Pascal Hufschmid, Red Cross Museum director, at an interview with Keystone-ATS, 13 November 2024, about the Swiss government’s decision to withdraw funding. (Keystone/Martial Trezzini)

Red Cross Museum’s Pascal Hufschmid: We need a public debate on funding cuts. For the first time in its history, Geneva’s iconic Red Cross Museum could lose the Swiss government support. Director Pascal Hufschmid is calling for public debate, warning that the abrupt decision to cut funding risks erasing decades of investment in preserving Switzerland’s humanitarian heritage.

COP29 PART TWO. A week after opening with official Azeri cultural shows and glitzy climate announcements – including the start of loss and damage payments next year and greenlighting rules for carbon credits – discussions resume after an ‘off day’, with countries particularly pressed to agree on a new climate finance deal. The $100 billion a year commitment will run out on 31 December, and negotiations will have to recover after a week of draft-backsliding and intensified money-bickering.

A report released last Thursday by the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance said the target figure for developing countries would need to rise at least $1.3 trillion each year by 2035 to avoid incurring even bigger shortfalls later.

💨Hot air. Countries have until February to deliver their most ambitious climate commitments, in an effort to stay under a 1.5°C global temperature increase. But after Brazil and UAE, the future and former Cop hosts, submitted unconvincing NDCs, or nationally determined contributions, Baku’s latest still awaits publication. An assessment of its last submission, was rated “critically insufficient”.

🏭Carbon influencers. The Center for International Environmental Law (Ciel) said over the weekend that nearly 500 lobbyists promoting controversial carbon capture and storage technology – five times more than in 2023 – were given badges to the talks.

🚷Rolling up the red carpet. The host country’s strongman, meanwhile, put diplomatic niceties on hold to attack governments critical of his own policies, leading to a decision by France’s ecological transition minister to ditch Baku.

💭Rethinking Cops. Amid criticism over recent Cop hosting choices and divulged hypocrisies, senior leaders, including a former UN secretary general and former chief of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change are calling for a rethink of Cop meetings. Countries not supporting the phase out of fossil fuels should be excluded from holding the events, they said.

🔥Methane leaks. As the second-largest contributor to global warming, and 84 times more potent than carbon, methane leaks can be quickly stopped, said Inger Andersen, UN Environment Programme chief last week. She was speaking from the Olympic Stadium, the Cop venue in Baku, not far from where gas flaring, a major source of methane emissions, is carried out, according to a UN monitoring system that Andersen said could be part of the solution, to identify leaks.

PUNCHING IN. It’s week one for Tom Fletcher, the sixth British head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA. Succeeding Martin Griffiths, who stepped down in June, the former diplomatic advisor will have a full in-box, amid ongoing conflicts, displacement, climate emergencies and shrinking aid contributions.

“Looking forward to getting started… and heading straight to the field to be with the humanitarian movement and those we serve,” he said on X earlier this month.

📌 20 November | Philippe Lazzarini: What future for UNRWA? The UN aid agency’s commissioner-general will discuss its plight with humanitarian experts amid the escalating conflict in occupied Palestinian territories, a worsening donor crisis and Israel’s push to abolish it.

📌 21 November | Martin Ennals Award 2024. On the 30th anniversary of the award honouring human rights defenders, two laureates will receive this year’s prize. They are the Palestinian Sami Huraini, coordinator of Youth of Sumud safely accompanying school children and herders in the West Bank, and Dilrabo Samadova, a Tajik human rights lawyer and founder of Office for Civil Freedoms.