COP29: What happened on day four of the UN climate conference with finance in the spotlight ?

That's it from us for today, thanks for joining us for finance day in Baku. Here's a quick recap of what you might have missed on day four:

• We spoke to regional leaders from across Europe about the need for more funding to help them prepare their areas for the increasingly frequent and deadly extreme weather.
• After warnings from former environment commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius that backtracking on the deforestation regulation could make the EU look 'ridiculous' in Baku, the law was postponed and diluted by Parliament.
• A new report from Christian Aid found that the ten countries most impacted by climate change between 2000-2019 received less than 2 per cent of all climate finance.
• EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra was among European leaders defending France after its minister for the ecological transition pulled out of COP29 following President Aliyev’s comments yesterday. Argentina has also withdrawn its delegation from COP29.
•  Climate justice activists unveiled a 10m-long 'invoice', underlying their demand for “trillions, not billions” in finance.

We'll be back tomorrow with the latest from COP29. Expect more on energy as well as peace, relief and recovery. See you then!

Parts of Spain woke up to fresh warnings of dangerous flooding this morning, just weeks after heavy rains killed more than 200 people in Valencia.

Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes in southern Spain after AEMET placed nine communities on red or orange alerts for strong storms and heavy to torrential rainfall on Tuesday. The warnings from the national meteorological agency covered Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and parts of the Valencia and Andalusia provinces.

It comes a fortnight after at least 220 people lost their lives in Valencia during Spain’s worst flooding in decades. And just days after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez brought the region’s tragedy to the global stage during his speech at COP29.

‘Climate change kills’ Spain PM tells COP29 as floods strike again

Spain faced new extreme weather alerts this week just a fortnight after flooding devastated Valencia.…

Ongoing floods in Spain have led to intense scrutiny over the role of regional governments in managing climate change-related disasters. 10,000s of Spaniards took to the streets last weekend to protest what they see as poor preparedness and response from their government after the devastating Valencia floods.

At the COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan, regional leaders from around Europe are asking for more investment to allow them to prepare their areas for the increasingly frequent and deadly extreme weather which is sweeping the continent.

They're realising that everything from buildings and transport to their emergency management systems are just not ready for the future.

COP29: Regional European leaders join call for more adaptation funding

Local leaders could be the driving force behind plans that help their areas to survive extreme weather.…

Finance is the dominant topic today and all COP29 days, but another important agenda item is carbon markets.

The rulebook for Article 6 of the Paris Agreement - which would determine how countries can trade carbon credits - still needs to be agreed. A “breakthrough” came at the start of COP on Monday, when draft documents were gavelled through.

But there are many details still to be hashed out - as newly-released negotiating texts show. The Article 6.2 text alone (regarding “internationally transferred mitigation outcomes”) currently runs to 43 pages long with 460 brackets that must be teased out.

CarbonBrief’s Dr Simon Evans has all the latest detail:



#COP29 NEW TEXT

Anyone who told you that Article 6 carbon trading had been "finalised on day 1" was, sadly, very wide of the mark

We now have a trio of new drafts to prove it, clocking in at 51pp, with disagreement around 499 bracketed passages and 130 "options" (!)… pic.twitter.com/Afzxvy3aSn

— Simon Evans (@DrSimEvans) November 14, 2024

Are carbon markets a climate solution or excuse for more pollution?

Carbon markets are one step closer to being part of global climate plans after a speedy COP decision.…

The European Parliament voted on Thursday to postpone and amend provisions of its ‘deforestation law’, an EU regulation that imposes due diligence obligations on all traders importing specified raw materials into Europe. It is set to come into force at the end of 2024 but will now need to be renegotiated with member states.

Under the proposed law, beef products, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soy and wood, and their derivative products must not come from deforested land, and importers must guarantee full traceability. A right-wing majority pushed for amendments to weaken the provisions, in a contested vote

Read more: EU deforestation law postponed and diluted by Parliament

Yesterday, former environment commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius warned that backtracking on the regulation could make the EU look "ridiculous" at COP29, creating "uncertainty" over the bloc's ability to follow up its headline climate action goals with concrete legislation.

“It would also show that we are not a reliable partner," he said.

If you’re still on X (formerly Twitter), you’ve likely been seeing an exodus of accounts over to Bluesky and other social media platforms. That’s in the wake of Trump’s election in the US, and scrutiny of the role X and X-owner Elon Musk played in his victory.

Today, 93 experts and organisations have signed an open letter calling for government action to tackle climate misinformation on social media sites. Climate scientist Michael Mann and organisations such as ISD and WWF-Brazil say that platforms must be held accountable.

As we reported from COP27 in Sharm-El-Sheikh two years ago, ‘climate scam’ began trending on X soon after Musk took over the site. Since then, matters have only got worse.

More on the climate protests that have been making some noise at the UN conference today.

As well as staging protests inside the COP corridors, activists took the opportunity to emblazon a big message across the Olympic Stadium venue in Baku.

Banners across the stadium seats spell out “Pay Up!” - in clear sight of the COP29 presidency offices located on the opposite side of the arena.

Inside, climate justice activists unveiled a 10m-long 'invoice', underlying their demand for “trillions, not billions” in climate finance.

“The giant invoice that we displayed today clearly itemises the costs of loss and damage, adaptation, and mitigation already being borne by developing countries,” explains Teresa Anderson, global lead on climate justice at ActionAid International.

