COP29: UN climate summits ‘no longer fit for purpose’, warn leading figures
UN climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and should only be hosted by countries who are trying to give up fossil fuels, veterans of the process have said.
An open letter to the United Nations, signed by former UN chief Ban Ki-moon, made a dramatic intervention in the 29th COP climate summit, under way in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Frustration over petrostate hosts – following last year’s summit in UAE – as well as the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists, prohibitive costs, and slow progress have been mounting in recent years.
The letter acknowledges the strides COPs have made on ramping up climate policies.
“But it is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” the authors said.
“Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.”
The letter’s 22 signatories also include former Ireland President Mary Robinson and Christiana Figueres, former head of the UN climate body (UNFCCC) that runs the annual COP summits.
It called for the process to be streamlined and for countries to be held accountable for their promises.
Sky News analysis has found only “marginal” progress has been made since the “historic” pledge from COP28 last year to transition away from fossil fuels.
Pic: AP Photo/Peter Dejong
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The letter also called for “strict eligibility criteria” for host countries to exclude those “who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy”.
This year’s host country, petrostate Azerbaijan, has been engulfed in controversy.
Its authoritarian president Ilham Aliyev used his opening address to criticise western hypocrisy and praise oil and gas as a “gift” from God. His criticism of France, with whom relations have long been tense, drove the French minister to cancel a trip to the summit.
While the government and its COP team run separate operations, host countries are supposed to smooth over disagreements and find consensus between the almost 200 countries gathered.
COP presidencies are also nominating themselves to be climate leaders and throwing their own countries under the spotlight.
Azerbaijan is a small developing country that relies significantly on oil and gas revenues. But it has made slow progress on building out clean power – getting just 1.5% of its energy from clean sources – and led a harsh crackdown on critics in the run up to the COP.
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In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, its lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev was unable to say whether Azerbaijan preferred to extract all its oil and gas or seek another, cleaner economic pathway – hard though that would be.
In a news conference yesterday, Mr Rafiyev said the president had been “quite clear” and he would not comment further.
“We have opened our doors to everybody,” he added.
Some diplomats here have hinted that Azerbaijan’s presidency team mean well but might be a little out of their depth. They have never been out in front at previous COPs, but they also only had a year to prepare for their turn hosting the mighty summit.
“My sense of this is that they’re a little underprepared, a little overwhelmed and a little bit short,” said one, speaking anonymously, as is customary for diplomats trying to maintain good relations.
“But I’m not sure that that’s politics. It might just be bandwidth and preparation and things like that.”
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Different regions in the world take turns to host a COP. This year it was up to Eastern Europe, but the selection process took longer than usual due to tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine and between Azerbaijan and rival Armenia.
Achim Steiner of the UN Development Programme, called it “troubling” that some countries face questions over their host roles.
“Are there countries that are by definition good hosts and others are bad hosts?” he asked.
“In the United Nations, we maintain the principle of every nation, first of all, should have a right to be heard.
“Labels are not always the fairest way of describing a nation. Some of the largest oil producers have hosted this COP in the past, and seemingly this seemed to be a perfectly acceptable phenomenon.”
COP stands for “conference of the parties” and refers to countries (“parties”) who have signed the underlying climate treaty.
Azerbaijan’s COP29 team and the UN’s climate body have been contacted with a request to comment.
Slovakia’s prime minister has drawn criticism from across Europe and from his own people after his surprise visit to Moscow for face-to-face talks with Vladimir Putin on Sunday.
Robert Fico is only the third EU leader to visit Mr Putin in Moscow since the Russian president ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
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The Kremlin said the two leaders discussed “the international situation” and Russian natural gas deliveries.
Russian natural gas still flows through Ukraine and to some other European countries, including Slovakia, under a five-year agreement signed before the war that is due to expire at the end of the year.
Vladimir Putin, right, and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico shake hands during their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow. Pic: AP
Volodymyr Zelenskyy told EU leaders last week that Ukraine had no intention of renewing the deal, which Mr Fico insisted would hurt Slovakia and its interests.
He said his visit to Moscow was a reaction to Mr Zelenskyy’s statement and that Mr Putin had told him that Russia was still ready to deliver gas to the West.
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‘It smells like treason’
In Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava, people took to the streets to protest after the meeting, with banners in support of Ukraine as well as unflattering depictions of Mr Fico on display.
One sign simply read: “It smells like treason.”
