101: What to expect from COP29, following Trump’s victory?

Joining Matt and Jen for a look-ahead to COP29 are Dr Simon Evans, Deputy Editor and Senior Policy Editor at Carbon Brief, and Professor Francesco Sindico, Professor of International Environmental Law at the University of Strathclyde Law School and Director of the Climate Change Legal Initiative.

Relevant links:

https://www.wri.org/insights/cop29-climate-summit-what-to-expect

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Matt: Hello and welcome to Local Zero with me, Matt. 

Jen: And me, Jen.

Jen: So, if the last episode was episode 100, that makes this episode 101 – right? 

Matt: Certainly does, and episode 101 has a lovely ring to it. Now, rather than place our worst climate nightmares into room 101, we're actually going to be looking ahead to COP29 in the hope that it isn't a nightmarish scenario this time around.

But jokes aside, COP 29 is taking place from the 11th to the 22nd of November in Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan. And as the name suggests, this will be the 29th Annual Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, otherwise known as COP. 

Jen: It's chance for the 198 parties to the Convention to assess what progress is being made towards tackling climate change, and to agree – or not agree – on what actions need to be taken next.

Now the pod is no stranger to COP, because we kicked off in the run-up to COP26 in Glasgow, but there've been two COPs since then which we didn't really dig into, so we are really well overdue this chat today. 

Matt: We absolutely are. Now joining us to share their hopes, expectations and perhaps fears for COP29 is Professor Francesco Sindico. He is a Professor of International Environmental Law at the University of Strathclyde's Law School and is also Director of the Climate Change Legal Initiative amongst many, many other things. 

Jen: And we'll also be joined by Dr Simon Evans, who's a Deputy Editor and Senior Policy Editor at The Carbon Brief. I'm sure many Local Zero listeners are already loyal readers of The Carbon Brief, but if not, it's a website that covers the latest developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy. It's really a go-to. 

Matt: It absolutely is. And we're always referencing Carbon Brief and Simon's name has been taken in vain more than once before. So really great to have him along. But before we get into this episode, a quick reminder that LinkedIn is now the place to follow Local Zero. That's where you can ask us questions, give us feedback or suggest guests and topics. Just search for “Local Zero podcast”. 

Jen: Yep. And wherever you listen to Local Zero, remember to hit the “subscribe” button to make sure you get every episode as soon as it's released.

Matt: Right, Jen, a big episode, a big topic area. We've got some big guests, but before we get stuck in, let's have a little kick around. There is more than one topic that I think we need to tie off here. I think the first is that this is episode 101. And if my math is correct, that means the last one was 100, and we had a bit of a centenary celebration, which was great.

I know you weren't present, but we had Fraser, we had Becky, Becky Ford, former podcast host and founder. So for those who haven't listened, worth checking out on your feed – get stuck in. And we had some really lovely comments from some long-term listeners. Matt Cole, who leads the Fuel Bank, which does a lot of work around fuel poverty and helping people in that. “I do enjoy listening to the podcast. You're in my faves”.

Osbert Lancaster: “Congratulations. I've only recently discovered the podcast, really enjoying it”. And we had some other really pleasant comments. So I'm thrilled that we've reached 101, but today's not about looking back – it's about looking forward. But before we can look forward, we're also being bombarded with news as we record about today's budget announcements.

Now, if we were recording an hour later, we may have been in a position to digest some of the responses, okay. There's a couple of things that are emerging as we speak, things around fuel duty, taxes on private jets, windfall taxes, and oil and gas, but, um, Jen, I think this is one for the future, no? 

Jen: A hundred percent. I mean, Rachel Reeves is stood making the announcement right now. So yeah, we can digest this at a later date. 

Matt: So, absolutely, I mean, there's a whole range of issues that aren't going to be covered today, but there are some newsworthy topics. I'm going to flag the forthcoming ban on disposable vapes.

Now, why am I flagging this apart from a personal and a professional stance? This is great news in terms of reducing litter, reducing wasted resources. I mean, there's all sorts of stuff that ends up sort of being chucked in the bin there, from batteries to copper to, uh, plastic. But our guest on episode 99, Less Waste Laura, was absolutely at the forefront of this and was, as I understand, it was even mentioned in the press release by UK government.

So look, a huge well done to Laura and the team there. This feels like a real win. UK, it's going to be June '25. And I think Scottish Government delayed their ban, I think from something like March or April in '25 to come in line with June. So whether you're in Scotland or England or you're visiting, you won't be able to easily lay your hands on one of these in the future.

Jen: Yeah, it's amazing progress. And yeah, again, I add my "well done” to Laura for that – it's monumental. In slightly scarier news, we've had the first storm of the year. Now, in, a couple of years ago, um, the Met Office started naming the storms in their alphabetical naming formula, and we've had storm Ashley come through the UK, bringing very severe winds.

And I had friends up visiting that weekend, and it's making decisions like do they actually set off to come and visit us? Horrendous situation across Europe as well. So pretty apocalyptic. 

Matt: Yeah, I mean, some of the videos that you know, we've been seeing popping up on LinkedIn, from meteorology and climatology professors and scientific journalists.

I mean, this is apocalyptic stuff. I think there's a real power to the imagery, you know, real-time sort of imagery of these. And I've said on the pod before there were kind of certain jaw-dropping moments that I've, I've seen. And I think for me where I really hit home that climate change was here in the UK was – and I'll have to get my years right and summers right, because they're all blurring into one – was when we had some wildfires down south.

I think it was not this summer, but the previous one. And these swept into suburban Dagenham, which raised it to the ground. But some of the imagery, for people who are living in Spain, Italy, some of the imagery – and Germany too, earlier this year – this is unbelievable. But it's here now and I think that really sets up the wider discussion today about COP 29 and why it's so important.

Jen: Yeah. Do we have more positive news Matt? 

