In Baku, will climate action trump a defiant prez-elect?

Baku: As negotiators make their way to the Azerbaijan capital for the UN climate talks (COP29), the big question on their minds is the implication of Donald Trump's election as the 47th President of the US.

The President-elect has made no secret of his disdain for the multilateral climate regime, and is expected to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement, and maybe even the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. A formal notice to withdraw can be given only after January 20 when Trump takes office. It will be a year before the formal process of withdrawal is completed.

The US, though lame duck, will be present and negotiating at Baku. It will have serious implications for negotiations to set a new goal for climate finance to be provided to developing countries by the rich industrialised ones.


"The US delegation, known for their fearsome legal expertise, will be working around the clock to ensure that whatever is agreed to on finance is something that they can be part of in the future," said Camilla Born, an independent expert who served as a senior advisor to the UK's COP26 Presidency. "We won't have the flexibility that might have been there if the US were not a party," she said. The US will therefore be negotiating to ensure that there is an opportunity to return to the multilateral climate talks.

The world has been in this situation before - in 2016 in Marrakesh, Morocco - when Trump was elected for his first term.

Negotiators from developed and developing countries point out that even under President Joe Biden, the US has not been the most forthcoming on climate finance for developing countries.

Challenge for Rest of the World
“On that count, I don't think much has changed,” said Mohamed Adow, founding director of the Nairobi-based think Power Shift Africa.

However, Adow said that challenge is now for rest of the world, particularly Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada. “Can they actually step forward and provide them much needed confidence that the rest of the developing countries are looking for,” he asked.

This is where the talks on climate finance get complicated. The EU and its members have been leading the table on providing climate finance. But tighter budgets, particularly for lead contributors like Germany and France, are likely to mean less room to manoeuvre. Some experts and negotiators are of the view that the EU is likely to be even more rigid on its demand that developing nations, which have since 1992 become richer and their emissions risen considerably, should become contributors.