Finance
What is COP29? The biggest issues on the table in Baku next month
A new global climate finance goal is the centrepiece of the climate summit.
The next UN climate conference, COP29, is taking place a month today in Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku.
In a week marred by deadly flooding in eastern Europe and a “berserk” climate fuelled hurricane in the US, it is painfully evident that the climate crisis continues to escalate beyond our efforts to temper it.
For a fortnight from 11 to 22 November, the world will be looking to leaders to ramp up climate action and afford stronger protection to those on the frontlines.
COP29 is billed as the ‘finance COP’, because it is time for countries to set a new global climate finance goal. Ahead of COP30 in Brazil next year, they also need to submit stronger national climate commitments.
And after some wins at COP28 in Dubai last year – including the official launching of a new loss and damage fund for climate victims – developing countries are anxious for past commitments to be honoured and improved on.
A month is a long time in global affairs. Devastating conflict in the Middle East, and the US election in early November, will influence the negotiations in various ways. But given the timeframes built into the UNFCCC process, here are the key issues heading into the summit.
What was agreed at COP28?
As required by the Paris Agreement which has guided global climate action since 2015, the main outcome agreed at COP28 was the first ever ‘global stocktake’.
For the first time at a climate COP, the final text actually named fossil fuels – and called for all countries to “transition away” from them. Despite this progress, the decision shied away from the full “phase-out” many said was needed to stay below 1.5C global heating.
The outcome also called on countries to contribute to the global tripling of renewable energy capacity by 2030.
Following the historic agreement to create a loss and damage fund at COP27 – to effectively compensate climate-vulnerable countries – COP28 succeeded in officially launching the fund.
The finer details remain to be figured out in Baku, before the money actually starts flowing to nations in need next year.
Why is COP29 being called the ‘finance COP’?
For the first time in 15 years, countries will need to agree to a new global finance goal, known as the new collective quantified climate finance goal (NCQG).
This will update the target set in 2009, when developed countries pledged to mobilise $100 billion (€91.4 bn) a year by 2020 to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change. A promise they only managed to deliver on in 2022.
With the crisis intensifying, the actual amount of climate finance that developing countries now need is estimated to be in the region of $500 billion dollars to over $1 trillion a year. There are big challenges to bridging the minimum that they will be willing to accept in a deal, and the maximum that developed countries are willing to put themselves on the hook for.
As well as the total figure, COP29 will see much wrangling over the terms of the NCQG, including: who the donor base and recipients will be; how much will come from public and private sources; and whether it will be in the form of grants or loans.
ADVERTISEMENTWhere does the EU stand on climate finance?
EU ministers approved their conclusions on climate finance earlier this week, committing to continue collectively mobilising $100 billion per year until 2025, and to set an “ambitious” NCQG for thereafter.
The council is expected to adopt its final negotiating mandate for COP29 on 15 October. Currently, the climate finance text stresses that international public finance should be at its core and be provided by a “broader base of contributors, including those countries that are capable of contributing.”
Michael Bloss, climate and industrial policy spokesperson for the Greens in the European Parliament, tells Euronews Green that “$100 billion per year is nowhere near enough.”
“Our priority is clear: balance funding across mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage, with strict interim targets,” he adds. “Grants must replace loans to break the cycle of debt and unlock true potential for sustainable development.”
ADVERTISEMENTIt remains to be seen whether the NGQG will have specific sub-goals for adaptation and loss and damage funding. The former is more likely, according to Alden Meyer, a senior associate at the E3G climate think tank. For the last few years, developing countries have been fighting for 50 per cent of finance to be allocated towards adaptation – given the urgent need to adjust to climate change.
Laying the ground for stronger NDCs
Also fast approaching under the Paris Agreement is the deadline for countries to submit new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), outlining how they will curb emissions.
These must be renewed every five years, with the next round due in February 2025. So COP29 is a crucial moment for countries to raise the bar and hold each other to account.
NDCs should include sector-specific targets, such as concrete goals for shifting to emissions-free energy and food systems, the World Resources Institute (WRI) notes.
ADVERTISEMENTDuring a recent high-level event, the troika of presidencies – the UAE, Azerbaijan and COP30 host Brazil – indicated that their NDCs will either be announced at COP or by the end of the year.
But despite some stirring rhetoric on “keeping 1.5C alive”, Meyer said the leaders had little information on how they will act on last year’s global stocktake.
“I was struck by the fact that the troika presidencies said nothing about reforming their current intentions to expand production and export of fossil fuels,” he told press during a subsequent briefing. “All three of them have plans to dramatically scale up investment in that sector.”
COP29 has the mammoth task of bringing rhetoric closer to reality.
ADVERTISEMENTTurning energy ambition into action
“This is going to be a finance COP that we’re heading into,” said Leo Roberts, an energy transition expert at E3G during the same briefing. “But that doesn’t mean that energy is no longer relevant – in fact it makes it extremely important that it’s not dropped.”
