Frustration and exhaustion set in among those gathered in Baku on Friday as the Azeri leadership in COP29 released a new draft text for the finance goal that has been the top focus of the past two weeks of negotiations.
Unlike a previous draft of the new collective quantified goal (NCQG) that dropped earlier this week, this new text at least contains concrete numbers. But leaders from around the world lambasted the figures as being not sufficient enough to help those countries most vulnerable to climate change.
“It is shameful to put forward texts like these. This package puts small island developing states and the least developing countries first on the chopping block,” said Tina Stege, the climate envoy for the Marshall Islands. When the world ignores the science and stands still on fossil fuels, what we hear is that our futures are being tossed away. We cannot accept that. It is incomprehensible that year after year we bring our stories of climate impacts to these meetings and receive only sympathy and no real action from wealthy nations. We are not here to tell stories. We are here to save our communities.”
The draft calls on countries to work together to scale up financing climate action from all public and private sources to at least USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035—the goal number set in a report released last week by the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance (IHLEG). The core $250 bn number is a provocatively low number – particularly as this text suggests it comes from both developed and developing countries and other sources such as private finance. African negotiators referred to $200bn as “a joke” yesterday. This is likely to cause a robust response.
This core finance number falls far short of what developing countries have asked for. What’s more, the text states that this financing can come from a wide variety of sources, instead of public funding from original contributor countries that is easier for developing countries to access and does not create further debt.
“This figure is too low and not consistent with delivery of the Paris Agreement,” Amar Bhattacharya, Vera Songwe and Nicholas Stern, co-chairs of the IHLEG, said in a statement. “Our analysis shows that the NCQG, based on the components that it covers, should commit developed countries to provide at least $300 billion per year by 2030, and $390 billion per year by 2035. We believe that these targets are feasible and will require stepped up direct bilateral finance from developed countries, much higher ambition on the part of the multilateral development banks, and improved private finance mobilisation.”
While the text makes efforts to expand the contributor base, it also “invites” developing countries “to make additional contributions, including through South–South cooperation.”
“The solution to the donor base issue is that countries like China will not be responsible for the 250 billion, but could be counted towards the delivery of that figure,” said Li Shuo, Director of China Climate Hub Asia Society. “This is classic strategic ambiguity, but towards the direction of China playing a more prominent role in helping developing countries.”
Despite the disappointing draft, experts still remain hopeful that a fairer agreement can be struck while the summit races into overtime.
“There is no deal to come out of Baku that will not leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth, but we are within sight of a landing zone for the first time all year,” said Avinash Persaud, Special Advisor on Climate Change to the President of the Inter-American Development Bank.
“We need stronger ambition from developed countries,” said Sandra Guzman Luna, Founder of the Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean. “We still have hours to get there.”
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