As is often the case, the second week overturns much of what we feared might happen in the first. And so it is happening (it is still too early to use the past tense) this time too. At Cop29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, the second week of climate negotiations seems to have suddenly awakened the desire to reach a result that saves face for the host country — even in the somnolent Azerbaijani presidency of Mukhtar Babayev. An awakening that — it must be stressed — has not instilled the enthusiasm his predecessor Sultan Al Jaber was capable of instilling. Babayev simply hit the alarm clock, reminding everyone how necessary it is to "go faster" to achieve "ambitious results". Quite. After that, it was all a game of passing the buck. Towards the finance and economy ministers, or the environment and climate ministers, who have arrived in the city in recent hours. And then towards the G20 leaders who, also at this very moment, are gathered in Brazil — needless to say, the country hosting Cop30.

Baku calls Rio, please respond!

Babayev openly called on the G20 to take the initiative and break the negotiating deadlock. After all, the Cop29 president himself recalled, "the G20 accounts for 85 per cent of global GDP and 80 per cent of total emissions". And so it is only from there that the two central issues of this conference can be unlocked: climate finance and mitigation (i.e. emissions reduction). But please, the Climate Action Network (Can) — the collective of NGOs that has for years led civil society demands at the negotiations — reminds us: let's not be the ones who trade one thing for another. That is, let's not allow a focus on finance to make us forget about mitigation. This very scenario was on the verge of taking shape during the first week, after "someone" played the procedural card of rule 16, which provides that "any item on the agenda of an ordinary session" shall be included on the agenda of the next one, "unless the conference of the parties decides otherwise". Many therefore feared that mitigation would not be discussed again until the Bonn intersessional negotiations in June 2025 — that is, until a "different decision" arrived in the late morning of today.

Who will make the first move at Cop29?

Despite this attempt by Babayev to stir things up, everyone is still playing their cards close to their chest. Starting with Europe, which has historically always sought to unlock the game. Can is asking Brussels not to be afraid, to put numbers on the table — whether for climate finance — bear in mind that for the transition, the figures being discussed range between 1,000 and 1,300 billion dollars — or for mitigation. On this last point, it should be noted that by next year the countries most responsible for emissions are expected to submit new CO2 reduction pledges, so as not to lose sight of the goal of the Paris Agreement: to remain well below 2 degrees Celsius of increase in average global temperature.

For his part, Wopke Hoekstra, Commissioner for Climate Action, admitted that Europe is running late, partly due to the recent electoral cycle that has slowed the pace of the Green Deal, the strategic plan to bring the old continent into the future.

Beyond the individual trees, a whole forest is at stake

It was Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UNFCCC (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — the playing field within which the negotiations take place), who attempted to close today with a touch of pathos mixed with romanticism. Stiell tried to step into the shoes of coach António Guterres in spurring on the players: "We can no longer afford a wave of individualism" — Stiell uses the expression you-first-ism, which takes the meaning of the slogan America first from the particular to the general — "where groups of countries dig in and refuse to make progress on one issue until others advance elsewhere. That is a recipe for going nowhere," the secretary scolded. "And it could set back global climate efforts at precisely the moment when we absolutely must move forward."

And launching a fresh warning to the G20 leaders who find themselves — as it happens — in the Amazon, one of the most important forests in the world, he added: "We can't lose sight of the forest because we're tussling over individual trees" — literally: we cannot lose sight of the forest just because we are squabbling over individual trees. Paraphrased: we cannot lose sight of the bigger picture by focusing on the details of individual issues.

So enough with the "theatrics", enough with "strategies aimed at wasting precious time". At Cop29, the moment has come to "start working seriously".