COP29 has completed its first week with some successes, but also with a series of controversies.
France’s top climate official is not going to COP29 in Baku after Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, reacting to criticism for cracking down on dissidents ahead of COP29, accused France of “brutally” suppressing climate change concerns in its overseas territories. He accused both France and the Netherlands for their “neocolonialism”, which he linked to climate change. Both France and the Netherlands categorically reject this.
On Tuesday Argentina’s president, Javier Millei, also pulled out the country’s delegation, saying they will not participate in the negotiations. This is interpreted as an indication that he will follow Donald Trump, whom he met earlier in the week, if and when he pulls the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Like Trump, he previously called global warming a hoax.
In another controversy, Aliyev defended his country’s plans to continue expanding production of oil and gas, saying these are a “gift of God”. He criticised what he called double standards from Western nations “for lecturing countries on climate change while remaining major consumers and producers of fossil fuels”.
With many world leaders skipping it, so far COP29 has been marked more by division than unity, and of course Donald Trump’s re-election has cast a big shadow, but there have been areas of progress.