COP29: Who will host the Conference of Parties 2024? How are the hosts decided?

This year, the Conference of Parties (COP) will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan. The agenda of the COP29 is to negotiate a future sans fossil fuels. The city of Baku, Azerbaijan is the one where the first oil fields of the world were developed. A total of 195 members attend the COP summit.

Since the year 1995, a total of 25 nations have successfully hosted the COP summit. However, it would be wrong to make an assumption that the host of the COP summit is not decided just randomly. Rather, selecting the host of the summit is actually an important and thoughtful decision. How is the host of the COP summits decided? Let's understand.

Who becomes the host of the COP summits and how?

The Conference of Parties stands as an important event of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change. Every such gathering is hosted by and presided over by a nation. The rights of hosting actually rotate between five UN regions. These include the Asia-Pacific Group, the Latin American and Caribbean Group (abbreviated as GRULAC), the Western European and Others Group (abbreviated as WEOG), the African Group, and the Eastern Europe Group. Now, a country and a president are unanimously nominated by the host region to the UNFCC secretariat. Next, the UNFCC secretariat conducts a "fact-finding mission" to the prospective host in order to determine whether the technical, financial, and logistical elements are available for hosting the sessions or not, as per the UNFCCC.

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It is interesting to note that the venues for the upcoming COPs are actually decided two years in advance. However, in the case of COP29, the announcements came 11 months prior to the summit. This is because of a tiff between the Eastern Europe Group. All European Union Members were vetoed by Russia, while Armenia and Azerbaijan vetoed each other. Later, Armenia withdrew its candidacy.

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In a situation where a host group fails to arrive at a decision, an alternative solution is derived by the global climate diplomats.

In certain situations, a host nation can opt for choosing a COP summit elsewhere. An example of such a situation was at the time of COP23, when the summit was actually held in Bonn, Germany, because of logistical lack. Additionally, COP25 was held under Chile's presidency in Madrid, Spain because of social unrest in the host region.

However, some experts also claim that the hosting system of COP is actually a bit unfair. This is because the financial burden of such an event is huge, and in such cases, there is actually no official financial aid to the host countries from the UNFCCC. The events include the expense of food, huge venues, accommodation, freebies, and more. Additionally, in recent years, the number of people attending the summit has also increased substantially. Therefore, only the nations that have enough funds to cater to the requirements of the COP summits come forward as hosts.

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