Matt: We do. Okay,  so let me point to the Wildlife Trust’s buyout of the Rothbury estate in Northumberland. I am a big fan of Northumberland. I don't hail from there, but kind of wish I did. Lovely place. And they've begun to buy out parts of about, it's about three-and-a-half-thousand hectare estate there from, I think it's from the Duke of Northumberland.

Why is this important? Because they're looking to, and again, quote unquote “rewild”, I'll probably get my wrist slapped for using that term, but they're looking to essentially turn this into a wildlife reserve, akin to what's happening at the Knepp Estate down south, also the Langholm initiative, uh, on the Borders.

Now, this is something relatively new in the UK, or at least this is the newest iteration of this, where big estates are being bought up, some by communities like Langholm, some just a change in use as, as these estates have been inherited, like Knepp. But with Rothbury, this is being bought by the Wildlife Trust and they are potentially going to do something really incredible here, from fell all the way down to the lowlands.

So I look forward to visiting and if anybody has any further information, do let us know.

Now, onto the big issues here. This is not the first COP we've covered. As you quite rightly said in the intro, Jen, when we kicked off the pod, it was in the lead-up to COP 26. We did some really good ones with Leo Hickman, who is also with The Carbon Brief – in fact, heads up the The Carbon Brief. We kind of did a sort of a before, during and after series.

So Leo talked about “what ifs” and what, you know, maybes and, and hopefullys.  Becky and I then went to COP 26 in Glasgow, roaming around with mics, speaking to people had a really, really eye-opening time. And then after it, we spoke with Professor David Reay, or Dave Reay, from the University of Edinburgh, about sort of reflections.

Um, but before we kind of talk a bit about COP 29, what are your memories of COP 26 – good, bad, uh, and in-between? Because it was a real circus that came to town in Glasgow, um, three years ago. 

Jen: Yeah, it is a standout COP for, for that reason, because it is so personal actually, which is immense – that you can take something like a Conference of the Parties and, and refer to it as “personal”.

Um, but I've been following the COPs for probably 15 years now. And there are, you know, some that stand out – and COP 26, not least because my flat was full. Every single place where somebody could sleep! 

Matt: Is a blur for me because I said, you know, we were recording for Local Zero. I had a pass to, I forget which it was, it was the Blue Zone. So the Green Zone was the kind of more informal space. The Blue Zone was, you know, where, where it was all happening. Um, but then there were sort of zones within zones. So I didn't get the sort of All Access VIP pass, which your John Kerrys and, uh, you know, your, uh, Jim Skeas would have had, but it was really interesting.

I mean, I think you probably have to go to five or six of these things in order to actually make sense of it. I was just kind of completely overwhelmed for two weeks, and just physically, mentally exhausted by the end of it. But what I did come away with was a sense of just how big this thing was, but how many different strands and little closed rooms.

And there was no single track where you could kind of follow proceedings. It was like, there was a thousand things happening simultaneously, but you could probably only grab hold of two or three of them, if you work really hard at that. So that's why somebody like Simon Evans, who always does a fantastic debrief on the COPs.

I mean, how he does that, I don't know, but I bow to him on this, but it will be a real team effort. I know The Carbon Brief are all over this. But I don't know, there's something about this uh, it's kind of pinged up on our radar. As I started to read a bit more about it, there are a few things that are, you know, really very much on the line here.

We'll hear more from Simon and Francesco about that. But this is particularly important given that, as we record, the US election is next week; we have a change in UK Government. It'll be interesting to see what's in the budget and what that might mean, or at least some of the rhetoric that our climate envoy will be taking to Baku.

But I think you and I more than once have talked about the sort of anxiety that leads up to a US election, that leads up to a COP. I feel it really acutely this year. Um, I don't know about yourself, but it's something I've heard a number of people refer to. 

Jen: Yeah, 100%. So actually, so COP 26 is, you know, so much going on on our doorstep. And it was actually a huge, you know, like you described, it's like a, almost like a kid in a candy shop – distracted, running around trying to eat all the exciting items and choose what to listen to and, and you know…

Matt: It's like Supermarket Sweep. 

Jen: Feeling a bit sick. Exactly! And actually one of the things it taught me is that there is very little point for me personally in trying to engage in what's going on in COP.

And it's better for me just to almost ignore it and then see what happens afterwards. So these briefings that come out of The Carbon Brief and so on are really, really important for me as well to know what happened. Because if you're trying to engage with it live, it is incredibly stressful, because of what is at stake, what's emerging, you see the negotiations and the, the effort going in and also the amazing lobbying and distraction.

And it's, it is really stressful. So it, actually on a personal level, COP 26 was the last one that I, I really engaged with, but COP 29 has been very much on the radar and coming up because of these kind of coming together of key political decisions and also key climate position statements as well coming out of COP 29.

Matt: Yeah, and I should note here, there are two well-known COPs, there's the COP sort of for biodiversity and ecology, which has been happening as well, and will conclude shortly as we record, but this is about climate, okay? And the climate one, and probably the biodiversity one too, are always scheduled every four years, or at least they're always scheduled in, in late October, early November, because it's before the US election.

Because that really does matter if you've got this Conference of Parties and everybody's, you know, your negotiating position is benchmarked against others. So, depending on whether it is Harris or Trump, this COP, I imagine, takes a very, very different flavour. We'll defer to our expert guests in a moment, but, uh, you know, I think a Trump presidency will be stepping back – in fact, they didn't just step back, they withdrew from the Paris Agreement.

It's all to play for. And there's a lot on the table. I'm not going to steal the thunder from our guests, but there is, I guess the key things for negotiation, climate finance. So again, they're kind of needing to set a target of how much money needs to go into the communal pot to tackle climate change.

Question marks about how much in total, how much from each country, what forms of finance will be acceptable, and also the reporting and transparency requirements. The other thing is that we'll start to see some of these countries show their hand around their nationally-determined contributions. So this is almost like a promise to, you know, “I will by year X or Y, I will achieve this, this and this”.