A protester holds a sign which translates as ‘it smells like treason’ during an anti-government demo in Slovakia, after the country’s Prime Minister Robert Fico met Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Pic: Reuters
Demonstrators at the protest. Pic: Reuters
Mr Zelenskyy said the “unwillingness” shown by Mr Fico to replace Russian gas is a “big security issue” for Europe, and questioned the potential financial incentives being offered to the Slovak leader.
“Why is this leader so dependent on Moscow? What is being paid to him, and what does he pay with?,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
In his nightly address on Monday, Mr Zelenskyy said that Mr Fico had received an offer of compensation for losses from the expiring transit deal, but that he “did not want compensation for the Slovaks”.
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‘Threat to whole of Europe’
In a statement, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said the “weakness, dependence and short-sightedness” of Mr Fico’s energy policy is a “threat to the whole of Europe”.
The Slovak leader’s “persistent attempts” to maintain energy dependence on Moscow is “surprising” and represents a “shameful policy of appeasement”, the Ukrainian ministry added.
The Czech government also criticised Mr Fico’s trip to Moscow, pointing to its own decision to wean itself off Russian energy.
“It was the Czech government that secured independence from Russian energy supplies so that we wouldn’t have to crawl in front of a mass murderer,” Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavsky said.
In early December 1955, the phone rang at an air base in Colorado Springs. The officers on the watch floor of the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) – who were defending the skies above the US and Canada – stiffened.
The Cold War was in full swing and tensions were running high.
The command’s director of operations Colonel Harry Shoup answered the call. On the other end was a child’s voice asking: “Is this Santa Claus?”
According to the colonel’s daughter Terri Van Keuren, now 75, her father initially thought it was a prank, and replied: “I’m the commander of the Combat Alert Center. Who’s this?”
In response, the child started crying and asked if he was one of “Santa’s helpers”.
Colonel Harry Shoup. Pic: David Bedard
Terri van Keuren was six years old when her father began the Santa Tracker tradition
The colonel then decided to play along, replying that he was indeed Santa Claus and mustering a convincing “ho-ho-ho”.
This surprise call started the nearly 70-year tradition of the Santa Tracker, which allows children around the world to track the whereabouts of Father Christmas via a livestream and a phone line answered by volunteers.
It is now run by CONAD’s successor, the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD).
The NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center on Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, on Christmas Eve 2022. Pic: Department of Defense/Chuck Marsh
But how did a child seemingly get the phone number of a colonel in the US air force?
The American department store Sears had printed an advert in a local newspaper telling children they could call Santa, Terri explains.
“They had printed one digit wrong in the phone number. And it was dad’s top secret number.”
Children can use a livestream to track Father Christmas as he delivers his presents. Pic: NORAD DVIDS
Colonel Shoup called the phone company and asked for a new number for his office.
Meanwhile, the phone at CONAD was “ringing off the hook” and Colonel Shoup told his staff they were to answer the calls as Santa Claus.
In the story told by Terri, on 24 December that year her parents arrived at the base to deliver cookies to those on duty, and found the military establishment unusually festive.
A picture of a sleigh had been drawn by a map writer on plexiglass – which was used to mark where unidentified flying objects were located.
“Next thing they knew, dad was calling the radio station. ‘This is Colonel Shoup, the commander of the Combat Alert Center in Colorado Springs. And we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh’,” says Terri.
Terri, who lives in Castle Rock, Colorado, was six years old when her father became the “Santa Colonel”. She says the NORAD Santa Tracker, which reaches millions of children around the world every year, is his “legacy”.
NORAD’s tracking of Santa is a military operation in itself beginning on 1 December.
Brigadier General Jocelyn Schermerhorn, a senior US military officer in Canada, tells Sky News how the day unfolds on Christmas Eve.
“We have about a thousand people come together to set up the operations centre that is used to track Santa and that allows anyone to call in to check on his whereabouts”.
Pic: Charles Marsh
Volunteers are responsible for answering calls from tens of thousands of children around the world. In 2022, 78,000 calls were answered at Peterson Space Force Base.
For 10 years Terri was one of these volunteers. “I always wore a t-shirt that had a picture of my dad. It says: ‘My dad’s the Santa Colonel’.”
What’s next for the Santa Tracker? Terri says her father’s festive story is so famous she’s “had several requests to make a movie out of it”.
Head to Sky News’ YouTube and other social media channels to watch NORAD’s Santa Tracker and find out where he is in the world delivering presents.
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