Behind the scenes at the UN climate summit, where many left heartbroken

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This week:

• Behind the scenes at the UN climate summit
• Plastic waste piles up
• There’s a push to make clothing companies responsible for textile waste

Behind the scenes at COP29, where many left heartbroken

They ushered in a deal at an ungodly hour Sunday morning, the greatest sense of solidarity found in the shared lack of sleep. 

In the end, countries at the COP29 UN climate summit agreed on a deal to contribute at least $300 billion US annually by 2035 to help developing nations deal with climate change. 

The final gavel was met with indignation from developing country leaders who fought to secure more than four times that — $1.3 trillion US per year — in climate finance. 

I’m CBC’s international climate producer, and I worked with senior correspondent Susan Ormiston and videographer Lyza Sale — as well as our Radio-Canada colleagues Elisa Serret, Etienne Leblanc and Samuel Lapointe-Savard— to cover COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

At their core, COPs are a set of annual negotiations that push the world to address the shared threat of climate change.

They are also a confluence of cultures, values, ideas, economies and generations. 

Panels and trade show booths go on for kilometres, highlighting every nook, cranny and idea tangential to the climate crisis, from clean-cooking projects to the impacts of war.

Ministers mingle in hallways with activists and analysts. Journalists from across the world support one another in massive WhatsApp groups to get complicated, fast-moving, high-stakes stories out to audiences around the world, accurately. 

In a way, the sense of community at COP is as high as the tensions that have pushed the talks into overtime year after year.

When Brazil’s National Secretary for Climate Change Ana Toni told us late on Thursday night that the latest draft of this year’s deal would have been a good starting place “10 days ago,” it was pretty clear this COP would follow the pattern of unscheduled late nights and no guaranteed conclusion.

One of the major sticking points this year was finance — the formulation of a “new collective quantified goal.” Simply put: an annual sum for climate change protection and prevention, up from the $100 billion US nations pledged in 2009, and finally met in 2022.

The developing world wanted developed countries to pledge a minimum of $1.3 trillion US of public money annually by 2035, not including loans and private investments. Activists on site regularly reminded us that annual fossil fuel subsidies currently amount to $7 trillion US per year globally, and that developing nations were facing the brunt of climate change impacts caused by the historical emissions of developed countries. 

By 5 p.m. Saturday, nearly 24 hours after negotiations were meant to conclude, party heads from island states and developing countries were walking out of negotiating rooms, fed up with the discussions.

“No deal is better than a bad deal,” echoed through the halls, where accredited activists voiced their support for developing nations. Climate finance analysts raised concerns that early draft agreements offering $250 billion US were little more than the previous pledge of $100 billion US per year, after factoring in inflation. 

We chased delegates as they left meeting rooms, dozens of microphones huddling around key players, trying to assess if the talks would collapse.

In the end, climate think-tank E3G offered this summary: “Vulnerable nations faced a grim ultimatum: either agree to a relatively low financial offer of support from developed countries or risk the collapse of the only international process where they have a significant voice and influence,” their post-COP analysis read, saying developing countries has to make huge sacrifices “to ensure the multilateral process survived.”

In the plenary, some of these nations spoke bluntly, though they did not formally block the deal.

The final text was “nothing more than an optical illusion,” said Chandni Raina, from the Indian delegation, voicing her country’s disapproval for the public record.

“$300 billion is unrealistic,” Nigeria’s special envoy on climate Nkiruka Maduekwe said. “Let us tell ourselves the truth. This is 3 a.m., and we are going to clap our hands and say this is what we’re going to do? I don’t think so.”

We stood outside the plenary hall until 5 a.m., asking delegates for further reaction to the deal as they slipped out. Many just waved us off, implying that they had no words left. 

By 6 a.m., we were packing up our temporary COP office for another year, and sensing the stories of developing country needs and climate finance were not over.