With the global stocktake decision, COP28 concluded with a set of global efforts that countries were called on to contribute to, including: tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency by 2030; phasing-down coal power; and transitioning away from fossil fuels.
“It’s quite clearly a package, not a menu,” said Roberts, flagging a worrying selectiveness around the fossil fuel side of the equation. He also noted a lack of coherence about how countries are linking ambition on the global energy transition through to financing.
In his first official letter to parties, COP29 President-Designate Mukhtar Babayev emphasised that the summit’s two pillars will be enhancing ambition and enabling action.
ADVERTISEMENTThe latest IEA report finds that the world is currently only on track for increasing renewable energy capacity by 2.7 times by 2030, so more action and financial support is needed on this front.
Who is going to COP29?
World leaders will be arriving at Baku Stadium for the World Leaders Climate Action summit at the start of COP on 12 and 13 November.
As in previous years, this will be a chance for heads of state to convene before their negotiators get down to business. The biggest names tend to be confirmed nearer the time.
But in a sign that the event will be slimmer than the record-breaking list of over 65,000 attendees last year, numerous finance bosses have said they plan to skip the summit this year.
ADVERTISEMENTDespite the focus on private finance, the heads of Bank of America, BlackRock, Standard Chartered and Deutsche Bank are not attending, the Financial Times reports, with some arguing this is a “technical COP” less suited to business.
The UK’s veteran climate attender King Charles is also reportedly giving COP29 a miss.
But Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev is sure to be welcoming many more world leaders including Barbadian prime minister Mia Mottley, a champion of more equitable climate action. Now head of the V20 group of climate-vulnerable countries, Mottley will be bringing more radical ideas for financial reform under the Bridgetown Initiative.
Civil society organisations and climate campaigners will be travelling to Azerbaijan too – another petrostate host that has drawn scrutiny for its human rights record.
ADVERTISEMENT“Climate action must be holistic, with justice at its core,” adds EU Greens spokesman Bloss. “This includes holding COP host Azerbaijan accountable for its precarious human rights situation and demanding full freedom for civil society and national climate activists to act without restraint.
If you need a refresher on how climate COPs began, check out our comprehensive guide from COP28. And check back for more COP29 coverage as the world’s most important climate negotiations approach.
DULUTH — The Duluth Homegrown Music Festival is seeking both new operational leadership and a solution to financial filing issues that caused the organization to lose its federal tax-exempt status, which it has not held since 2022.
The organization is currently operating as a taxable nonprofit, confirmed Don Ness, the former Duluth mayor who serves as president of Homegrown’s
board of directors.
Ness and the board are working to discern whether there might be any outstanding tax liabilities in the wake of an apparent filing lapse.
“It’s a serious matter that requires diligence to do things right, and to correct past oversight, and to make sure that we are in full compliance with all tax and regulatory requirements,” Ness said. “The board is 100% committed to that course of action.”
As the Duluth Monitor first reported, Homegrown had its federal tax-exempt status revoked in 2022 after failing to make required financial reports for three years. The Monitor also reported that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office has notified the organization it may be in violation of state law requiring the proper registration of soliciting charities.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“All but one of us have been on for less than a year,” Ness said of the current board members. “We’ve been committed to saying, ‘hey, we need to improve the points of accountability.’”
The organization will also require new operational leadership. Co-directors Cory Jezierski and Dereck Murphy-Williams resigned earlier this month, after leading Homegrown through four successful festivals.
“My contract ended at the end of May, and I knew a few days later that I did not want to continue in that position,” Jezierski said. “Simply put, it was the best thing for my mental health. It’s a job that requires many, many hours and a lot of work, and it can be very stressful as well.”
Amy Arntson / Duluth Media Group file photo
Murphy-Williams did not respond to an interview request for this article, nor did preceding Homegrown director Melissa LaTour. According to LaTour’s
LinkedIn profile,
she was Homegrown director from 2016 to 2022.
Jason Beckman, a recent president who is no longer serving on the board, responded to a News Tribune email but did not provide an interview availability before this article went to press.
Ness does not believe the reporting lapses were due to any ill intent. He praised Jezierski and Murphy-Williams for their success managing festival operations. “They cared deeply about the festival,” he said. “It’s amazing to see that our community continues to support this really unique and special festival.”
“Those guys run a hell of a festival,” said Scott Lunt, festival founder and a current board member. “I think they needed help with bookkeeping.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
By Jezierski’s account, issues with the festival’s tax status became apparent shortly after he became co-director. “We went to file taxes, they were rejected,” Jezierski said. “At that time we, of course, didn’t know why right away, but once we started pulling on that thread, we unraveled a whole lot of the problems that were going on.”
Jezierski said “it took a long time to try to get any sort of help” from the board, but said that by the time he and Murphy-Williams left the organization, “everything had been turned over to be reconciled” with a financial professional.