Jen: Yeah, those are some of the things that I'm most interested in following, actually. So you talk about the sort of bits that you might cherry pick to, to check in on. And actually it's about that kind of transparency framework and national determined contributions.

And then also the long-term emissions pathways. So those are the pathways that countries signatory to the Paris Agreement are laying out, how to become climate neutral by 2050. And actually this year we've seen publication of recommendations on how to put those together and what should be included in those long term strategies.

So I think this COP 29 is going to be really interesting from, from that perspective as well. 

Matt: Yeah, there's just kind of a few things coming to a head. And I think one of the others that you often hear referenced in the news is around loss and damage. So about some countries, you know, we know, and we hear, you know, these island nations, not least places like the Maldives, they're going to get hammered by climate change far harder than say, you know, we are in, in relatively sort of mild and upland parts of the UK.

And not least that many of these developed nations that are in, say, more temperate parts of Northwest Europe have benefited from the hydrocarbons that they've expended. So this loss and damage, Jen, huge on the agenda this, this time around, and it has been, I think for some time, not least COP26. 

Jen: Yeah, absolutely. And it's, it's always really interesting to see, you know, every different COP has got a different focus, but we're seeing the topics coming up again and again, repeatedly. So I thought it might be useful just to run through the 17 topics that are listed in the COP 29. 

Matt: Blimey, this feels like a quiz question.

Jen: I know, 17. 

Matt: Go on. 

Jen: In alphabetical order, what we have is, we have topic one: action for climate empowerment and children and youth. We’ve got adaptation and resilience, capacity building, climate finance, climate technology, cooperative activities and SDG – so sustainable development goals, um, agenda. We’ve got gender, global stock take, innovation, just transition, land use, local communities and Indigenous peoples’ platform, market and non-market mechanisms, mitigation, pre-2020 ambition and implementation, science, and the ocean.

Matt: “The ocean”. Yeah, it's a small topic. “And the ocean”, I mean, geez, that is some list, right? No wonder it's so busy there.

Jen: Yeah, absolutely. It's absolutely huge. So it really shows how the topics that are getting tackled as part of these discussions – it's immense. 

Matt: And I think just maybe the last thing I want to note is apart from the ongoing debate about carbon markets and how these can be implemented at scale internationally with a degree of legitimacy, um, which will carry on again.

One of the more interesting topics I saw flagged up – and I should say I'm taking much of this from a fantastic blog from the World Resources Institute, which we’ll uh, make sure that we put a link up to – but it's about transparency. So how these nations actually make clear what their progress is and how that progress can be understood, but also believed, right? From country to country, because you know, whenever I, if I'm crunching data from the IEA or the OECD around carbon emissions, that's really important.

The numbers matter, right? And the validity, the integrity of those numbers is so crucial. 

Jen: Yeah. The numbers, they matter so, so much, as do having these plans in place. And I do want to flag up that, you know, as we speak, I think we're seeing a gradual increase in these, um, nationally-determined contributions on these long-term emissions strategies.

But there's 195 signatories to the Paris Agreement. And I think right now there's just over 70 long-term strategies submitted. So there's a transparency and holding countries to account as part of that transparency, this big, big topic to be tackled at COP. 

Matt: And maybe just worth dialling off on this point, is that this will be the second year that a COP is held in a nation with very, very big hydrocarbon footprint.

We had Dubai last year, Azerbaijan this year and – huge gas producer. Some would argue that's great. It's being hosted in these high, you know, net emitters, or at least from a production standpoint, but from your perspective, good or bad? Is this something we want to see going forward or does it not necessarily matter?

Jen: I think it’ll be really interesting to see what happens and comes out of this COP to see how much the place matters. You're right – it's the second year in a row from a high oil and gas producing nation. And what's going to be very interesting as well is thinking about, well, what have those nations, what plans have they laid out? What are they committed to? 

Matt: What's the legacy of hosting? And to be honest, you know, we've got to reflect on ourselves here as well. What's the legacy of COP 26 for Scotland and the UK? So maybe that's a whole ‘nother episode Jen. Let's deal with this COP first and foremost, before we talk about the long-term legacy of this for the different countries. So let's bring the guests in. They’re ready and raring to go.

Francesco: My name is Francesco Sindico. I'm delighted to be here. I'm a Professor of International Environmental Law at the university of Strathclyde Law School. But I also collaborate with a number of organisations, in particular, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, where I am the co-chair of the Climate Change Law Specialist Group of the World Commission on Environmental Law.

Simon: I'm Dr Simon Evans, and thanks very much for inviting me. I'm the Deputy Editor and Senior Policy Editor at Carbon Brief, which is a publication focusing on climate change and energy. I'm in charge of all of our coverage of climate policy, including the annual UN climate summit known as COP. 

Matt: Francesco, Simon, welcome to this very special episode on COP29. I think as we've said in the kick around prior to this, we haven't really covered a COP in any detail since COP 26, which was in Glasgow where Jen and I reside, so it was very close to home. Francesco, I know also you're a colleague of mine at the university, or colleague of ours at the University of Strathclyde, but this one is some distance away, in Azerbaijan and Baku. 

Before we get into the specifics about COP 29, what it means and why ultimately we should all care, I'd like to ask some fundamental questions. What is the COP and where does the process fit into wider dialogue, into governmental discussions and planning around climate and sustainability?

I wonder, Francesco, if we may begin with yourself, Professor of Law, been to more than one COP. What, what is the process? What is a COP? How does it work? 

Francesco: So yes, have I been to all of them? Clearly not, but I have been to three, and I have so many friends and colleagues who work as negotiators who have been to many, many, many of them.

The COP in a way, you can consider it as the place where countries get together to fine out the details of something bigger, called the Paris Agreement. So, some of you who are listening may remember in 2015, the world gets together in Paris and there's this thing called the Paris Agreement that sets the trajectory, a machine as some people were calling it – but that machine didn't have all the pieces of the engine.