And so while COP29 did have some modest progress on carbon markets and gender, many agree the unsatisfying ending passes a heavy baton to Brazil, which will host next year’s climate summit. 

— Jill English

Old issues of What on Earth? are here. The CBC News climate page is here. 

Check out our podcast and radio show. In our newest episode: A bright white mineral promises to boost crop yields while sucking up atmospheric carbon, and its name is wollastonite. Join CBC Ottawa’s environment and climate reporter Stu Mills as he walks us through why some farmers are cautiously embracing this new mineral, and sprinkling it on their fields.

What On Earth20:32A mineral rock with climate-fighting superpowers?

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Reader feedback

Last week, we wrote about some terms and phrases that are crucially important to understanding the climate crisis, but are quite … boring. We asked how readers would rebrand them and here are some responses: 

Kate Walker in Vancouver said “Regarding boring (and inaccurate) climate terminology, I have heard of a replacement for carbon tax — what do you think of ‘pollution fine’?” 

Drew Jarvis suggested rebranding “maladaptation” as “shortsighted climate disruptors.” 

Carol Ann Trabert wrote: “Time and time again, you see and hear obscure language used to describe something that could be better understood using simple language. Please lead the fight to reclaim the mundane! We would all be better off with language that allows us to focus on the issue, not the name of the issue.”

Dave Braden, formerly of Braden Homes, in Rockwood, Ont., responded to Nicole Mortillaro’s story on sustainable cooling with tips on how to install sun shades and avoid air conditioning: “Determine the angle of the sun on June 21…. Build permanent or seasonal shading that shades all glazing facing south at noon [without preventing] sunshine from penetrating the glazing on Dec. 21.… This roughly translates into an overhang of 24 inches about 12 inches above average-sized windows.” The west side of the building also needs attention, but the north and east sides don’t, he writes.”This shading combined with a well-insulated house means you don’t need AC. Our business did over 50 of these projects over 40 years. They cost little and they don’t break.”

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, window awnings reduce solar heat gain in the summer by up to 65 per cent on south-facing windows and 77 per cent on west-facing windows. Such awnings can be retractable to allow for winter sun and heating.

Write us at whatonearth@cbc.ca. (And feel free to send photos too!) Please keep sharing your suggestions for greener holiday gifting or other ways to make the holidays greener – we will compile them for a future issue.

The Big Picture: Plastic waste piles up

There are few bigger pictures than the sheer scale of humanity’s plastic waste. But beyond the mountains that end up in landfills, beyond the paltry nine per cent that ever get recycled, there’s also the hidden scourge of mismanaged waste — plastic that’s not accounted for and lost, often polluting the environment. 

“If we took all of that mismanaged plastic waste and piled it on top of New York City, it would reach so high that it would disrupt general aviation,” said Sam Pottinger, senior data scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. His new research shows how the issue of plastic waste is set to grow by 2050, but implementing a few key policies could make a serious dent if implemented at plastic pollution treaty talks currently happening in Busan, South Korea.  

Read more about this research and how recycling is still seen as a solution despite its low success rate. 

— Anand Ram

Hot and bothered: Provocative ideas from around the web

• Glass jars aren’t recycled in Newfoundland and Labrador — they just go to the landfill. But a company that turns glass into sand is hoping to change that. Check out a CBC News video about it.

• Desalinating water is sometimes used to produce drinking water in coastal regions. It’s been considered too expensive for inland agriculture. But climate change is motivating the development of new desalination technology to save agriculture in regions with brackish groundwater.

• Florida manatees are charismatic animals that make their home along the coasts of the Sunshine State. But archeological evidence suggests they’re actually recent migrants, drawn by the heat from fossil fuel power plants. The researchers suggest the phaseout of such plants may cause manatees to leave Florida again.

• Cows and pigs produce lots of planet-warming methane. A new tax in Denmark aims to clean that up.

