COP29 talks already dampened by Trump win

Climate Focus

By Sharon Kimathi, Energy and ESG Editor, Reuters Digital

Hello!

The outcome of the United States presidential election has dampened the mood of the 29th Conference of the Parties before it's even begun.

Donald Trump's victory has darkened the outlook for a strong deal at the COP29 climate summit next week in Baku, Azerbaijan, and will increase pressure on Europe and China to lead international progress in curbing planetary warming, according to climate negotiators.

Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, has said he plans to withdraw the U.S. from the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement at the start of his second presidency, and his policy advisers have floated removing the U.S. from the underlying UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1992.

Climate negotiators and observers preparing for the COP29 conference said that a Trump return reduces the ability of countries to agree to a new global finance target or increase the pool of countries that should contribute.

This year's COP29 has been dubbed the "climate finance COP" for its central goal: to agree on how much money should go each year to helping developing countries cope with climate-related costs.

This comes as the annual U.N. Environment Programme report said that the amount of finance provided to developing countries to help them adapt to the impacts of climate change is far short of the $359 billion a year needed even after the biggest annual increase yet.

Agreeing on the amount and use of climate adaptation finance is central to the talks this year.

Such financing would cover activities including building flood defenses against rising sea levels, planting trees in urban areas to protect against extreme heat and ensuring infrastructure can withstand hurricanes.

It doesn't help that leaders from major economies, including the United States, the European Union and Brazil, are planning to skip the summit altogether.

Perhaps it's because this year's COP29 overlaps with the Group of 20 summit in Brazil on Nov. 18-19, where leaders will also discuss efforts to finance the climate transition.

But have no fear as Sustainable Switch will still be here giving you daily updates of COP29 and any G20 climate-related talking points from Nov 11-22. I'll also post about developments from the summit on my LinkedIn, so do check it out.

The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said that this year is "virtually certain" to eclipse 2023 as the world's warmest since records began. "The climate is warming, generally. It's warming in all continents, in all ocean basins. So we are bound to see those records being broken," C3S Director Carlo Buontempo told Reuters.

An helicopter flies as smoke billows from the Mountain Fire in Santa Paula, California, U.S. REUTERS/David Swanson

Thousands of people were under evacuation orders in Southern California as fast moving wildfires engulfed homes, authorities said, with the National Weather Service issuing a red flag alert that described the situation as "particularly dangerous."

Fueled by abundant grass and scrub, with wind gusts up to 80 mph (130 kph), the blaze had burned over 20,000 acres (8,094 hectares) by Thursday evening, authorities said. Several civilians were injured and a "significant" number of homes, businesses and other structures were destroyed, Ventura County fire department Captain Tony McHale said.

The world was hit by so many floods and landslides in 2024 that it triggered the aid sector's first multi-disaster insurance pay-out, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told Reuters, signaling both the scale of the problem and the need for new financing solutions.

The European Union's climate commissioner reaffirmed EU plans to end sales of CO2-emitting cars in 2035 and tighten CO2 limits next year, after pressure from some governments and carmakers to reconsider the policies. The EU has passed a law to ban sales of new CO2-emitting cars from 2035, effectively outlawing new diesel and petrol engines.

Big-name retailers such as Walmart are increasingly using analytics to blunt the impact of one of the most unpredictable performance variables of shopping – the weather. Demand for such data is growing amid heightened weather volatility due to climate change. New weather-data tools, centered on pricing, may soon be hitting the market. Click here to learn more about weather analytics in retail.

A Dutch court will rule next week on Shell's appeal of a landmark 2021 court ruling. The decision ordered Shell to reduce its carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 from 2019 levels. Click here to learn more.

Damage to businesses in towns hit by floods in eastern Spain could rise to more than 10 billion euros, with banks' loan exposure to the area alone worth around 20 billion euros ($21.82 billion), representatives for local firms and a Bank of Spain official said.

The government earmarked around 10.6 billion euros to help victims of some of Europe's worst flooding in decades. At least 217 people died and more are still unaccounted for.

The amount that analysts expect in insured losses from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which recently wreaked havoc in the United States. In addition to hurricane damage, insurers have seen a rise in losses from so-called "secondary perils" such as storms, hail, wildfires and floods in recent years, which they attribute partly to climate change.

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