Global disappointment at COP29: rich countries force a downward agreement
The amount of climate aid that poor countries will receive remains at 300 billion, far from the trillion they were asking for.
BarcelonaWell into the early hours of Sunday morning, the UN summit against the climate crisis, COP29, has reached an agreement that seemed almost impossible, but which has disappointed almost everyone. The text approved in Baku (Azerbaijan) provides for rich countries to contribute $300 billion annually by 2035 to help poor countries cope with the climate emergency. A figure "scandalously low," as the Gambian minister said, within an agreement that is generally "disappointing," according to climate NGOs such as Greenpeace, but one that poor countries have had no choice but to accept in order to have some aid to work with. It falls far short of the trillion dollars requested by the most vulnerable states and NGOs, leaving the door open to aid of many types, "public and private," or even in the form of credit.
The approved text provides for "mobilizing" a total of $1.3 trillion for climate finance in general, with investments of many types, and from diverse sources and destinations. Of this total figure, 300 billion would be aid from the richest countries to the poorest, and could also include "voluntary" contributions from developing countries, a reference intended to China and India, which are still considered to be part of this group. Poor countries initially demanded that the entire 1.3 trillion be direct aid from developed countries, but during the negotiations they assumed this would not be the case and set other thresholds. Some negotiating groups went as low as 500 billion as an acceptable direct aid figure, but they have had to accept much less.
Climate activists denounced that, after three years of negotiating this new financing system, they waited until the last minute to put concrete figures on the table that were completely insufficient. "Now, with the help of an incompetent COP29 presidency and using the future Trump administration as a threat, they are forcing developing countries to accept an agreement that not only does not represent real new money, but could also increase their debt," they denounced. The Guardian Claudio de Angelo, Brazilian Climate Observatory.
As the summit wound down, at midday on Saturday, representatives of the poorest and most vulnerable countries in the face of the climate crisis attempted to strike and walked out of the negotiating room, but the move failed to achieve the desired effect. Wealthy countries, especially the United States and Japan, with the approval of the EU, pushed to impose the maximum figure of 300 billion euros, slightly higher than the first draft made public on Friday (250 billion euros), but far from the aspirations of poor countries, which owe the most to the poor. Oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia have also maneuvered to water down the texts resulting from COP29, and the summit president, Azerbaijani Minister Mukhtar Babayev, rushed to swing the hammer to seal a financing agreement that some observers described as a "betrayal." "It's a betrayal of both people and the planet by rich countries that claim to take climate change seriously," said Mohamed Adow, a representative of Power Shift Africa, part of the climate NGO network.
The emissions deal has been postponed for a year.
The other surprise of the night was the inability to close an agreement on mitigation, that is, on reducing CO2 emissions.2. And this was because the text being negotiated in this section eliminated at the last minute the mention of fossil fuels that was achieved at last year's summit in Dubai, COP28, and many countries rejected its approval without that mention. Since decisions must be made by consensus, the text could not be adopted, and Babayev decided to postpone it to next year's COP30, to be held in Brazil. Next February, in fact, all states must submit new state plans with more ambitious emissions reduction commitments.
Carbon Markets Pact
The only positive news of the day, and it wasn't entirely positive, was an agreement on carbon markets. The agreed text, which implements Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, unblocks negotiations that had been stalled for more than four years, but the final result has not pleased climate NGOs. "The carbon market mechanism agreed at COP29 is not a climate finance solution and will only provide a lifeline to the polluting fossil fuel industry, allowing it to offset its emissions," said Greenpeace. "The agreement reached on Article 6 carbon markets at COP29 in Baku risks flooding carbon markets with... cowboys "at a time when the world needs a sheriff," Carbon Market Watch also confirmed. The new agreement sets measures that are too lax, they believe, to regulate a market in which countries that emit little CO₂ can sell their "emission rights" to those that generate more, with guarantees of accounting and registration by the UN ~B. The key issue of this Baku summit was money, as the meeting was supposed to serve to establish the new climate finance system for the next decade. The system agreed upon in the Paris Agreement for the first five years, which expires in 2025, stated that rich countries would pay $100 billion annually to the poorest to help them deal with the climate emergency. But this figure didn't become effective until 2023 and it quickly became clear that it was totally insufficient, and that it included many forms of financing that weren't aid but loans. All of this was supposed to be resolved with the new system for 2025-2035. But the agreement speaks of "mobilizing" $1.3 trillion as a generic target and sets only $300 billion in direct annual aid, but that it wouldn't arrive until 2035. A clause has been included in the text stating that next year's summit in Brazil, COP30, must attempt to .
This Saturday, the poorest countries attempted a revolt, but ultimately had to accede to the agreement. Spokespeople for two negotiating groups, the Small Island Developing States (AOSIS) and the Least Developed Countries (LDC), walked out of the room and abandoned the dialogue, which was attempting to reach an agreement on climate finance that should allow these poor governments to address the climate emergency. "The LDC countries left the finance meeting saying they do not want to be associated with a text that undermines the climate fight," Mohamed Adow, one of the leaders of the network of climate NGOs acting as observers at the summit, confirmed online. However, one of the representatives of the outraged countries said that the withdrawal was "temporary until a fair agreement is reached." Ultimately, they were forced to accept the watered-down text, faced with the dilemma that it could be either that or nothing.