Crude Realities

In early November, the eyes of the climate community turned to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, as more than 60,000 delegates descended on the city for two weeks of climate negotiations at COP29. The 29^th Conference of the Parties (COP) is the yearly meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It had been dubbed “The Finance COP.” The goal? Come up with the funds and a plan to support the ecologically sustainable economic growth of low- and middle-income countries, known as the “Global South.” They have contributed the least to fossil fuel emissions but bear the greatest brunt of the negative consequences of climate change. 

Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego was on site in a delegation consisting of students, faculty and staff. From rubbing shoulders with dignitaries and giving interviews with international media on the role our ocean plays in climate change, to getting roped into the underground COP lapel pin trade, our time in Baku was a whirlwind. This is a first-hand account from a novice COP delegate offering some glimpses behind the scenes of the global focal point of climate negotiations.

Baku is known as the “city of wind.” Perched on the edge of the Caspian Sea, this Fifth Century city bears the signs of the colorful history of Azerbaijan. From 10th Century mosques carved in stone, to Soviet-era grey match-box architecture to gleaming, all-glass façade skyscrapers downtown built by oil money in the three decades since the country declared independence from the Soviet Union. The smell of crude oil hangs in the air, drifting in from the rich oil fields just outside of town. From the high-end fashion mall, it’s only a short walk to the old town of Baku where you can buy a handicraft rug that might be made in China, drink some freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, or pay one manat (60 cents) to have your photo taken with a big fur hat bearing the Soviet hammer and sickle. You can still see cars that look like they’re taken straight out of James Bond’s “From Russia with Love,” but they shared the roads with the 160 brand new electric buses purchased specifically to ferry meeting attendees to the Baku Olympic Stadium, where hundreds of thousands of square feet of tent structures were set up for the event.

What might not be known to outsiders is that COP is really three meetings in one. First we have the “Green Zone.” This is where companies and various ventures, from housing projects to a surprising number of companies in the oil and gas sector, try to show everyone how sustainable they are. Then we have the “Blue Zone” where only delegates with a badge are let in. The Blue Zone consists of two areas: the plenary halls and meeting rooms where the actual negotiations take place and the delegation pavilion spaces. Pavilions are like showrooms, built from scratch and of varying sizes, from a 20 by 20 foot cubicle to something more like a medium-sized apartment. Just as with variation in size, you’ll also find variation in elaborateness. The COP29 pavilions ranged from a simple front desk and some leaflets for perusal to an all-inclusive experience with a big screen stage, 100+ seats, custom-made art, live plants and space to host panel discussions or sit down and network. 

The Ocean Pavilion at COP29 was a collaboration between Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and supported by many partners such as the American Geophysical Union and the Ocean Policy Research Institute of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. This was the third installment of the Ocean Pavilion which is meant to be the home of the ocean at COP and hosting all ocean-focused talks. Topics ranged from the latest science on ocean warming and acidification to new advances in marine carbon dioxide removal technologies and policies. 

Watch Bergentz and fellow Scripps students present new assessments of ocean warming at COP29.

The Ocean Pavilion also provided a space for discussions among various stakeholders on how to support emerging blue economies, protect marine biodiversity and promote ocean-focused climate solutions. From presidents and ministers of small island countries in the Global South to fund managers from some of the biggest philanthropies in the world to scientists, negotiators and policymakers, hundreds if not thousands of people cycled through the Ocean Pavilion in the span of the two weeks of COP29.

Word quickly gets around which pavilion has the best swag. Head to the UK and Northern Ireland pavilion for a photo op with a red phone booth or have a VR experience surfing the biggest wave in the world in the Portuguese pavilion. Head to Thailand for a picture with a statue of Moo Deng, an Insta-famous pygmy hippopotamus who lives in the Khao Kheow Zoo, and get a custom fridge magnet made. Get a free coffee from the in-house barista in the Australian pavilion. Try your hand at some marbling art in Turkey or get a cute stuffed panda from China. One of the most coveted swag items is the lapel pin, the kind you’d put on your suit jacket. It only took about two days before an unofficial lapel pin trading market was established with many delegates, 5,000 volunteers, and technical support staff sporting lanyards heavy with dozens of pins. Be aware, if you want to get your hands on one of the rare otter pins from Singapore, you might have to give up both your Icelandic iceberg pin and your Pakistani snow leopard pin…. For many of the Azerbaijani high school and university students recruited as volunteers for the event, this was perhaps a seemingly superficial pursuit, though also likely a very relevant exposure to new cultures, negotiations and international trade. It’s the microcosm in the macrocosm.

A flourishing lapel pin trade aside, did COP29 create its desired outcomes? The general feeling among the climate community seems to be disappointment – again. After negotiations stretched into overtime by nearly two days, relatively affluent countries at last agreed to provide $300 billion per year by 2035 in funds to support developing countries in their climate actions post-2025. Recent reports have put the amount needed to deal with the consequences of climate change at some $1.3 trillion annually. In that context, the words of some delegations calling the $300 billion target a “joke” and “insultingly low” seem fair. 

Furthermore, this is the third COP in a row hosted by an oil exporter (after COP28 in the United Arab Emirates and COP27 in Egypt), and one that is also accused of committing ethnic cleansing and genocidal acts against Armenians. The voices arguing that the whole premise of COP is flawed and outdated are getting louder. Do we really need these massive events that people fly thousands of miles to get to, hosted in places with questionable ecological practices and low democratic standards, to repeatedly set lofty goals and then fail to achieve them on time? Are the voices of the people for whom climate change is life or death really being heard when the protest space is limited to a tiny corner of the venue surrounded by police? Call it petrostate greenwashing or just an unwarranted platform for big empty words by world leaders who care more about power than people; it is still the case that the climate crisis is one of the few issues humanity gathers around to discuss at the scale of a COP meeting. 

But as the flights taking delegates back to their home countries swoosh over the oil fields of Baku and the tent city that took two years to plan and build for a two-week meeting is being torn down, it feels like the inkling we’ve had before is reinforced. The climate crisis is only in part going to be solved in the meeting halls of COP, and it is going to require action, energy and effort by every single one of us to guarantee a fair and livable future on planet Earth.

Kerstin Bergentz is a fifth-year PhD student with the Multiscale Ocean Dynamics lab and Lagrangian Drifter Lab at Scripps. She researches air-sea interactions, upper ocean dynamics and various types of waves.

Read more on the Ocean Pavilion here: https://oceanpavilion-cop.org 

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography delegation to COP29 was generously supported by Logitech and the delegation as a whole has taken steps to offset its travel to Baku using a social cost of carbon estimate created by the University of California.