Damian Carrington

The climate crisis is right here, right now, and supercharging extreme weather and taking lives across the globe, as laid out in my story yesterday. That means not only is cutting carbon emissions ever more urgent, the world now has to prepare and protect people against what we must now call unnatural disasters.

At UN climate summits, that protection is called adaptation and a high-level ministerial session at Cop29 discussed the urgency today - there is a huge gap between the finance needed and what has been given.

It really matters, Daniele Violetti, a senior UN climate official, told the gathered nations: “These disasters have long-term knock-on effects on people and on economies, effects that aren’t always easily quantifiable when the building blocks of a better future are washed away. Lives and livelihoods are lost. That’s not just about dollars. That’s about deep scars, devastation and trauma.”

Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s special climate envoy, announced the country would be giving €60m extra to the international adaptation fund: “We think this is incredibly important - there’s so much at stake.” While the sum is relatively small compared to hundreds of billions a year needed, putting money on the table at climate summits helps boost trust between the rich and poor nations, a vital commodity when everything must be agreed by consensus.

The US will announce a contribution of $325mn to the Climate Investment Funds, senior White House officials said on Tuesday.

The Climate Investment Funds are a set of World Bank managed trust funds for climate action for low and middle income countries.

The new US contribution will specifically go into a trust fund used for low-carbon energy projects. It follows a previous commitment of $568mn announced by Biden administration officials late last year and brings the US’ total contributions to 1.8 billion.

Cutting emissions of potent but short-lived greenhouse gas methane is 'emergency brake'

Damian Carrington

Slashing emissions of the potent but short-lived greenhouse gas methane is “our emergency brake”, the UN said today, as the Cop29 presidency announced a new drive to cut methane emissions from waste dumps.

Rotting food in landfills causes about 20% of human-related emissions of methane and the Guardian revealed in February that there have been more than 1000 huge leaks of the gas from landfills since 2019. Cutting methane from waste, fossil fuel sites and farming will rapidly stop global temperature rise and is essential to taming the climate crisis.

“Today, we are launching the Cop29 Reducing Methane from Organic Waste Declaration,” said Cop29 lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev. “This commits countries to creating targets on food waste within future [national climate pledges].”

“As of this morning, more than 30 countries representing almost 50% of the global methane emissions from organic waste have endorsed the declaration,” he said. “This includes eight of the world’s 10 largest emitters of methane from organic waste.” The endorsing countries include the US, UK, Nigeria, Brazil, Japan, Russia and Mexico.

“Reducing methane emissions this decade is our emergency brake in the climate emergency,” said Martina Otto, at the UN Environment Programme, which hosts the Global Methane Pledge through which almost 160 nations have pledged to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030.

She said there were several good reasons to cut food waste emissions, including trapping the gas to use it as an energy source and reusing the food waste as a protein source. “We also want to make sure we’re not losing food that could feed people and is instead feeding climate change,” she said. She called the new declaration “absolutely critical”.

On the leaders’ statement from the G20 summit, which my colleague Fiona Harvey covered earlier, Rafiyev said: “We appreciate the signal that they have sent - we now need to translate political will into practical work.” He also said the Cop29 presidency was working towards producing “a first iteration of a full draft tax” on the all-important climate finance goal by Wednesday evening.

An announcement has just come through that the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Colombia have joined the international Coalition on Phasing Out Fossil Fuel Incentives Including Subsidies (COFFIS).

COFFIS is a Dutch-led coalition of governments working together to remove barriers and facilitate transparency toward the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies. It now has 16 member countries, including Austria, the federal government of Antigua and Barbuda, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

And the members have now committed to coming to COP30 with a national plan for phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.

Responding to the announcement from the UK, Rebecca Newsom, Senior Political Advisor at Greenpeace UK, said:

“The UK’s decision to join this coalition is another indication that British climate diplomacy is finally coming out of its slumber after several dormant years under the Tories. Further collaboration around tackling fossil fuel subsidies can only be a good thing.

“But given G7 and G20 leaders have repeatedly signed statements over many years to tackle this issue, now is the time for real action. UK fossil fuel production subsidies are worth billions every year. These should be redirected immediately, alongside extra taxes on the fossil fuel industry, to unlock cash to deliver on the UK’s climate finance obligation to support developing countries.

“It’s time to make polluters pay for the climate damages they have caused.”

At Cop29 today, I ran into Katie Rood, the New Zealand footballer, writes Dharna Noor, US fossil fuels and climate reporter. Rood came to the summit to speak on a panel about the role of athletes in the climate fight.

Last month, Rood led an open letter demanding FIFA drop the oil giant Saudi Aramco as a sponsor on humanitarian and environmental grounds. The partnership is “a middle finger to women’s soccer,” the letter said.

“The sponsorship doesn’t align with the values of the sport and Fifa’s own values,” she said.

Rood was thrilled with the letter’s reception. It was signed by 130 athletes and received international media coverage. Fifa’s response, however, was underwhelming.

