Protecting the planet is a global endeavor that only works if countries agree to take collective action. Judging by how the most important climate negotiations went this year, things aren’t going well.In 2024, talks to halt plastic pollution, protect biodiversity and end desertification all failed. Meanwhile, a deal at the COP29 summit left developing nations unhappy with the amount of money agreed upon to help them battle global warming and avoided mentioning the need to move away from fossil fuels.”It has become increasingly more difficult to come to an agreement that is ambitious yet feasible and that will address the problem at hand,” said Maria Ivanova, director of Northeastern University’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. “Issues like climate change and plastic pollution are inherently systemic, cross-sectoral, and embedded in economic structures.”Global environmental agreements have never been simple. But political polarization, the growing influence of multinational corporations and strained government budgets have made countries less willing to compromise.”By the time we get to a text or to an agreement that has a consensus, it is so diluted that, ultimately, it’s almost nothing,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey-Gomez, Panama’s special representative for climate change, who attended all four major international climate negotiations this year.Here’s a look at how some of the main global talks around climate and the environment fared in 2024.
Climate activists hold banners outside the venue of the COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
| BloombergClimate changeNearly 200 countries agreed in Baku, Azerbaijan, to triple funds available to help developing countries confront rapidly warming temperatures at COP29 in November. But the talks were, at times, openly hostile and produced an agreement that even many supporters saw as insufficient and disappointing.Rich countries pledged to provide at least $300 billion annually by 2035 through public finance as well as bilateral and multilateral deals. The agreement also calls on nations to unleash a total of $1.3 trillion a year, with most of it expected to come through private financing.The talks kept “the multilateral system alive,” Monterrey-Gomez said in Baku. Yet the failure to deliver on key promises means efforts to to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius are “dead,” he said.
South Korean environmental activists hold a banner reading “Citizen’s march to save the planet from plastic” during a campaign to reduce plastic use in Seoul on Dec. 3.
| AFP-JIJIPlastic pollutionDespite overwhelming public and business support, negotiators in Busan, South Korea, failed to reach consensus on cutting plastic production and phasing out dangerous chemicals at what was supposed to be the culmination of two years of talks on a global plastics treaty.Progress was block