• Japan, China and other countries are testing a new generation of batteries called “flow batteries” that store huge amounts of energy in enormous vats of metallic liquid — enough to power tens of thousands of homes for hours. 

There’s a push to make clothing companies responsible for textile waste

Europe is dealing with fashion waste. Why can’t Canada?

3 days ago

Duration 1:59

A growing number of European countries are trying to reduce waste from fast
fashion by forcing brands to collect and process clothes at the end of their lifespan. Advocates hope to see that in Canada but a lack of provincial co-ordination on recycling could make that hard.

While fast fashion is still plenty popular, more brands are trying to appeal to customers who want their clothes to last a lifetime — or at least not wind up in the garbage — with in-store repair services, used clothing trade-in programs and new forms of recycled textiles.

But some jurisdictions have decided it isn’t enough to let businesses take the lead on reducing waste.

They’re forcing retailers to pay up. 

A growing number of European countries — along with the state of California — have brought in legislation that makes brands that manufacture and sell clothes responsible for collecting and processing them at the end of their lifespan.

The hope of these “extended producer responsibility” (EPR) schemes is to keep clothes out of the dump, and to push brands to make fabrics that last longer and are easier to recycle. 

Canadian advocates hope this country will take a similar approach — though some warn Canada’s size, and the complexity of its provincial recycling systems, could pose challenges.

This week, Black Friday kicks off the holiday season — and revives concern about what will happen with this year’s sequined tops and Christmas sweaters in a few years’ time.

Enter EPR. 

In the world of textiles, this would typically involve charging brands a fee based on the amount of clothing they sell, which would then go into a fund to pay for its collection and disposal, said Jordan Girling, head of EPR with the Waste and Resources Action Programme, a global non-governmental organization based in the U.K.

Policies can also be written such that brands get a discount for making clothes that are better quality or easier to recycle, he said.

For example, a brand might pay less for making a T-shirt of 100 per cent cotton compared to a blend of synthetics. 

“That’s where the incentive comes for producers and brands to make the products more recyclable in the first place — a cheaper fee,” said Girling, who spoke to CBC News on the sidelines of a recent recycling industry conference in Banff, Alta. 

France was an early adopter of EPR for textiles, and has had a version of a program since 2007. 

But in recent years, the idea has been gaining traction elsewhere in the world. Last year, Hungary and the Netherlands introduced programs of their own, with Latvia following suit. In the European Union, negotiations are underway between the Parliament and council on rules that would make it mandatory for each member country to enact a textile EPR scheme. 

Closer to home, California was the first state to approve an EPR program for textiles this fall. In New York, a similar bill is in front of the state Senate. 

“[This idea] is gaining a lot of steam quite dramatically,” said Girling.

Kelly Drennan, founder of the Toronto non-profit Fashion Takes Action, said EPR isn’t a perfect solution, but thinks it would be a good step for Canada to take.

“Putting the responsibility onto the industry to pay for the volume of products that they’re making, and the poor quality, and the environmental degradation and pollution that it’s causing — I think just makes a ton of sense,” said Drennan.

Canada has a range of different recycling systems across a range of different jurisdictions that could make implementing this type of policy a challenge. 

But several provinces — for example, B.C., Ontario and Alberta — either already have EPR systems for products like packaging and paper products or are making the transition now. 

The Retail Council of Canada said it’s aware textile waste is a growing concern and is watching EPR policies in Europe and California, but is wary of “unintended consequences.”

“[The council] is particularly concerned about potential disruptions to charitable reuse systems, the current lack of scalable recycling technology, and the economic impact on businesses and consumers,” said vice-president Santo Ligotti in a statement.

Federal bureaucrats are also keeping an eye on EPR.

Environment and Climate Change Canada recently wrapped up a public consultation about how to deal with plastic waste from textiles, and has asked for feedback about whether take-back programs or EPR could work here. 

— Paula Duhatscheck

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Editors: Emily Chung and Hannah Hoag | Logo design: Sködt McNalty