Ness, like Lunt, was deeply involved with Homegrown in its first decade but had not had an official role with the festival since then. After launching the festival in 1999 and running it on his own for several years, Lunt was “burnt out,” Ness remembered.
Derek Montgomery / Duluth Media Group file photo
After a transition period during which the festival was run in partnership with the Ripsaw newspaper, Homegrown established a nonprofit organization in 2006 with Ness as festival director. Ness subsequently stepped down when he was elected mayor in 2007.
By 2025, Ness was in his current position as executive director of the Ordean Foundation.
“I was approached by a couple of longtime music scenesters,” Ness recalled. “They said, ‘There are questions about (Homegrown’s) nonprofit status. There are questions about some governance issues. We’re concerned.’”
Ness agreed to join the board, and became president. The 2026 festival ran smoothly from an operational standpoint, but Ness found the financial reporting to be lacking.
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
“The last board meeting that we had prior to the (co-directors’) resignations was intended to be an overview of the festival that was a month before,” Ness said. “I certainly felt very uncomfortable with how little financial information we were receiving.”
Lunt also joined the board in 2025, marking his first time serving in that capacity. He said the new board has been spending significant time addressing the accounting and reporting issues.
“Every year at Homegrown time I’m like, ‘I should get more involved,’ and then I don’t,” Lunt said. “Then this board thing came up, and it was kind of sold to me as, like, four meetings a year. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s perfect.’ And now we’re meeting weekly.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
Although it’s unclear how the organization’s finances will look when the accounting and reporting issues have been fully addressed, along with any outstanding tax liabilities, both Ness and Lunt said they are confident the annual festival will continue without interruption.
“The organization will continue,” Ness said. “The festival will continue. Homegrown is in no danger in terms of its viability.” The financial documentation Ness initially received indicated budgeted revenues of about $140,000, against about $130,000 in expenses.
“Financially, I think we’re in a great spot. We have the money to hire the (financial) professionals, and we have (done so),” Lunt said. “We were hoping that we could get all this sorted out before it had to become more public.”
“We poured countless hours into this festival, and this is how it ends, with everyone talking about this,” Jezierski said. “It’s rough.”
“There’s a DIY ethos that is really at the core of Homegrown,” reflected Ness. “We’re throwing a music festival that isn’t waiting for some famous band from the East Coast to bless us with their presence. We are doing this on our own.”
Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group file photo
That DIY spirit also means “you’re kind of passing wisdom down from person to person, and sometimes that’s imperfect.” Ness continued. “The ways that we do things evolve over time, because it’s not a buttoned-down corporate sort of thing. That can create its own set of challenges.”
“It’s self-supporting,” said Lunt about the festival. “It’s widely volunteer-run. You do need to pay a couple people, obviously, to keep track of some things, but it’s going to be strong into the future. It’s gone through its bumps before.”
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Shoaib Mohammad, Co-founder and CEO, LUMIQ
From AI that assists to AI that decides
For decades, financial institutions have bought technology that made their people faster — faster data, faster scoring, faster copilots. The decision still landed on a human. LUMIQ is changing that. Through its LiteCone platform, the company deploys AI agents that read the file, apply the institution’s own guidelines, and reach the decision end to end — escalating only the cases that genuinely require human judgment. The output is not a recommendation. It is a decision, with full reasoning attached, cross-referenced to policy, and defensible under audit.
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LiteCone turns a real financial-services role into a working AI agent in weeks. Every agent we deploy is consistent, explainable, compliant, and auditable by design — not as an afterthought. This capital lets us go deeper on the platform and broader across roles. And through our cloud and AI lab partnerships, institutions will increasingly find LiteCone already embedded in the platforms they run today.
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Consumer confidence has plunged among traditionally optimistic younger adults amid fears for their personal finances and the wider economy, figures show.
GfK’s long-running Consumer Confidence Index remained unchanged at an overall score of minus 23 in June.
However, the analyst said this was was “misleading as, beneath the surface, there are new signs that confidence is weakening”.
Neil Bellamy, consumer insights director at GfK, said: “The biggest fall this month is among those aged 16 to 29, traditionally one of the most optimistic groups.
“Here confidence has dropped 11 points over the past month to minus two, the lowest level seen for two years, driven by large falls in views on both their own personal finances and the wider economy.
“More broadly, there are now no demographic groups with a positive confidence score, including higher-income households earning £50,000 or more, who have slipped back into negative territory as of June.
“Confidence remains subdued and vulnerable to further economic or political uncertainty.”
Overall, confidence in personal finances over the coming year remained flat at minus two, four points lower than this time last year.
The measures of both personal finances and the economy over the previous 12 months were both slightly down, by two points and three points respectively, “reflecting the sense that things have been extremely tough over the last year for so many”, GfK said.
The only measure to increase was expectations for the wider economy over the next 12 months, up two points to minus 36 but still eight points below this time last year.
The major purchase index, an indicator of confidence in buying big ticket items, remained at minus 20, four points lower than June last year.
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