“Fifa just kind of came back with a blank statement about how much they value their sponsorship and that they’re investing in women’s football,” she said. “So we haven’t heard directly from them about it.”

Over 1,700 coal, oil and gas lobbyists granted access to Cop29, the Guardian revealed last week.

“It’s disturbing to see just how much influence the lobbies have here,” Rood said. “Are we actually able to have influence and make positive steps toward a brighter future?”

Right now, there is a “tug of war going on between different entities,” Rood said.

“But I think we just have to keep putting our best foot forward,” she said.

A US congressman has accused Azerbaijan’s government of organising an attempted assault on him while he visited Baku.

On his return to Washington on Monday, representative Frank Pallone, who is an outspoken supporter of Azerbaijan’s rival Armenia, told reporters that he was only saved by the diplomatic security he was travelling with.

“It was no question that if it wasn’t for the fact that security that the embassy hired protected me, I would have been in the hospital,” he was quoted as saying by AFP.

The Democrat from New Jersey said he was confronted by hostile and seemingly coordinated questions by local media while visiting Cop29.

Around 50 “thugs” then waited for him outside his hotel, with the local police refusing to take him through a back entrance but the US embassy-provided security shielding him, he said.

“It was clear that they wanted to assault me,” he said, adding: “You know this was orchestrated by the government. That’s what this was all about. In order to make a point that we don’t want you here and we don’t want you articulating concerns that you have.”

Democrat senator Ed Markey said he also encountered harassment while in Baku, and that he needed a bodyguard even inside his hotel.

Markey, who is a leading climate advocate, accused energy producer Azerbaijan of intensifying repression and “greenwashing” both its climate and human rights record by holding Cop29.

“We can’t just allow these authoritarian petrostates to ignore both the human rights and the climate threats that have to be addressed in a comprehensive way,” Markey said.

On food, agriculture and water day at Cop29, US officials trumpeted the Biden administration’s conservation wins, writes Dharna Noor, US fossil fuels and climate reporter, in Baku.

Shortly after taking office, Biden set a goal to conserve at least 30% of US lands and waters by 2030.

“I’m proud to say that we have conserved more than 45 million acres so far,” said Brenda Mallory, chair of the White House council on environmental quality, in a Tuesday press conference.

The US secretary of agriculture, Thomas Vilsack, also spoke, touting the the intergovernmental Agriculture Innovation Mission (AIM) for Climate initiative, led by the US and UAE.

At Cop29, the initiative announced $29.2bn in funding for resilient agriculture and food systems globally.

Asked how the Biden administration’s efforts on environmental justice can be preserved under Donald Trump, Mallory noted that many dollars have “already gone out to communities” for everything from closing off leaky oil and gas wells to swapping gas-fuelled school buses with electric ones.

Under Biden, the Environmental Protection Agency also took several steps to improve water quality and rein in toxic chemical pollution, including by implementing water limits for toxic forever chemicals and lead, she noted.

“Some of those will surely continue,” she said.

But Trump is expected to re-evaluate many of these rules and regulations.

When the Guardian asked Vilsack how the administration can preserve its legacy on conservation, he said funding has already been spent to do so, with contracts signed and partnerships formed.

“So I’m confident that this is going to continue, just because I think the people who are receiving the benefits understand it’s their responsibility to preserve it,” he said. “Theres a groundswell of momentum that I don’t think any administration…would be in a position to stop”

Damian Carrington

Yesterday delegates in Baku heard from youth representatives, who spoke about the ways in which they were being affected by climate breakdown. Here’s one we didn’t have a chance to run earlier.

“As a surfer, I’m constantly on the ocean, and I actually felt the oceans warming,” says Catarina Lorenzo, 17, a professional surfer from Salvador, in Bahia state in Brazil.

Lorenzo is one of the Unicef climate youth advocates at Cop29, representing the future of humanity, writes Damian Carrington, Guardian environment editor. She said:

My family has always taught me the importance of taking care of nature, and they always say that taking care of nature is taking care of ourselves.

When I look at Brazil this year, we see that the climate consequences are getting worse and worse. We saw floods in the South, droughts in the Amazon, burning of the Pantanal, the destruction of the Cerrado, which became the most destroyed biome of Brazil.

We have droughts in the rainy seasons, and this affects the small family farms and because of this, the big agricultural and livestock industry buys the land from the small agricultural community and then contribute more to the climate crisis.

How can children access their rights to a safe, healthy and clean environment if they don’t have the natural spaces to access. When my government throws sewage in the river, it goes to the ocean, and I can’t surf because I’m going to get sick.

As a surfer, I’m constantly on the ocean, and when I was nine years old, I actually felt the oceans warming. The water was much hotter than normal, and when I got close to a coral reef, it was full of white spots. That is coral bleaching, something that had never happened.

Children have things to say [but] we need the space to say it. We need a Cop for children. When I get into the position of power where the older generation is now, I won’t have the same power to make effective actions. The actions have to be made now. If we are the future, then this future needs to have a voice.