It didn't have all the necessary fuel, if you want, to make it go forward. Every year, countries get together again and negotiate some small, sometimes some bigger parts of this machine. And that's what happens at COPs. Together with that, what happens at a COP is that these countries get together and remind themselves of how important the final destination of this train, of this machine, is. Now, this is what the COP is from a very narrow, intergovernmental negotiator perspective. But as Simon knows very well, the COP is not just there with people that have a blue badge from a government, be at the UK, Norway, or Bhutan. It's full of other people.

And for them, a COP I would go as far as saying is, I know it's a bit maybe cynical, it's whatever they want it to be. And. It's really something that you almost have to live firsthand to really understand, but it's a place where to network. It's a place where to push your message, good or bad as it may be, and to really try – and this is the most important part to some extent – try in a positive way to make a difference.

Matt: So, Simon, your perspective on this. What is the COP? I mean, you've got the Green Zone, the Blue Zone, and you've got the fringe. What does it mean to you, or other people? 

Simon: I mean, I guess, you know, stepping right back to the beginning, if you like, climate change is a kind of a global commons problem. We have this, this, you know, increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and it's making the world hotter.

Simon: Yeah. And the only way we can solve that is through collective global action. And so way back in, I think it was ’91 or ’92, countries came together and agreed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and that set a target of avoiding dangerous warming. And then under that subsequently we had the Kyoto protocol, which gave targets to rich countries to cut their emissions.

And then subsequently you already mentioned the Paris Agreement in 2015, which, which obligates all countries to make a nationally-determined contribution, so called, in other words, to make their own contribution, you know, whatever they wish to come forward with towards cutting emissions. And it also defined dangerous climate change by setting a target of staying well below two degrees and making efforts to limit warming to 1.5. 

So the COP, basically, it's the annual meeting of, of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. And it's simultaneously the annual meeting of the Paris Agreement. And it's where all of the things that, you know, Francesco already mentioned, come together. And you mentioned the Blue Zone and the Green Zone.

So just to explain those for your listeners, the Blue Zone is where the negotiations happen. So that's where government representatives huddle in, in airless rooms without natural light, often all the way through the night, trying to negotiate the exact wording of, of, esoteric, but often extremely important legal text.

So at the end of each COP, they negotiate a legal outcome, that, that's a legal document that that's agreed by consensus among all of the countries that are parties to those, those international agreements, which is basically all of the countries of the world. And then in the Green Zone is, is this, you know, kind of trade fair or whatever you want it to be.

It's, it's the place where other things happen. Representatives of companies, NGOs, campaigners, all sorts of other actors will be coming to the COP. You know, from my personal perspective, going to the COP, we're almost always focused, in Carbon Brief, on the Blue Zone – on what's actually happening in those negotiating rooms, and often they're closed, including to the press. And so we talked to lots of the other people that are there that aren't government representatives, that aren't actually negotiators, but we talk to negotiators too, to try and get a sense of what's going on. And, you know, at the end of it, there's this negotiated agreement, but there's also increasingly now, over the past few years, a series of other pledges that will be made.

So, so the, the Azerbaijani presidency will be trying to organise this COP truce, for example, but there's lots of other, you know, global pledge on methane that happened at Glasgow, global pledge on deforestation and so on. So it's really a huge event. I think there were a hundred thousand attendees in COP 28 in Dubai.

COP 29 in Baku this year is expected to be smaller, but it's still, you know, it's tens of thousands of people. 

Francesco: Can I add Matt, because you asked the, you know, how does this fit within wider climate and sustainability? And I think some of our, some of your listeners may think of COP as something that happens once in a year when it's big in the news and it's the climate change COP.

But there's a COP for all flavours you want, to some extent. As we speak, there's a COP happening in Cali, in Colombia, of the Convention on Biological Diversity. That's actually quite a big one, but there's also a conference of the parties of the Minamata Convention on the Elimination of Mercury. That happens in a basement of a hotel in Bucharest, but it's exactly the same thing. The Blue Zone and the Green Zone will be much smaller. There's much less media attention. There's not a Carbon Brief there to talk about it as much as you would have… But this is actually the bread and butter of those who work in the negotiations.

And the last thing I'll say, the Blue Zone actually, is yes, the negotiators, but then there's another part of the Blue Zone, which are the country pavilions, which the negotiators can go from there to these pavilions, but not the other way around. And that creates a bit of confusion sometimes in the COPs where some negotiators are almost find all of these other elements as a distraction because there's so much going on and sometimes they cannot really focus on their day job, which is, as Simon said, to negotiate those sometimes quite boring but as Simon said, quite important words that will define climate finance, loss and damage, you name it, that is part of the, all the COP processes, let's say.

Simon: Just to make this a bit more real, you know, some of those negotiations happening around individual words that people might remember hearing about, there was obviously in Glasgow, the fight over whether we were going to agree to “phase down" coal power, or whether we were going to “phase out”, uh, unabated coal power.

And, you know, it's a single word, but obviously hugely different. And similarly, at COP 28 in Dubai last year, we had a, you know, this big fight around where we're going to "phase down fossil fuels", "phase out fossil fuels”. And then, then we ended up with “transitioning away from fossil fuels”. And there's all sorts of other kind of nuances to, to what they agreed.

But, you know, of course, these are only words. And ultimately what counts is what happens when, you know, governments, businesses, you know, other communities and stakeholders go home after the COP and actually start implementing the words that have been agreed. So that's obviously a key, a key kind of link between the real world and the COP that, that doesn't always happen.

Jen: It's a brilliant overview of the COP process, but what is special about this particular COP, COP29, and what is at stake this time around? 

Simon: Sure. Yeah. So the kind of, the banner issue for this COP is about the so-called New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance. So people might remember that rich countries have a target to give 100 billion dollars a year in climate finance to developing countries, both to help them adapt to rising temperatures, but also to help cut their emissions.

