As Baku climate talks begin, 10 Eastern Europe nations ‘face biggest economic harm’

Baku: With global temperatures hitting record highs and extreme weather events affecting people across the globe, a new study has identified 10 countries in Eastern Europe facing the biggest economic harm from future temperature rises — and the two-week COP29 talks starting on Monday is a pivotal opportunity to accelerate action to tackle the climate crisis.

This year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) kicked off on Monday in Baku, Azerbaijan with a focus on a cornerstone of global climate action — finance.

The host’s economy mainly depends on oil and natural gas production.

The top priority on the COP29 agenda is agreeing on the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG), the world’s long-term finance goal to fund climate action.

However, the study findings, published by Christian Aid in conjunction with economists at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, chart the reduction in future GDP of the top 10 most impacted countries in the region under two scenarios.

The first, if the world delivers current national climate pledges, known as nationally-determined contributions — NDCs (which are projected to result in global heating of around 2.8 degrees Celsius). The second scenario is if global heating is allowed to reach two degrees.

The report, ‘Baking Baku: The economic impact of climate change on Eastern Europe’, shows that in the current NDC scenario, Azerbaijan faces an eye-watering reduction in future GDP of 8.5 per cent by 2050 and a reduction of 12.6 per cent in 2070.

If temperature rise reaches two degrees it will suffer less harm but still more than a six per cent reduction in GDP in both 2050 and 2070.

Azerbaijan is one of Europe’s major fossil fuel producers yet has been singled out as one of the very few countries in the world to weaken their NDC in contravention of the Paris Agreement’s Article 4.3, which says each NDC will be more ambitious than the previous one.

Last month Climate Action Tracker assessed Azerbaijan’s climate policies as “critically insufficient”.

“Azerbaijan appears to have abandoned its 2030 emissions target, moving backward instead of forward on climate action. Its renewable energy targets remain weak,” said the study.

Among the climate impacts facing the region are hotter temperatures, especially in the summer, drought, forest fires and more erratic precipitation leading to severe flooding.

These will negatively impact agriculture, food security, tourism, human health and could lead to increased tensions over water supplies.

In Azerbaijan specifically, a World Bank report from 2023, warned that Azerbaijan’s key agriculture sector will soon be constrained by more frequent and severe adverse climate impacts while Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea, the world’s largest lake, is also coming under pressure from climate change.

The other countries in Eastern Europe facing the most severe GDP hit due to climate change are Montenegro, Albania, Croatia, Georgia, Serbia, Hungary, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Javid Gara, environmental activist and founder of Ecofront Azerbaijan, said: “Azerbaijan is facing the impact of the climate crisis on many fronts. More frequent and severe droughts make traditional farming more challenging. Especially in mountainous areas where communities rely on animal farming it is problematic since they don’t have many options to diversify their farming activities. This accelerates migration from these villages.”

Adriano Vinca, an economist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna, who helped coordinate the analysis, said: “Climate change is the world’s biggest economic threat multiplier and this report shows the clear danger posed to the nations of Eastern Europe. This year’s host of the COP, Azerbaijan, is set to suffer more than any other nation in the region from rising temperatures. In particular, its agriculture, which relies on a stable climate, is highly vulnerable.”

In the run-up to COP29, the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) report, “Adaptation Gap Report 2024: Come hell and high water”, finds nations must dramatically increase climate adaptation efforts, starting with a commitment to act on finance at COP29.

Global average temperature rise is approaching 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, and the latest estimates from UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report put the world on course for a catastrophic rise of 2.6-3.1 degrees this century without immediate and major cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.

The report finds that there is therefore an urgent need to significantly scale-up adaptation this decade to address rising impacts.

But this is being hampered by the huge gap that exists between adaptation finance needs and current international public adaptation finance flows.

“Climate catastrophe is hammering health, widening inequalities, harming sustainable development, and rocking the foundations of peace,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

“The vulnerable are hardest hit. And taxpayers are footing the bill. While the purveyors of all this destruction — particularly the fossil fuel industry –reap massive profits and subsidies.”

However, international public adaptation finance flows to developing countries increased from $22 billion in 2021 to $28 billion in 2022: The largest absolute and relative year-on-year increase since the 2015 Paris Agreement.

This reflects progress towards the Glasgow Climate Pact, which urged developed nations to at least double adaptation finance to developing countries from about $19 billion in 2019 by 2025.

However, even achieving the Glasgow Climate Pact goal would only reduce the adaptation finance gap, which is estimated at $187-359 billion per year, by approximately five per cent.

As developing countries experience increasing loss and damage, they are already struggling with increasing debt burdens.

Effective and adequate adaptation, incorporating fairness and equity, is thus more urgent than ever. 350.org’s overall demands for COP29 are: Countries pledge to an ambitious climate finance goal, or New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) of at least $1 trillion, which must be in the form of grants and based on the financial, climate and social needs of the Global South.

Also, countries agree to put forward climate goals (NDCs) in line with fairly tripling renewable energy capacity and phasing out fossil fuels by 2030.

350.org is an international movement of ordinary people working to end the fossil fuel era and build a better future for all.

IANS