the volume of money,” said Emilie Beauchamp, an activist with the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a climate-focused think tank. “It’s about whether the funding is actually reaching those who need it most. »

Negotiators aim to set a new target by the end of the COP. Vulnerable countries are demanding an annual commitment amounting to billions of dollars. But key questions remain about who should pay money and who should receive it. The United States and Europe have clamored for massive economies like China and oil-rich states like Saudi Arabia. to contribute financially even though they were considered “developing” countries when the UN began negotiating on climate change. These countries have resisted these calls, pointing to the fact that the United States and Europe are historically responsible for more total emissions. This geopolitical impasse has delayed progress in negotiations for months, and is essential to a comprehensive global agreement on climate aid.

Taking over from the United States

The first days of each COP are marked by a parade of announcements from world leaders and their key ministers, who take the stage to tout – and quantify – their countries’ commitment to the climate fight. In this year’s series of announcements, there will be an elephant in the room: the United States, which is the world’s largest economy and largest historical emitter, is expected to formally withdraw from the international climate fight as soon as possible. that Trump will take office next year. Current President Joe Biden is not attending the COP, and even if senior officials in his administration make new pledges, they could be difficult for other countries to take seriously.

The question is whether other major emitters, particularly China and the European Union, will step up their ambition to try to close the gap that Trump risks creating. Ministers in these countries are probably already preparing for a Trump victory. But as Europe and China have grappled with economic malaise in recent years, it’s unclear what other governments will be willing to promise when it comes to clean energy and adaptation investments.

Coordinating the global energy transition

The big news from last year’s COP28 was the “UAE consensus” document, an agreement in which all the world’s major economies, including the United States and petrostates like Saudi Arabia , have committed to moving away from fossil fuels. The text calling for “a move away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a fair, orderly and equitable manner” has been carefully crafted, but must now be put into practice. It is unlikely that the Baku summit will result in another agreement of this scale, but each country will detail the more specific commitments it plans to make to advance this energy transition.

One of the most important actions is the regulation of methanea greenhouse gas that is several times more potent than carbon dioxide. The United States, European Union and Canada have all unveiled sweeping new regulations on methane from oil wells and industrial facilities in recent years, but COP negotiators are expected to make further progress on restrictions methane from agriculture, which represents around a third of production. global gas emissions.

“A few years ago (agriculture) was sort of the third rail of methane — you didn’t want to touch it because the politics around it were so bad,” said Jonathan Banks, senior policy adviser at Clean Air Task. Force, referring to the reaction of farmers in countries like the Netherlands. “But we have reached a milestone in agriculture.”

There will also be major debates on the role of nuclear energy, which has attracted renewed interest in recent years from countries seeking continuous, non-carbon emitting energy, as well as on the carbon removal and storage technologies, which the oil industry has touted as a key way to reduce emissions. There are deep disagreements within and between countries over whether or not these technologies constitute climate solutions; A line from last year’s COP28 agreement, which suggested coal power could be used for decades provided it was accompanied by carbon capture, sparked strong objections from the from some negotiators.

Chop up climate reparations

Two years ago, long-wealthy nations pledged to provide what amounts to reparations for their role in climate change. Because these first industrialized countries are historically those that have emitted the most greenhouse gases, they should send money to poor countries to help them recover from climate disasters that the latter did not contribute to causing. . This commitment was the realization of a demand that small island states and developing countries in Africa had been seeking for years.

But the devil is in the details: the new “loss and damage” fund is hosted by the World Bank, which has a troubled legacy with developing countries, and rich countries have only capitalized the new fund to the tune of $700 million, a fraction of the total need. The big question at this year’s COP is whether or whether this fund can get off the ground. bogged down in bureaucracy that it is failing to address the challenges facing the countries it is supposed to help.

Quarrels over carbon markets

One of the main ways that big companies claim to have made progress towards their emissions reduction targets is through what is known as the voluntary carbon market. It works like this: When climate pollution is too difficult or expensive to reduce directly, a company can simply buy credits representing emissions avoided or sequestered elsewhere (for example, through an afforestation project that promises to keep the carbon locked in the trunks of newly planted forests). trees). Now the United Nations is trying to create its own carbon market – but for countries, not corporations. The goal is to give nations more ways to cooperate to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Some experts say such a market could accelerate global emissions reductions and reduce the cost of climate change mitigation. But the issue is extremely controversial and environmental groups fear that a UN-backed carbon market would reproduce the same defects like those observed in voluntary markets. Some scientists have criticized carbon markets because they legitimize “junk» makes up for it don’t permanently keep carbon out of the atmosphereor it was going to happen anyway.

HAS last year’s COPdiplomats made no progress whether over the development of the UN carbon market, disagreeing over the types of carbon credits that should be eligible for trade and the methodologies used to generate them. This year’s COP president has promised to take the market “to the finish line”, but disagreements remain. likely to persist. Some commentators claim that Trump’s re-election has “diminished enthusiasm» for a solid result.

Joseph Winters contributed reporting to this article.