That was agreed, you know, a long time ago, and it was meant to have been met by 2020. And we've just about got there by now. But already in the Paris Agreement in 2015, they set this timeline and they said that by a certain point, which is now, at COP 29, you have to agree what comes after the hundred billion.

And so this new collective goal is to apply from 2025, i. e. from next year. And basically the question is, how big is that number going to be? You know, is it going to be in the trillions, hundreds of billions? Where is the money coming from? That hundred billion is public climate finance from governments and, you know, international financial institutions and so on, to developing countries.

But is there a part of that, this new number that's going to be wider than just public money. And there's also, another big part of the question is who's going to contribute. So historically only developed countries have contributed climate finance officially, even though some large developing countries have also effectively been giving climate finance, just not labeled as such. 

But there's a big push from the likes of the US for example, to broaden the pool of contributors. So to bring in countries like, uh, China, for example, which is obviously still considers itself a developing country, but it is, you know, it's a rich and powerful country with very large GDP and it's already giving climate finance, effectively.

So, so those are the kind of key issues around the climate finance goal. There's lots of other issues that are going to be on the table. There's a push from the presidency to try and finalise the rules on article six of the Paris Agreement, which is all about carbon markets, but yeah, the key one is on finance. And finance is important because without finance, it's a kind of a, a trust issue.

Developing countries say we're happy to cut our emissions, but in order to do that, we need financial support. And so if there's not a good deal on finance, then we can't agree to raise our ambition.

Francesco: If I can just jump into that, because one thing that is increasingly true over the last COPs is that climate change is everywhere. It's not just about these two weeks in Baku and so forth. If you think of climate finance, it's about development. It's about how so many countries – developing, small island developing states – will finance and will transition, not just in relation to climate finance, but in relation to almost everything they do.

And what this means is that what happens, or does not happen, in Baku will set the stage, or will need to be filled elsewhere. And next June in Seville in Spain, the United Nations is gathering for a once every four or five years get-together about development for finance. Five years ago, we had the Addis Ababa Framework, and now we'll have the Seville Framework.

What I want to say with this is that the two weeks in Baku – and by the way, it's not two weeks, they negotiate all year round. It's not that they don't do anything for 52 weeks and then they wake up in Baku and they start negotiating. Clearly there's a lot of work during the year, but actually the positive story would be Baku sends a message, and civil completes it. 

If Baku does not send the message, or the climate finance number is either not agreed or the structure is not agreed, it's a bad outcome, but it's not the end of the story. And I think it's important to understand that the international community structure, both law and poli-, is very complex and it doesn't stop at COPs of climate change.

Climate change COPs are so important. They get the news. We're talking about it because it's energy, it's education. It's, it's everything you can think of. But there are also other processes going on at the same time. 

Matt: So Francesco, just to kind of clear that up, is the sense that actually a lot of what the COP, or the outcome of the COP is to signal intent and some of the mechanisms that, that, you know, are preferred to realise that ambition, but then the hard work kind of begins in some respects after the COP – is about actually then implementing that. Is, is that your point about the kind of summit in June and…?

Francesco: Yes, yes, and both at the international level and both like Simon, I think, said at national level. I mean, we can have the best legal language that you want, but if it then is not taken into account domestically, then we're really at square one. Even more importantly, what the COPs should do is give a market signal to move away from fossil fuels and so forth.

And I don't know, lowering prices of renewables and so forth. And a lot of people would argue that to some extent that is happening, but not fast enough. I think that's really the problem. The speed of the transition, the speed of what needs to happen. It's just not there yet. 

Matt: Okay. So, so on that particular issue or, and, and the broader issues about, you know, what the COP may deliver and what might be seen as progress, Simon, you've talked a bit about what's a kind of, you know, on the ledger this time around, what's going to be discussed.

And obviously it depends what standpoint you're taking, what perspective you take on these negotiations, but what might a good outcome look like? Now, if maybe if we just take from the stance about tackling existential climate change would be a good point, but there's a whole range of other issues around climate justice.

I don't mind which way you tackle this. I'll come to Simon first and Francesco after, but what would a good result look like? 

Simon: So obviously there's the individual issues that I mentioned – so, you know, finalising Article Six, that, that would be, you know, progress in the sense of, you know, finalising a big part of the Paris Agreement. Getting some kind of outcome that is agreed by consensus by all the countries on climate finance that everyone's, you know, at least vaguely happy with.

It's obviously a compromise. Those are kind of the specific outcomes, but I guess sort of stepping back from this particular COP, there's obviously a, a kind of a bigger picture here in terms of, are we going to stay below 1.5 degrees or at least, you know, get below two degrees and, you know, looking at, at the outlook for emissions and related increase in temperatures before the Paris Agreement was, you know, three, three-and-a-half plus degrees of warming this century. 

As part of the Paris Agreement, you know, I mentioned everyone has to bring a pledge, a nationally-determined contribution in terms of, you know, tackling their emissions. And we've now had a couple of rounds of those, but after this COP, you know, something that will be very much on the agenda in Baku, by February of next year, countries have to bring their sort of second NDC for 2035. So we've got this kind of ratchet mechanism that's meant to increase ambition over time. And as a result of those plans and all sorts of other things, progress in the cost of renewables and so on, we've seen progress in the outlook for warming this century. So we're now down to something like two-and-a-half degrees of warming expected this century.

If countries follow through on their current policies or potentially closer to two degrees, if countries meet all of the promises that they’ve made. So in a sense, that's like the big picture of obviously, as Francesco says, we're not making nearly fast enough progress to stay below one-and-a-half degrees, but there has been kind of an incremental progress over time.

One of the things I find frustrating around the COP, every year, someone will show a chart of atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and show that it keeps going up and up and up. And of course that will be true until we reach net zero emissions. That, that CO2 concentration will keep rising and temperatures will keep going up until we reach net zero.