“If developing countries want to avert runaway climate breakdown, they need to repay the debt owed to the Global South.”

Credit: AP Photo/Sergei Grits

Credit: ActionAid

Away from the conference in Baku, a unique cultural intervention for biodiversity and endangered species is taking shape in Paris.

Icelandic treasure Björk and French artist Aleph have collaborated on an immersive sound piece that uses AI to recreate extinct animal calls. 

The new immersive sound installation, titled ‘Natural Manifesto’, is set to run at the Pompidou Centre in Paris from 20 November until 9 December.

Björk uses AI to recreate extinct animal calls for new Paris exhibit

Coinciding with the latest UN Climate Change Conference, Björk and French artist Aleph have designed a new sound installation that will recreate extinct……

The ten countries most impacted by climate change between 2000-2019 received less than 2 per cent of all climate finance, according to a new report from Christian Aid.  

With today’s focus on finance, the charity is urging governments to pay for public, grant-based funding through progressive taxes on major polluters like fossil fuel companies.

Whether, and what amount of climate finance should come from private sources is set to be a big sticking point in COP29 negotiations. Christian Aid’s report finds that the assumption that the new finance goal will effectively be met by private finance is at odds with the evidence. 

Mariana Paoli, global advocacy lead at Christian Aid, comments:

“If COP29 is going to live up to its ‘Finance COP’ title, world leaders must stop chasing shadows with attempts to make up for insufficient and poor-quality public finance with private contributions.

“The evidence is clear. Private finance, predicated on profit, doesn’t reach poorer and climate vulnerable communities. Just 0.5 per cent private finance goes to adaptation, a drop in the ocean. When $270bn [€257bn] is spent on fossil fuel subsidies, seven times what is spent on adaptation, it’s a cruel joke.”

Another destabilising geopolitical move yesterday was the news that Argentina’s negotiating team have been ordered home.

“It’s true. We have instructions from the ministry of foreign affairs to no longer participate. That’s all I can tell you,” Argentina’s undersecretary for the environment, Ana Lamas, told the UK’s Guardian newspaper yesterday.

The country’s president Javier Milei has previously called the climate crisis a “socialist lie”, and threatened to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

On Tuesday, Milei spoke with incoming US president Donald Trump - who has a similar stance on the world’s most important agreement to tackle climate change.

EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra is among European leaders defending France, after Aliyev’s comments yesterday.

France is one of the world’s leading voices on climate action and had played a pivotal role at previous COPs. Regardless of any bilateral disagreements, the COP should be a place where all parties feel at liberty to come and negotiate on climate action. https://t.co/dqJeGOMJyM

— Wopke Hoekstra (@WBHoekstra) November 13, 2024

President Aliyev’s allegations on the EU, France & the Netherlands are most regrettable.

These unacceptable statements risk to undermine the conference’s vital climate objectives and the credibility of Azerbaijan’s COP29 presidency.

We stand with France & the Netherlands. 1/2

— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) November 14, 2024

Azerbaijan’s president Iham Aliyev has again grabbed headlines with a provocative speech yesterday directed at France. 

Addressing a gathering of island leaders, Aliyev accused France of “brutally” suppressing climate-impacted communities in its overseas territories, which he called “colonies”.

As a result, France’s ecology minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher announced she was cancelling her trip to Baku next week. “Azerbaijan is instrumentalizing the fight against climate change for its own unworthy personal agenda,” she responded.

French President Emmanuel Macron was already a no-show. Relations between the two countries have been strained since last year when Paris condemned Azerbaijan's military offensive against Armenian separatists in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

So there will be no senior leadership presence at COP29 from France - a country generally viewed as a climate leader.

Today is the first day that climate activists are allowed to protest inside the inner venue at Baku, and they’re raising their voices for fair finance.  

An eye-catchingly long ‘climate invoice’ of $5 trillion (€4.7 trillion) was unfurled by activists this morning, billed to rich Global North countries.

Euronews science correspondent Jeremy Wilks has been speaking to climate activists about what brings them to COP29.

‘Dark times’: Climate activists on why they’re still fighting at COP29

Cutting through the noise at COP29, Luisa Neubauer and Asad Rehman tell us what brings them to Baku.…

The centrepiece of this year’s summit is the New Collective Quantified Goal. This is the new finance target that will replace the previous goal of $100 billion (€91.4 bn).

But countries still have a long way to go before a decision can be reached. Currently, the finance text stands at a weighty 33 pages long, and all options are on the table - from grants and loans to private sector investment. 

These options will need to be narrowed down by the time government ministers take over from country negotiators at the end of the week.

We took a look at why finance is set to dominate COP29 here.

Grant, loan or investment: Are strings attached to climate finance?

Countries need to agree on a new collective quantified goal for climate finance in Baku. Here are the key fault lines.…

Good morning and welcome to day four of our live COP29 coverage. 

After two days of hearing from world leaders about the climate crisis, today the focus turns to financing the solutions. 

Finance, investment and trade are Thursday’s themes, and behind the scenes country negotiators are working on a text that will determine the terms of climate funding for the next few critical years. 

We'll be here keeping you up to date on what's going on at the UN climate conference so stay tuned.

If you missed any of the action yesterday take a look at our coverage from day three to catch up.

COP29: Albania PM goes off script to ask ‘What on Earth are we doing?’

Euronews Green brings you the latest updates from the UN climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.…