Four UN environmental summits fell short in 2024. What happened? Premium

United Nations' environmental summits face setbacks, raising concerns about global cooperation in addressing biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution.

The United Nations’ efforts to address critical environmental challenges hit multiple roadblocks this year, with four key summits — in Colombia on biodiversity, Azerbaijan on climate, Saudi Arabia on land degradation, and South Korea on plastics — failing to deliver meaningful outcomes.

These meetings brought together governments, researchers, policymakers, industries, and civil society organisations to ensure their goals were aligned, build equitable accountability, and mobilise adequate finance for action. But all four summits achieved no or partial success on issues they had set to address. In fact, this is the fourth time UN discussions designed to push countries toward significant progress in addressing biodiversity loss, climate change, and plastic pollution have either ended without consensus or yielded unsatisfactory outcomes.

This is a significant setback in global efforts to address biodiversity loss and climate change, potentially leading to delayed action on critical issues such as climate finance, drought mitigation, and plastic pollution, with the most vulnerable countries potentially suffering the greatest impact.

The partial or full failures of these talks raise pressing concerns about the global community’s ability to combat biodiversity loss, climate change, and other urgent environmental crises. Understanding the reasons behind these setbacks and their implications for global cooperation is essential to charting a more effective path forward.

At the heart of the talks’ breakdown lies a stark and growing divergence in national priorities. Developing nations, grappling with developmental challenges, economic constraints, and the impacts of climate change, have repeatedly demanded more technology transfer and financial support from developed countries. But developed nations are reluctant to commit additional resources citing domestic political pressures and economic challenges of their own.

For example, the Colombia talks on biodiversity conservation faltered as countries failed to agree on financing mechanisms to support sustainable land-use practices. Financing conservation at scale came to a gridlock with countries lagging in ambition, being nowhere close to delivering the $700 billion a year requirement. In Azerbaijan, developing nations demanded $1.3 trillion a year from developed nations and the talks ended with the latter loosely agreeing to raise the amount from a wide range of sources, including private investment.

Also in Azerbaijan, countries were divided over the pledge to transition away from fossil fuels, a decision made during the last UN climate summit. The plastic pollution talks in South Korea also brought to the fore a significant divide among participating nations. The meeting concluded without reaching an agreement primarily because countries that rely on economies dependent on ongoing demand for plastics opposed a legally binding treaty. Instead, they pushed for proper usage and recycling of plastic waste.