But that doesn't mean that we haven't made progress. We're, we're definitely bending the curve away from the worst possible outcomes towards something that's slightly less bad. 

Matt: Yeah. And Francesco, before I come to you, I think it's worth saying to listeners that if you want a shot of optimism, Simon's a great person to follow and his figures are notorious – stuff of legend. So thank you, Simon, for that. Francesco. 

Francesco: What I hope to see, what would be a good outcome from me, is in two different areas. One is carbon markets and the other one is loss and damage. Both are incredibly complex. So carbon markets, really, to simplify tremendously, would be: yes, countries can put their pledge, as Simon said, the nationally-determined contribution. So they have a lot of freedom to some extent to decide how to tackle climate change, how much, when, et cetera, et cetera. Not only that, they can also offset what they do at home through projects elsewhere, at least that's the concept. You know, you go to Costa Rica, you protect a few forests, and that counts for your NDC in the Netherlands or the UK and so forth.

It's very tricky and potentially dangerous if very clear rules are not set around that. That has happened with a Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism. The good news is that actually, throughout the negotiations this year, some safeguards have been suggested and recommended and now need to be approved in Baku.

So actually there has been some progress over the year about this emissions trading project, credits, call them as you wish. So I hope that we'll get some more clarity, and if done well, then that can happen. The second is about loss and damage. This started a long time ago, but it really kicked up a lot of momentum in COP 27 in Sharm El Sheikh and last year in Dubai.

To the extent that in Dubai, a process to actually establish a fund was started and countries started pledging money into it. Over the last 12 months, again, to show that these people actually work for 50 weeks a year, they have agreed that the interim secretariat will be managed, if you want, by the World Bank, that the fund will have its headquarters in the Philippines and more money has been pumped into it.

So things are happening. I think the interesting and also quite worrying thing with loss and damage is that it has always been considered as something for developing countries, especially least developed countries, which is absolutely true and should remain like that. But over the last two months, and unfortunately, this morning, we have seen that loss and damage happens also in North Carolina, in Southeast Spain, and it's something that we are all going to face in one way or another, be it directly, hopefully not, but through friends, families, communities.

So, unfortunately, it's going to be a hot topic on the agenda for the reasons we all know, but I am pleased to see that although in very technical terms, again, the boring legal language, some progress has happened over the last 50 weeks from Dubai and hopefully they can rubber-stamp it in Baku. 

Jen: So also hot right now is the issue of the US presidential election. You know, the COP kicks off on the 11th of November, six days after the US election. What might be the impact of the outcome from that on the flavour and direction of COP 29?

Simon: So we actually have a precedent for what might happen, in the sense that Donald Trump's first election victory came during, I think it would have been COP 22 in Marrakesh, in 2016, obviously. I wasn't there because I was getting married at the time, but, um, what I've heard is that the US negotiating team, almost all, were told to stay in their hotel. No one knew quite what to do. And it definitely overshadowed the whole, the whole COP, but I guess what it's, it's worth saying is that obviously the election happens in November. The change of administration doesn't happen until January.

So Joe Biden is still the President until the end of this year, whatever happens. And so that means substantively in terms of the negotiating position, um, in terms of the, you know, the approach that the US negotiating team and other negotiating teams are going to take, like that shouldn't change, but obviously it will have an impact.

We know that Trump has said explicitly that he would pull the US out of the Paris Agreement again, you know, as, as he did previously. And there's also an indication in this Project 2025 document that's been put, I think it's the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has set out this sort of plan for government, which I think is sort of expected to be implemented in lots of ways by a future Trump presidency, if, if he wins the election. And that talks about pulling the US not only out of the Paris Agreement, but also out of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that, that I mentioned at the start. That would have significant consequences just in the sense that joining that convention required Senate approval.

And so there’s a question mark about – going in and out of the Paris Agreement, the president can just do that with a stroke of a pen. But if the US comes out of the Framework Convention, it might be quite hard for a future democratic president, or a future Republican president who's changed their mind about, you know, their views on climate change, to take the US back into the Framework Convention.

So that, that would be pretty serious. And then obviously there's, you know, there's big potential impacts in terms of the US emissions and the US approach to, you know, to clean energy, to fossil fuels and so on. And obviously that, that would have spillover effects internationally in terms of what other countries would do.

Whether, you know, my understanding is a lot of the major emitters will be waiting to see which way the US election goes and using that to inform their own climate pledge. Because, you know, they may decide effectively the, if the US is in the game on climate action, if they're there, pressuring other countries to do more to step up, that does have a real weight and real impact.

Whereas if the US is completely out of the picture, you know, that probably eases the pressure – it allows other countries that don't want to do much on climate change to hide behind a future Trump administration. So it's, it's huge. And obviously we'll, we'll see what happens.

Francesco: I think, however, as you said, this would be a déjà vu. It already happened. If it is a déjà vu, what also happens is that cities and states and civil society in the US actually gets reinvigorated. Much of the climate action in the US came through because of Trump in a way. I know it's a crazy thing to think, but in the state of California, a flood of climate change litigation both against private actors and public actors happen in the first Trump presidency.

I'm not saying that's a silver lining – clearly not – but it is something that is interesting to consider if we look at the past. The other thing is that, we're talking about the COP, but I already mentioned there's life beyond COP. Uh, there is so many other processes where the US is present, but also where it's not present.

And I think climate change has become so complex and so pervasive everywhere, that if for whatever reason, the momentum in this COP doesn't work too much because of depending on how you see it, the negative outcome in the US elections, well, then maybe the efforts can be pushed in other forums whilst not forgetting, obviously, that the Paris Agreement and these COPs to some extent can operate also without the US. It's not that between 2016 and 2020, we did not have any COPs on climate change. It's not that all the other 190-odd states just waited for a new US administration. So we also have to put that into perspective. 

