The annual United Nations climate conference has kicked off in Baku, Azerbaijan. Starting on Monday, delegates from nearly 200 countries will participate in the two-week COP29 forum in Baku.

With turbulent weather witnessed all across the globe this year, this year's UNFCCC conference will focus on the rampant changes caused by the climate crisis and how countries can work towards ensuring the red line of 1.5 degrees Celsius is not crossed.

Over the past year, several climate records have been broken as the world continues its urgent debate over the climate crisis. With COP29, the focus will be on climate funding as countries seek an increase in the 100 billion dollar per year target.

Major Focus On Better Climate Funding

As countries seek a new funding target, COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev highlighted that the current policies are leading the world towards 3 degrees Celsius of warming, which would be catastrophic.

This year's summit will focus on a fair and ambitious climate funding goal, or New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG).

As per the 1992 framework adopted on climate change, high-income industrialised nations are responsible for providing finance and technology to developing countries to combat and adapt to climate change.

These countries have been identified as the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. However, with the climate crisis at its peak, developing and third-world nations are seeking higher funding and greater contributions from the developed world.

However, these "high-income" countries have argued that the global landscape has changed since 1992 and nations such as China and the Gulf states should also contribute to funding.

Developing countries and other nations, however, have fought and continue to fight this view as an "attempt to shift responsibility" from the countries which have benefitted the most from industrialisation on and contributed the most to greenhouse emissions.

A Trump Win And Threat To Recall

Following Donald Trump's win in the US presidential polls last week, the former president has threatened to recall the United States' carbon-cutting commitments.

During his first term, Donald Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 Paris Agreement, which Biden rejoined in 2020. However, with a second Trump presidency in the works, the US is expected to once again pull out of the agreement, which could result in less ambition regarding climate change and global warming at the intergovernmental level.

Apart from a looming Trump 2.0, several leaders, including incumbent Joe Biden have stayed away from the climate change talks this year. Along with Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also pulled out from the Baku conference.

2024 - A Record Breaking Year For Climate

2024 is on track to become the hottest year on record, a record which was previously held by 2023. As the years go by, the levels of global warming increase, bringing the globe closer to the 1.5-degree Celsius red line.

This year, rich and poor countries alike were challenged by extreme weather events ranging from flooding in Africa, droughts in South America, and Mexico and the most recent floods in Valencia, Spain.

Noting the extreme weather events and the rise in greenhouse gases, the World Meteorological Organisation has also issued a Red Alert at the pace of climate change.

As per the dataset used by WMO, the January – September 2024 global mean surface air temperature has already reached 1.54 °C (with a margin of uncertainty of ±0.13°C), which is above the pre-industrial average.

“As monthly and annual warming temporarily surpass 1.5°C, it is important to emphasize that this does NOT mean that we have failed to meet Paris Agreement goal to keep the long- term global average surface temperature increase to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the warming to 1.5°C,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo on Day One of the Baku summit.