This year’s UN climate summit COP29, in Baku, 11-22 November, where diplomats from nearly 200 nations gathered during a record spell of extreme heat and severe weather globally, is now over. The hoped–for outcome of a large number of delegates was to mobilise as much as $1.3 trillion annually, the sum reckoned by many experts as that needed to help developing nations adapt to a warming world and the transition away from fossil fuels.
Deciding on the degree of financial support to be made available to less developed nations was the most important discussion point at the conference, because such a large number of countries have a stake in a successful outcome, and they made their voices heard with great vigour.
In the event the conference struck an agreement, at the last minute early on 24 November, and after much wrangling. Under the deal, wealthier nations have undertaken to reach $300 billion per year in support by 2035, increased from the current target of $100 billion, and came to a lose agreement to raise $1.3 trillion each year from a wide range of sources, including private investment, by 2035.
But the general feeling was deeply polarised. The deal was almost immediately assailed as inadequate by a large number of delegates, with developing countries complaining that the $300 bn a year they will receive by 2035 is a ‘paltry sum’.
with the richer nations astonished that most of the benefiting countries were unhappy with what on the surface seems a huge settlement, while those nations receiving it were scathing in their response to the deal.
It is an improvement on the current $100bn a year, but the developing world, which had pushed for much more, had many genuine issues with the final sum and complained it simply was not enough, and that it was a mixture of grants and loans. And countries were deeply suspicious about the way the wealthy countries waited until the last minute to reveal their hand. India and Nigeria accused the COP29 presidency of pushing the deal through without their proper consent, following chaotic last-minute negotiations.
“It’s a paltry sum,” India’s delegate Chandni Raina told other delegates, after the deal had been pushed through. “This document is little more than an optical illusion. This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face.”
The over-arching dispute about contributions to less developed nations overshadowed other aims. Negotiators failed to reach an agreement on how the outcomes of last year’s ‘global stockade’, including a key pledge to transition away from fossil fuels, should be taken forward – instead, it shunted the decision to COP30 next year in Brazil.
They did manage to find agreement on the remaining sections of Article 6 on carbon markets, meaning all elements of the Paris Agreement have been finalised nearly 10 years after it was signed.
Other reactions
Some rich countries pointed to next year’s arrival of president Donald Trump, a known climate sceptic, arguing that they would not get a better deal.
But this assessment does not convince the poorer nations, which argue that if we want to keep the world safe from rising temperatures, then wealthier nations need to help emerging economies cut their emissions, because that is where 75% of the growth in emissions has occurred in the past decade.
Climate charities have criticised the agreed deal. Jasper Inventor, head of the COP29 Greenpeace delegation, called the deal “woefully inadequate” and said “reckless nature destroyers” were being protected by “every government’s low climate ambition”.
WaterAid described the deal as a “death sentence for millions”, while a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion said COP29 had “failed”.
Friends of Earth head of policy Mike Childs said that in terms of climate leadership, the planet is still “light years away from where we were” at last year’s meeting in Dubai. “These latest international talks failed to solve the question of climate finance,” he said. “Instead they have again kicked the can down the road.”
Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, conceded that the agreement was far from perfect. “No country got everything it wanted, and we leave Baku with a mountain of work still to do,” he said in an official statement.
The future of climate talks This is a cross head, not a new story
New national plans outline how every country will promise to limit its emissions of planet warming gases over the next 10 years are to be submitted by end–February, to be published next spring. A more generous cash settlement at COP29 would undoubtedly have had a positive knock-on effect on those efforts.
But with a Trump presidency on the horizon, confidence may have been shaken in future climate talks. The effects of the US election result on climate change policies and their likely success loomed very large at the conference – inevitably given that president-elect Trump has called climate change a hoax and pledged to pull out of the Paris climate accord. Given that, few countries are expecting the USA to play a major role in climate diplomacy – or the funding of climate finance goals – in the years ahead.
