About COP

The UN climate summit — known as the “Conference of the Parties,” or COP — is the central venue where international climate agreements are forged. Every year, representatives from more than 190 countries gather to negotiate agreements and lay out plans to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, build more resilient communities, finance climate action and more. In short, what happens at COPs helps dictate how — and whether — the world can confront the climate crisis.

The next UN climate summit, COP29, will take place in Baku, Azerbaijan from Nov. 11-Nov. 22, 2024. Here, we answer key questions about the summit, its history and the importance of UN climate negotiations.

What Are COPs and Why Are They Important?

A “Conference of the Parties,” or COP, is a meeting of signatories to an international agreement. The UN’s climate COPs refer to the annual meeting of the 197 countries that joined the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international treaty adopted in 1992 to stabilize the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

At COPs, nations’ climate negotiators make decisions about how the UNFCCC and its affiliated treaties, like the Paris Agreement, will be implemented. Put simply, COP is a moment where decision-makers from every country come together to assess the world’s collective efforts to curb climate change and take actions to accelerate them. 

Outside of the formal negotiations, COPs have also become key moments for a broader set of actors, including businesses, NGOs, local governments and more, to announce major new climate initiatives and commitments.

The 2024 UN climate summit will be the 29th such meeting, hence “COP29.”  

What Have COPs Achieved?

COPs have spawned much of the world’s collective action on climate change to date. This includes the groundbreaking 2015 Paris Agreement, under which nearly every country in the world committed to collectively reduce emissions enough to hold global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) and ideally to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). Countries have also agreed at COPs to transition away from fossil fuels, scale up clean energy, protect and restore ecosystems, help vulnerable communities adapt to climate impacts, increase financial support for climate action, and more.

These outcomes are registered in formal “COP decisions” at each summit, outlining measures that all Parties agree to carry forward. COP decisions also include action items to be tackled at subsequent COPs.

What Happens Outside of the Formal COP Negotiations?

Many significant COP activities take place outside the formal negotiating halls, attracting national and local government officials, business leaders, researchers, activist groups, journalists and even heads-of-state.

COPs host dozens of themed “pavilions” featuring events and key discussions on topics ranging from adaptation to low-carbon finance to clean energy development. Many businesses, NGOs, local and state governments and others use COPs to announce major new climate commitments and initiatives. These “side events” are a major reason that COP has become such a significant moment for international climate action.  

Recent COP outcomes outside of the formal COP decisions include things like the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action, where 134 nations committed to sustainable agriculture and integrating food into their climate action plans; the Forests and Climate Leaders’ Partnership, where 140 leaders pledged to halt and reverse forest loss and degradation by the end of the decade; and the Global Methane Pledge, where more than 100 countries promised to reduce emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane.

What Happened at the Last UN Climate Conference?

At the most recent UN climate conference, COP28 in 2023, countries committed to “transition away from fossil fuels,” agreeing to accelerate action on the energy transition this decade and to triple the world’s renewable energy capacity by 2030. This historic agreement marked the first time a COP decision specifically addressed fossil fuel use — the root cause of the climate crisis.

COP28 yielded other important outcomes, too. It set into motion a new Loss & Damage Fund, through which wealthy nations will contribute finance to help vulnerable nations deal with the most severe impacts of climate change. It hosted the first-ever “Local Climate Action Summit,” where more than 500 mayors, governors and other local leaders came together to elevate cities on the climate action agenda. And it established a framework for the Global Goal on Adaptation, which will help guide countries as they ramp up efforts to build resilience to the climate crisis.

Learn more about COP28’s outcomes and what comes next here.

What’s on the Agenda for COP29?

The driving issue at this year’s UN climate conference is finance. At COP29, countries will work toward setting a new global climate finance goal that will channel much more money from developed countries to developing ones. This finance will both support the low-carbon transition and help developing countries — who did the least to cause global warming — build resilience to floods, storms, rising seas and other dangerous climate change impacts.

COP29 is also a pivotal moment for countries to signal how they will strengthen their national climate plans next year, renew their commitment to fulfilling past COP pledges, and step up their actions on adaptation and responding to loss and damage. Read more about the key issues at stake at COP29 here.

What Is WRI’s Involvement in COPs?

WRI’s research and on-the-ground presence have helped secure important outcomes at COPs, both in the formal negotiations and outside of them.

Ahead of the Paris Agreement, WRI and partners provided research and proposals on mitigation, adaptation, climate finance and other key elements that contributed significantly to the final treaty. A few years later, WRI convened negotiators, experts and policymakers to inform the “rulebook” that set the Paris Agreement into motion. More recently, WRI helped position loss and damage finance as a central issue at COP27 by elevating the voices of vulnerable countries already reeling from the effects of climate change.

Beyond the negotiation rooms, WRI has helped raise climate ambition and secure commitments among a wide range of stakeholders. WRI research on food systems helped inform the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit and contributed to the 2023 Emirates Declaration on sustainable agriculture. Our engagement with COP presidencies and other leaders helped advance conversations around nature-based solutions, including through the COP26 Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forests and Land Use. At COP28, WRI helped elevate cities (which produce over 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions) on the climate agenda by supporting the launch of the Coalition for High Ambition Multi-level Partnerships (CHAMP).

Moving into COP29, WRI experts are focused on informing key negotiations around finance — such as what the new climate finance goal will look like and which countries will contribute to it — as well as helping countries raise their national climate ambition and drive action on previous commitments.

We are also organizing a number of webinars and events both before COP29 and in Baku. Check out our events calendar for more information.