The last round of the U.N. climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, which ended late last month, was a travesty of injustice and a concerted attempt by polluting countries and corporations to run out the clock on climate action.
The very first day kicked off with dangerous and loophole-ridden rules on carbon markets getting rammed through before any official negotiations could take place, despite protests from civil society and multiple Global South governments and mounting evidence that these schemes do not reduce emissions. And the talks ended without the Global North paying up for their climate debt and doing their fair share, with more paltry outcomes being gaveled through without consensus, and despite multiple governments objecting. These unjust decisions amount to a death sentence for millions around the globe. And while these outcomes are undeniably tragic, they are also predictable.
This is the outcome of a process that allowed nearly 1,800 fossil fuel lobbyists to infiltrate the talks, and wealthy, powerful Global North governments like the U.S., EU, and U.K. to bully and intimidate anyone that stands in the way of profits.
Despite the disastrous failure by Global North governments like the United States to do their fair share, we must not stop, and we will not concede. Because even, and especially when, such reckless injustice is on display, it matters that we are there, with allies from around the globe, making sure this injustice does not go unchallenged. And it mattered that hundreds of thousands of people like you spoke up.
Here are just a few of the things you helped make possible during the climate talks in Baku:
The Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition released research that exposed just how many Big Polluters had been officially admitted to the climate talks: nearly 1800 in all. The number surpassed the 1033 delegates that attended the talks from the most climate vulnerable countries combined. The majority of fossil fuel lobbyists accessed the talks through a trade association. The presence of these polluters stood in a stark contrast to the stated goals of the conference.
And the fossil fuel industry was not the only industry lurking the halls throughout the negotiations: the KBPO coalition, in partnership with Desmog, reported the attendance of more than 200 agriculture lobbyists at COP29, a sector that contributes to one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Graphic that the KBPO coalition shared on social media plainly shows the injustice of the industry’s presence at the talks.
Alongside KBPO partners, we staged a day of action and sent thousands of emails to U.N. Secretary-General asking for his support for strong policies to keep Big Polluters from attending climate talks in the future. And that message reached far and wide, with extensive media coverage from the Associated Press, and more than 2,000 media hits in 92 languages.
Our allies at the Artivists network constructed this 15-meter long snake that slithered through the negotiation halls on the day of action, representing Big Polluter’s presence at the talks. Image credit: Bianka Csenki
Climate justice advocates, youth from around the world, human rights activists, Palestinian activists, and members of the KBPO coalition joined forces to throughout the U.N. climate talks in Baku to draw attention to the linkages between fossil fuels and violence like the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Together, we organized a collective action to demand that governments defund genocide.
Climate justice activists join Palestinians and others resisting the fossil-fueled genocide. Image credit: Bianka Csenki, Artivists Network
We co-hosted an official side event with several of our allies focused on the real solutions we have to address the climate crisis that are rooted in equity, gender justice, and Indigenous peoples’ rights, not corporate-driven distractions.
We brought together allies and partners from across the globe to discuss people-led, real solutions to the climate crisis.
There is still so much at stake, and there is still so much more to do, especially with a new Trump administration on its way in the door that will try to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement again and make it significantly more difficult to address the climate crisis domestically.
But no matter who is in the White House, we will continue to show up and insist that the voices of the people who are most impacted by the climate crisis, not the corporations who caused and continue to exacerbate it, should be the ones making decisions about the global climate policy.
