Today marks the start of COP29: Why is the United Nations climate conference being held?

Global solutions that can handle the variety of needs across nations are required since climate change will impact every nation, regardless of whether it was a contributing factor in the issue.

Next week, COP29, the annual U.N. climate summit, will take place in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, with tens of thousands of attendees from around the world.

The justification for these talks might be challenging to understand, though, because every summit has created a different set of pledges, plans, and documents to follow.

What you should know about the significance of COP, or Conference of the Parties, is as follows:

Global solutions that can handle the variety of needs across nations are required since climate change will impact every nation, regardless of whether it was a contributing factor in the issue.

The parties to the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which established the international discussions, made a point of distinguishing between the rich countries who mostly caused the warming and the poorer countries that bear a disproportionate amount of its effects.

In other words, the discussions are based on the notion that the nations that gained the most from industrialization ought to bear the greatest burden of addressing the resulting warming.

As the economies of poor nations have expanded and wealthy nations have to weigh conflicting expenses, such as war, redressing that imbalance has become increasingly challenging.

Countries might debate solutions, such as energy regulations, financial plans, or funding requirements, at the summit.

World leaders also attend almost all summits, which is a significant indication of their nations' commitment to the UNFCCC's objectives. Additionally, the presence of the leaders aids in holding nations to their previous commitments.

However, the yearly COP is only the culmination of an ongoing process. In order to gain support for new climate action plans before the COP, where all countries can agree on them, country representatives meet throughout the year.

Each summit aims to further global climate action from the previous year, but it also gives nations an opportunity to demonstrate to their citizens that the issue is being handled.

Crucially, the exercise has helped transfer hundreds of billions of dollars in climate aid to developing countries and has seen governments count and report their emissions.

The method also guarantees significant international support for agreed activities by forcing decisions to be made by agreement, increasing the likelihood that these actions will be carried out.

However, development has proceeded too slowly to stop the increase in global temperatures. Both emissions and temperatures have increased since the start of COP conferences in 1995, indicating that severe climate change is imminent.

There is no other way to negotiate significant socioeconomic reforms in an effort to curb global warming, according to proponents of the UNFCCC process.

A new yearly climate finance target, an agreement to restart multilateral carbon credit markets, and additional relief funding offered for nations already affected by expensive climate disasters are among the headline accords that this year's conference is seeking to achieve.

After that, negotiators will keep working on technical agreements that expand on the work from earlier meetings.

Groups of nations could start their own initiatives or commit funds for certain projects outside of the official COP framework. As financiers work to generate money for climate investments, businesses will probably announce business agreements pertaining to climate action.

Central and Eastern Europe took up the rotating COP chairmanship, and this year, Azerbaijan is hosting COP29.

Brazil will host COP30 in Latin America next year.

A nation that hosts a summit spends the entire year guiding pre-summit talks and pressuring other countries to take bold measures. This allows the presidency to play a significant role in determining the summit's agenda.
Activists and scientists mingle with banking titans and business lobbyists at hundreds of side events.

Panel talks on everything from planning carbon offset schemes to ocean acidification are held on public conference stages.

The "Green Zone," an exhibition hall, hosts talks facilitated by corporations, non-profits, and national delegations.

While large-scale protests have been staged outside of some summits, such the COP26 march in Glasgow in 2021, the last two conferences in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have only permitted protests in specific, roped-off locations.

There won't be much public dissent outside the high-security conference location in Azerbaijan, which has likewise outlawed public demonstrations.