COP 29 – A tale of opportunity lost, obligations diluted and responsibility shirked, says CSE
At COP 29 in Baku, the global community witnessed a missed opportunity for meaningful climate finance agreements. Developed countries’ failure to deliver a robust financial commitment for developing nations has raised concerns about the future of low-carbon growth and climate resilience, especially in vulnerable regions. Experts from the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) express disappointment over the outcome, criticizing the inadequate financial support offered to the Global South.
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Countries of the developed world perform ‘the great escape’ from their financial obligations.
New Delhi, November 28, 2024: “At COP 29, we lost an opportunity – without a meaningful agreement on climate finance; both in terms of quantity and quality, large parts of the world that would have had the chance to reinvent growth to make it low-carbon intensive, will not be able to do so. What’s worse, this comes at a time when these countries are even more vulnerable due to climate change impacts,” said Sunita Narain, director general, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), speaking at an online debriefing on the Baku conference’s results.
The 29th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ended November 24 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The headline issue of the conference was the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance. The NCQG is the successor to the US $100 billion per year commitment made by developed countries in 2009 to support climate action in developing countries by 2020.
Says Avantika Goswami, programme manager, Climate Change, CSE: “An ambitious NCQG outcome at COP 29 would have been critical for supporting the increasing climate needs of the Global South. So did the finance COP deliver? The answer has to be a most emphatic ‘no’.”
What the COP29 presidency did was to gavel a climate finance deal of US $300 billion per year for developing countries – the money is expected to come from developed Parties and other sources by 2035. The deal also “calls on all actors” to contribute towards an overall climate finance goal of US $1.3 trillion per year to developing countries by 2035, which would also include voluntary contributions from developing countries.
Says Goswami: “The Global North has abandoned the Global South with this meagre offer. It has no right to demand mitigation ambition from our part of the world with so little finance on the table. To begin with, the deal dilutes the legal obligation of developed countries to provide the entirety of the finance under the new goal, as per Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement. The ambiguities of the goal make it clear that there will be little accountability and traceability of funds.”
She adds: “This was the last remaining window for the Global North to step up, pay its fair share, and restore some semblance of trust in the multilateral process. They have failed.”
Follow the proceedings of the CSE debriefing webinar here: https://www.cseindia.org/did-the-finance-cop-deliver--12496
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