COP29 agrees 300 billion dollars for poorer nations in the face of climate change

Baku. Countries meeting at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku adopted a global financing target of $300 billion to help the poorest nations cope with the impacts of climate change, an agreement criticized by its recipients as woefully insufficient.

The agreement, reached on an extraordinary day of the two-week conference in Azerbaijan’s capital, was meant to boost international efforts to curb global warming in a year set to be the hottest on record. Instead, it frustrated frustrated developing countries.

“I regret to say that this document is nothing more than an optical illusion,” Chandni Raina, representative of the Indian delegation, said in the closing plenary session of the summit, minutes after the agreement was approved. “In our view, this will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face.”

The United Nations climate chief, Simon Steill, acknowledged the difficulties of two weeks of grueling negotiations that led to the agreement, but hailed the result as an insurance policy for humanity.

“It’s been a difficult road, but we’ve come to an agreement,” Steill said. “This deal will sustain the clean energy boom and protect billions of lives.”

“But like any insurance policy – it only works – if the premiums are paid in full, and on time,” he added.

The new goal replaces the previous commitment by developed countries to contribute $100 billion annually to finance the poorest countries by 2020. That goal was met two years late, in 2022, which expires in 2025.

The summit was to have concluded on Friday, but it went on longer than expected as negotiators from nearly 200 countries struggled to reach a consensus on the global climate finance plan for the next decade.

The summit focused on the debate over the financial responsibility of industrialized countries – whose use of fossil fuels has caused the majority of greenhouse gas emissions – to compensate others for the deterioration caused by climate change.

It also highlighted divisions between wealthy governments, constrained by tight national budgets, and developing nations, reeling from the costs of storms, floods and droughts.

Countries are seeking funding to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

According to the UN 2024 emissions gap report, the world is on track to reach warming of up to 3.1°C by the end of this century, as global greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel use they continue to increase.

The list of countries that must contribute – about two dozen industrialized countries, including the United States, European nations and Canada – dates back to one decided during the 1992 UN climate talks.

European governments have called on other countries to join them, including China, the world’s second-largest economy, and the oil-rich Gulf countries. The agreement encourages developing countries to contribute, but does not obligate them.

The agreement also includes the broader goal of raising $1.3 trillion annually to finance the fight against climate change by 2035, a figure that would include funds from all public and private sources and that, according to economists, It corresponds to the sum necessary to confront global warming.

Countries also agreed to rules for a global market for buying and selling carbon credits that advocates say could mobilize billions of dollars more in new projects to help combat global warming, from reforestation to technology deployment. of clean energy.

Securing the climate finance agreement was a challenge from the beginning.

Donald Trump’s victory in this month’s US presidential election has raised questions among some negotiators about whether the world’s largest economy would contribute to any climate finance targets agreed in Baku.

Trump, a Republican who will take office in January, has called climate change a hoax and has vowed to once again withdraw the United States from international climate cooperation.

I expected “a more ambitious result”: Guterres

The Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, applauded the agreement reached this Saturday within the framework of COP29 and has presented it as a “base” on which to continue moving forward, although he has acknowledged that his expectations were more ambitious.

“I had hoped for a more ambitious result, both in financial and mitigation matters, to address the great challenge we face. But this agreement provides a foundation on which to build. It is necessary to comply with it in its entirety and on time,” said the secretary.

Guterres has insisted on the relevance of this “absolutely essential” agreement and has called on “all countries” to “come together to ensure that the upper limit of this new goal is reached.”

The representative of the United Nations has emphasized two fundamental aspects. On the one hand, the implementation of “new national climate action plans that cover the entire economy and are aligned with the objective of not exceeding 1.5 degrees, long before COP30.”

To this end, he added, “the G20 countries, the largest emitters, must take the lead” to “accelerate the elimination of fossil fuels” and “contribute to ensuring that it is produced fairly.”

On the other, the need to “act quickly to fulfill the commitments assumed in the Pact for the Future”, especially with regard to issues regarding debt or lending capacity of multilateral development banks, among others.