Simon: I think the other thing that's worth adding is that the idea that we'll only get progress if the US is in the room and pushing other people to do more on climate – I mean, that's just clearly not the case.

If you look at what, you know, what China's doing on climate change, for example, a huge part of their motivation for, you know, rolling out electric vehicles, for building vast amounts of clean energy, that's not really about climate change, primarily. That's about the fact that they don't have domestic oil and gas resources in large quantities.

So that's very much about energy security. It's about building these, you know, vast new industries of the future, that's going to completely change the geopolitics of energy. And, you know, similarly somewhere like Pakistan, which has been going on this mad kind of splurge of installing solar panels, you know, that's about their domestic energy security as well. So self interest and climate action are very much aligned in many, many cases now. 

Matt: Okay. So I did have a question about the UK's position and I'm not going to ask that. Uh, what I am going to is dig deeper on this, right? My position is nowhere near as well informed as you two on the international stage here, but my sense is we're in a different place than we were eight years ago.

I mean, I know Simon, the various figures that you pop up about the cost of solar and how it's outstripping IEA's, you know, uh, the International Energy Agency’s predictions, right? This is, this is happening, and Biden's Inflation Reduction Act amongst many other countries that you've just mentioned, Simon, is their own, their own position.

This is going great guns now. And I do wonder about Trump's and Musk's sort of love affair at this particular election speaks to, you know, an industry of the future – obviously Musk and his connectivity with Tesla and all the, the sort of gubbins that goes with that around installed capacity of renewables and battery, uh, prices.

Are we in a different place than we are, were eight years ago? I mean, could Trump as easily pull back on this and survive the flack that would come from the titans of industry, not just in the US, but all those other nations and countries that are connected to it. I don't know who wants to pick that particular thorny one up, but it is a hypothesis of mine. I haven't had anybody to talk to about it yet. 

Francesco: My gut feeling with that, with, uh, with a pair of Trump and Musk, you can expect anything and more than anything. So anything can happen to some extent, but I think you're right. I mean, if I remember correctly, you know, the big thing the first time around was about shale gas, for example, and how we have to continue with shale gas and here and there – I mean, gas is still considered a not-as-bad option as before, but actually I think we have moved slightly away from that, and there is a much larger appetite for renewables and everything that goes around renewables.

I actually think, leaving maybe aside Trump and the US, what is happening now is that all this appetite for renewables is actually alerting to the risks of doing with renewables, what we have done with fossil fuels, which is human rights violations, which is a lack of public participation, which is actually bulldozing the economy in a way that 50 years ago seemed good, because it gave us cheap electricity. And the same thing we're going to do now with renewables.

I'm not saying we're doing it. Although there are some evidence that in some parts of the world, parts and parcels of what we use in our cars and elsewhere are not really the best things that we can have. So I think there's also that aspect to consider, which is obviously links us to climate justice and elements like that. 

Matt: Thank you. And, and Simon, I mean, any sense of whether history is just going to repeat itself or whether it can't, because we're in a different place than we were.

Simon: I mean, so there's a couple of things to say. One is when Trump was elected first time around in 2016, one of his big things was about saving coal power. And, you know, there was the Obama Clean Power Plan, which was about cutting emissions in the power sector. And, obviously, then, you know, Trump came in and he, he didn't do that.

And he tried all sorts of ways and to, you know, to support coal power, and coal power capacity continued to collapse in the US over the four years that he was in, in office. And so that just shows the limitations of the presidency. There's only so much you can do and you can't. You can't fight those market forces that, you know, in, in the US that was about gas being very cheap, renewables being very cheap, and much cheaper than coal.

So that, that's one thing to say. The other thing is, you know, we've had in the past few years, this global energy crisis caused by incredibly high fossil fuel prices, specifically gas prices being very high after Russia stopped or restricted exports to Europe sort of in and around its invasion of Ukraine.

And that's just really highlighted the economic, um, kind of peril, if you like, of, of relying on very volatile fossil fuel prices and therefore the relative kind of advantage and attractiveness of, of clean energy sources. And so, yeah, that, that's definitely changed the picture, but, but at the same time, we're in this period of very heightened sort of geopolitical tension and risk.

We've got, you know, conflicts all over the world. We've got increasing protectionism, um, tariffs in the EU and, and, and US against, you know, Chinese EVs. And that's really highlighting some of the, some of the things that are going to happen as a result of this energy transition, which as you say, is already happening.

And so, you know, you look at somewhere like Germany where their car industry is incredibly important economically, and it's massively under pressure because China's built up this huge EV industry and then they're starting to export cheap and very good EVs in large volumes. That's, you know, that's great for climate change, but not so great for German industry.

And that's having all sorts of political consequences. So, yeah, we're in a very, very different place now. Just, just very briefly, if I can come back on this thing about clean energy and mining and human rights and so on, obviously it's super important, but I think it's really, it's really vital to, to, to put things in context, you know, we mine and extract tens of billions of tons worth of fossil fuels every year that has huge impacts on, on land and people around the world.

Obviously there are large amounts of mining that happen for batteries and so on, but there's a difference, you know, fossil fuels, you dig it up and you burn it and you do the same next year. With a battery, you dig up some metal, you make a battery and then you use it for a long period and you can recycle it at the end. So I think, you know, it’s stocks and flows and it's, it has very different impacts. 

Jen: So I think we've done an amazing job of really also bringing some of the linkages between what we started out talking about – COP, international Conference of the Parties taking place in Baku, far away from us where we're sat currently in, in Glasgow, and really thinking about what do the outcomes of that mean to the local, to us, to people.

Francesco, you started touching on that with, you know, this discussion around, you know, has the landscape changed in the past eight years, and some of the local action that started taking place after the Marrakesh COP. So I just want to hear your thoughts on, you know, really, why do COPs matter for our listeners. 

