COP29 has concluded in Baku, Azerbaijan following two weeks of fraught negotiations, reports Climate Heritage Network (CHN), with tense disagreements over the COP’s signature issue of climate finance and outcomes whose adequacy is hotly disputed.
Climate Heritage Network writes:
Despite enormous efforts by culture advocates, COP negotiators unfortunately missed the chance for an easy win for the planet and its peoples, failing to take even a small step towards the Global Call’s core objective of addressing the culture gap in current international climate policy and planning. In the end, advocates managed to secure a single reference to culture in the decisions of the COP. This reference can be found in the highly contentious Mitigation Work Programme (MWP) decision, where the discussion on ‘cities: buildings and urban systems’ notes the ‘need to tailor solutions to sociocultural and economic contexts.’ This inclusion builds on extensive engagement by the Climate Heritage Network’s Working Group 3 with the MWP’s 2024 global dialogues. This effort will be expanded in 2025 via the CHN’s new Decarbonizing the Built Environment Through Heritage (DBTH) initiative.
Other high points for culture delegates at this year’s COP included the strong support for the potential of culture-based climate action expressed at COP29’s High-Level Ministerial Dialogue on Culture-Based Climate Action with a commitment to pursue a UNFCCC work plan for culture in the future; a host of valuable side events including the day-long Culture x Climate Forum at Baku’s Tusi-Bohm Planetarium and events in the Azerbaijan, Digital Innovation, ICESCO, Italian, Greek, Spanish, Regional Climate Foundations, Resilience Hub, UAE, and United States pavilions; and coordinated, energized advocacy by arts, culture, and heritage advocates that reached the highest levels of the COP.
In advance of COP28 in 2023 thousands of organisations and leaders signed the Global Call to Put Cultural Heritage, Arts and Creative Sectors at the Heart of Climate Action, which calls on climate negotiators at the COPs to enable culture to contribute fully to climate solutions. COP28 then took an important step in this direction with the launch of the Group of Friends of Culture-Based Climate Action, an international coalition of UNFCCC member states that advocates for culture-based climate action.
Tabling and adoption of a Joint Work Decision is a key goal of the Global Call campaign. COP29’s failure to adopt a culture workshop request makes it more difficult to assure this victory for culture will come at COP30 in Belém, Brazil. It also misses the opportunity to help unlock at scale the power of culture to drive more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are due from national governments in 2025.
The Group of Friends of Culture-Based Climate Action met in Baku at the 2nd High-Level Ministerial on Culture-Based Climate Action at COP29, which took place on 15 November 2024. This meeting was co-sponsored by the Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan and the co-chairs of the Group of Friends, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates.
In a positive step, the Ministerial adopted Terms of Reference for the Group of Friends that declare the Group’s goal to be the launch of the first Work Program on Culture-based Climate Action at the UNFCCC. The Global Call urged the ministers to turn these words into action by deciding to collectively work for inclusion of a culture workshop request in the final decisions of COP29. The urgent need for this action was strongly expressed by HRH Princess Dana Firas of Jordan, the Climate Heritage Network’s Special Envoy to the Ministerial Dialogue in her remarks to the Minister.
Branded ‘the finance COP,’ the top mission of COP29 was to secure an ambitious and equitable global climate finance goal. In the end, developed nations agreed to help channel ‘at least’ $300bn a year into developing countries by 2035, leaving bitterly disappointed many who said vastly larger sums were needed and sooner. Many culture advocates had supported the idea of sub-goals for adaptation and loss and damage finance, neither of which were included. At the same time, a provision in the finance decision linking the targets of the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience to the need to ‘dramatically scale up adaptation finance’ holds out hope for new channels of finance for adapting cultural heritage.
