At the COP29 summit in Baku, China expressed readiness to increase climate aid if developed countries showed more initiative. However, this did not happen, and as a result, the $300 billion amount agreed upon by industrialized countries drew criticism from developing nations, which insisted on a minimum of $500 billion to combat the climate crisis, reads an article by Azerbaijan's Minister of Ecology and COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev, published in The Guardian, Report informs.
"Under the terms of the Baku breakthrough, the world’s industrialized nations will provide $300 billion (£240 billion), which, combined with resources from multilateral lending institutions and the private sector will reach $1.3 trillion in climate financing. Cop29 also finalized, after years of failed attempts, a global framework for international carbon markets trading, a critical mechanism for less polluting and less wealthy nations to raise climate finance. A fund for responding to loss and damage – another new financial resource for less developed nations – was brought in shortly before the summit, and funds are already being paid into it.
The $300 billion now agreed is an upgrade from the $250bn proposed a day earlier, and an increase made directly at the insistence of our negotiating team. But clearly it is far short of the $1tn widely and scientifically agreed to be the minimum needed to avert catastrophic human-made climate change," he wrote.
"Azerbaijan sought to reach and surpass that minimum total by proposing a blended number of $1.3 trillion in financing, combining the $300 billion contribution from developed governments with funds from intergovernmental financing institutions and the private sector. No one realistically doubts that all three funding sources and more must row together to finance our way out of this crisis. But the global south was right that the industrialized world’s contribution was too low and that the private sector contribution was too theoretical. That remains the case even with the deal we have agreed.
Others in the developed world did their best to match Britain’s more flexible approach. The European Union made clear from the outset it could not lift the government contribution much beyond the originally proposed $250 billion. That of course is its right: it must answer to its citizens, and in these straitened economic times, all are under pressure to spend more at home and less abroad. However, after the clear response to the $250 billion from small island states, a meeting was called at the insistence of the Azerbaijani Cop presidency, also attended by the UK and the US, and the EU agreed, along with the other industrialized nations, to lift that number to $300b billion," reads the article.
"It is critical however and humbling that we did not walk away from Baku without an agreement. The marshaling of 198 parties, through arguments, tears, and even cheers to take just a modest step towards saving the planet we all call home is the achievement of my life – and it was an honor for my country to have played a part in it. There was a deal at Cop29 because the people of the world demanded one and in the end politicians of all countries in their own way, though faced with their own limitations, did the best they could to deliver it.
The task of the Cop29 presidency does not end here. There are another six months before we hand over to Brazil as hosts and lead negotiators of Cop30. What we agreed in Baku will help slow the effects of human-made climate change, but it was not enough. It does not end the debate over who pays. It does not change the fact that the longer we delay, the more the costs will rise. But at least to the Amazonian city of Belém we take something vital and tangible: a deal that very nearly never was," the author wrote.
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