And also kind of pose a question of how can our listeners follow and potentially engage with COP 29? And I do just want to add here that I confessed in the opening that, um, the last couple of COPs, I have almost like buried my head. I’ve put my hands over my head and I've gone, “Oh, just let it happen". And then I'll, I'll come out the other end after the dust has settled, and then I will engage.

And that's partly to manage my own anxiety, to disengage that stress, but also because they're, taking place far away from me. I couldn't be involved in the campaigning quite so much. So, campaigning aside, is it fine for us non- COPpers to let it happen and then check in later? Or what, what else can our listeners and activists do?

Francesco: I mean, I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer here. It very much depends also on what you do, how you feel, let's say. I've been lucky enough over the past years to collaborate very closely with an amazing group of people on our Scottish islands, a very local level on even very small islands in terms of population and so forth.

And you could think, you know, why should they bother about climate change mitigation? Adaptation, fine, you can get it – but mitigation, I mean, the amount of emissions that come from a small island in Scotland is negligent. And what was fantastic to see is that especially young people, but not only young people, really, really care about this.

And actually they have a strong appetite to understand what these three letters are: C-O-P. COP. They are curious about it. They're frustrated maybe about the outcome. But then again, I think it's for people like myself, Simon, yourselves, who navigate those spheres, who understand the legal processes, to explain that they don't operate in a vacuum. It’s about mainly, not only, sovereign states. Sovereign states operate very differently from actors in a domestic society.

And at the end of the day, the promise, the optimist way of seeing it is that what comes out from these COPs slowly but steadily enters into financial markets, into the way education is provided in countries and so forth and so forth. But I will repeat, and this is the big, big problem, huge elephant in the room: if we had 200 years for this – fine, we can go as far as slowly as sovereign states can do. We don't have that time. And that begs the question, maybe for another episode: how can we do all of this well, but 10 times faster? And it's not an easy solution. It's not an easy answer. 

Matt: Simon, I feel a plug coming on for The Carbon Brief here. 

Simon: It's very kind, Matt. Yeah. So I was planning to plug some of The Carbon Briefs output. There’s four of us going for the first week and a slightly different four going for the second week of the COP in Baku.

We'll be following it extremely closely. And for those of your listeners that wish to keep track of things in detail – possibly excruciating detail for some – we will be publishing a grid of effectively who wants what. So different country positions on all of the key issues on the finance goal, on carbon markets, and so on. We'll be publishing a sort of a text tracker so that you can keep track of all of the latest draft negotiating texts as they come out.

We've got an explainer coming out on, on that, that new climate finance goal that I mentioned, and another piece, it's setting out some of the reasons why climate finance is complicated and difficult. And obviously we'll be, you know, publishing on social media and through our newsletters and so on, on the website, throughout the COP to keep people informed.

I would say for those that don't feel the need to follow the sort of blow-by-blow, we will publish a summary at the end of the COP. And that's designed to be kind of detailed but accessible, if people want, you know, want to get an understanding of what happened and why it matters. And we'll also do a webinar at the end to explain what actually happened and, you know, give people an opportunity to ask their own questions.

So there's lots of ways for people to engage. I think in sort of stepping back slightly from Carbon Brief’s coverage, you know, obviously, you know, the COP sends a big signal internationally. But there's a huge role for, for civil society organisations, for, you know, for political activists and, you know, policy wonks, think tanks, and, you know, everyone that cares about this issue, you know, members of the public or whatever to, to engage with the COP in the weeks and months that follow.

Because ultimately, you know, I mentioned earlier that the key thing about the COP outcome is how it's translated into action on the ground, whether that's by businesses, governments, or, or whoever. And obviously all of those people that I mentioned can play a role in holding governments to account saying, "Hey, look, you said at the COP with all of these other 190 countries that you were going to transition away from fossil fuels.

So why is it you're doing X, Y, Z? You know, why are you allowing continued extraction of fossil fuels?” Those moments will be different in different countries, but there's sort of myriad opportunities for people to, you know, to do that holding of account saying, “Well, you agreed to tripling of renewables at COP 28. So how come your, your climate pledge for 2035 has such low ambition on renewables?”

You know, these are just a couple of examples, but there's lots of different ways that people can get involved in that more practical kind of on-the-ground way, subsequent to the COP actually taking place. 

Jen: Transformative change. That's really what the pod is all about. So we're really keen to highlight those examples and to highlight that message, Simon, and I'm really glad that we had a chance to plug The Carbon Brief, even for somebody hiding under a rock for the last, uh, COP 28, I have to say that I still read the briefings from Carbon Brief, and that is enough just to know what's going on, and the direction of travel.

So I encourage our listeners to engage with that. And we'll put some of the links in the episode notes where you can find out that information. So thank you both so much for your insights. I mean, you could tell Matt and I've been itching to discuss this together and with you. So thanks so much for coming along and sharing your thoughts.

Matt: Thank you very much. And once the dust settles on both COP and the US presidential election, the invite remains and is always open to hear what your thoughts are. But until then, thank you both.

Jen: Wow. A huge thank you to Francesco and Simon for joining us. I think that just really showed to me, we've got some really key events over the next few weeks. Even in a couple of months’ time, I think we're still going to be digesting the repercussions of whatever happens. And that actually takes the pressure off a bit in terms of, um, finding out what's happening on the every minute, every moment of these negotiations.

Matt: That's Simon's job. That is the Carbon Brief! I mean…

Jen: And he's very good at it.

Matt: Thank goodness they exist.

Jen: So you can find out more information about Francesco and Simon, and the work that they do, by checking out the show notes for the episode. 

Matt: Absolutely. And thank you as always to our listeners for listening to Local Zero. If you enjoy the pod, here are some quick and easy things you can do that will really help us out.

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Matt: And please do reach out to us with any questions, suggestions, or feedback either at localzeropod@gmail.com or over on LinkedIn. But for now, thank you for listening and see you next month. Bye bye. 

Jen: Bye.