COP29: Civil society protests mark energy day at UN climate summit in Azerbaijan

Civil society activists held demonstrations at the summit venue at Baku Olympics stadium

Several protests erupted at the Baku climate summit’s energy day as civil society groups decried the lack of progress on phasing out heat-trapping fossil fuels.

The Baku summit is focused on ensuring adequate finance to tackle the climate crisis, and activists said the discourse on fossil fuels has taken a backseat.

Civil society activists held demonstrations at the summit venue at Baku Olympics stadium, demanding immediate action from authorities. “The volume of fossil fuel lobbyists roaming in the corridors and rooms of COP29 will continue to impede progress towards climate action if left unchecked,” said Erika Lennon, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law. “We need to reform the climate negotiations process and make sure the voices of people on the frontlines, not the voices of polluters, are taking centre stage.”

An analysis showed that the number of company executives and lobbyists outnumber the delegations of almost every country at the conference. “The UN climate talks are full of fossil fuel lobbyists,” said Nathan Stewart of Fossil Free Politics, a non-profit.

Oil and gas companies are falling short in setting strict targets to curb methane leaking into the atmosphere, and global efforts to cut overall emissions remain weak at best and sometimes non-existent, a report by Carbon Tracker, a financial think tank, said on November 16. The report, titled Absolute Impact 2024, found that no oil and gas company was aligned with the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C.

Carbon emissions are fuelling increasingly severe storms, droughts, floods and heatwaves around the world, said lead author Olivia Bisel. “Greenhouse gas emissions must fall rapidly to avert even more devastating impacts,” she said.

The 2015 Paris Climate Pact aims to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial times and make efforts to contain it within 1.5 degrees. The 2023 climate summit held in Dubai reached a consensus on transitioning away from fossil fuels, but scientists and activists say not enough is being done to achieve that goal.

Global warming projections for 2100 have not improved since 2021, with the aggregate effect of current policies setting the world on a path toward 2.7°C of warming, according to Climate Action Tracker, a scientific project that tracks government climate action and measures it against the Paris pact. Fossil fuel subsidies remain at an all-time high, and funding for fossil fuel-prolonging projects quadrupled between 2021 and 2022, according to its latest update.