Employees of the Panama Canal monitor the water levels of Lake Gatún, near Colón, Panama, 14 May 2024. (Keystone/AFP/Martin Bernetti)

Climate change is disrupting trade at sea. Could trade turn the tide? As climate change affects vulnerable economies by draining distant maritime passages, trade organisations are veering into the spotlight to pitch their own climate solutions. But not without pushback.

UN chief António Guterres and Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev speak during welcoming ceremony at the UN Climate Change Conference Cop29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, 12 November 2024. (Keystone/EPA/Stringer)

💔Criss-crossed messages. The conference got to a fiery start, with Azerbaijan’s leader Ilham Aliyev praising fossil fuels as a “gift from god” and lambasting western hypocrisy for taking his oil while criticising its dependency on it. This message was rebuked only moments later when it was UN secretary general António Guterres’s turn at the podium and said, “doubling down on fossil fuels is absurd”.

🧳Upended lives. A report released yesterday by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, revealed that climate change is among the factors forcing people to flee their homes, with the total number of refugees doubling in the last decade.

“Three-fourths of the 120 million displaced people live in countries heavily impacted by climate change,” according to the report – a situation that is projected to worsen.

💢Uproar. Baku’s hasty announcement on the approval of carbon market rules, breaking years of deadlock on the first day, has drawn outcry from rights groups, which say the “backdoor deal” is bypassing due process for a quick win that sets a “bad precedent”.

💰Money pot. Deliberations over the post-2025 financial goal also got a speedy start but are already hitting a bump. The developing nations group G77 and China rejected a starting draft by the working group in charge of penning the agreement, arguing it doesn’t reflect their demands both in numbers and in form.

🧾Who foots the bill? With wealthy nations reluctant to reach too deep into their pockets, a compromise could be to broaden the donor pool to include large emitters like Russia, China and Saudi Arabia, as Switzerland and Canada have suggested. However, these nations have already said, no way.

📣Unavoidable politics. Despite fears of a tightly controlled conference, activists were able to stage a protest on Monday calling for a ceasefire in Gaza as Israeli forces choke the north of the enclave and aid falls to its lowest level in 11 months.

🚫Access denied. In October, out of 98 attempts to coordinate aid with the Israeli authorities into the besieged area through the Wadi Gaza checkpoint, 85 per cent were either denied or impeded, according to the UN relief coordination office, OCHA, compared to an average denial rate of 43 per cent for the entire Strip.

A US ultimatum on Israel to ramp up aid in Gaza within a month or face sanctions reached its expiration date between yesterday and today, with aid groups, including Save the Children, Mercy Corps and Care, accusing Israel of ignoring the ultimatum as the crisis on the ground becomes “apocalyptic”.

– By Michelle Langrand

❝Education should be central to climate talks, especially for children in crisis-hit areas. Extreme weather events are putting children’s learning into disarray. As countries gather in Baku for Cop29, the directors of Education Cannot Wait and the Geneva Global Hub for Education in Emergency urge leaders to make education – and children – more central to their national plans for fighting climate change.