UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell speaks in the early hours of the morning at the end of the UNFCCC COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, November 24, 2024.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Ambitious climate action often requires ambitious financing – whether it’s clean energy transition plans or helping developing countries mitigate the impact of natural disasters.
but as extreme weather become more normal and global temperature riseWhat was supposed to be a critical year for funding mitigation efforts turned out to be a particularly frustrating one.
Nearly 50,000 people from 200 countries – including for the first time Taliban Rulers of Afghanistan – this year in Azerbaijan United Nations Climate Change Conferenceaiming to reach a major agreement on climate finance. The meeting was originally scheduled to end on Friday, but funding talks were extended into the weekend.
The meeting released a draft agreement to help the world adapt to and cope with climate change, called COP 29Commitment to provide $250 billion per year from rich countries to poor countries by 2035. While rich countries say this is realistic and the only limit they can do, the figure is less than a quarter of what developing countries most affected by extreme weather are demanding.
The president-elect’s victory has cast a pall over the meeting Donald TrumpHe withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement climate change treaty during his first term as president and has vowed to do so again. Attendance by world leaders, especially those from rich countries, was low and the atmosphere was affected.
By the end of this decade, developing countries are seeking $1 trillion a year, much of it from developed economies, to transition to green energy and adapt to extreme weather driven by climate change.
As the World Meteorological Organization says, 2024 is expected to be hottest year on recordsome experts are so concerned that they are calling for a completely new approach. in a open letter A statement last week by signatories, including former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said the entire framework of UN climate talks “is no longer fit for purpose”.
“We can choose to be proactive on climate, and the time for proactive action is rapidly shortening,” said Ruth Townend, a senior fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank who attended the meeting. “Or we can choose to be reactive. response, but it would be more expensive, more difficult, and more labor intensive.”
Some of the highest human costs will be borne by small countries disproportionately affected by climate change, including Pacific island nations whose existence is threatened by rising sea levels. But with COP29 hampered by geopolitics and domestic unrest, some are simply unwilling to attend.
Differences deepen
Top leaders from some major economies were conspicuously absent from the Azerbaijani capital Baku.
they include the president Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinpingleaders of the two largest carbon emitters. Although the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer did attend, most other leaders of the G7’s major industrialized nations did not, including the president of France Emmanuel Macrongerman chancellor Olaf Scholzcanadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
Townend said that while much of the work was carried out by lower-level negotiators during long nights in windowless rooms, the presence of the head of state was symbolic.
She added: “It’s disappointing to see a lack of solidarity from world leaders.”
Although Trump himself was absent, his presence was felt here.
After Trump’s victory, U.S. officials tried to reassure attendees.
While Trump “may put climate action on the backburner,” U.S. climate envoy John Podesta said”, “Work to curb climate change will continue.
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said states, cities, NGOs and companies were still “all in” pursuing climate goals. She also pointed out that 80% of the funds for Biden’s two signature bills, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, went to Republican constituencies, including promoting the manufacturing of electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels.
She said Trump may slow but not stop U.S. climate efforts.
“It would be a political evil to take away these opportunities when people are just getting hired,” Granholm told NBC News, adding that about 400,000 people were hired as a result of the bills.
Even companies that stand to benefit from Trump’s pledge to loosen restrictions on oil and gas exploration have expressed concern. ExxonMobil Chief Executive Darren Woods said he hopes the Trump administration will take a “common sense approach” to reducing emissions and continue to comply with the Paris Agreement.
Achieving the deal’s goals, which include limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures, could cost up to $8 trillion a year, according to one study. Report released last week Developed by the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance.
Who pays?
Although emitters are relatively small, countries hit hard by climate change are frustrated with major polluters because they believe they are shirking responsibility for helping them meet their costs and trying to hinder their development in the name of environmental protection.
The host of the meeting, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, The tone is full of provocation In his keynote speech, he said countries like his should not be harshly criticized for exporting fossil fuels, especially from the United States and other wealthy countries that continue to rely on fossil fuels.
Aliyev and other recently developed countries, many of which were once colonized by the West, say they should not be financially punished for past emissions by wealthy nations.
“Who is responsible for the pollution we have now? It’s 120 years of the industrial revolution,” said Adel Al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s climate envoy.
British Lord Adair Turner, chairman of the Global Alliance for Energy Transition, said Saudi Arabia’s climate envoy was living in a “diplomatic fantasy land”.
“The fact that Saudi Arabia is a developing country at its level of per capita income is an insult to truly developing countries like sub-Saharan Africa,” he said in an interview. “We will need not only people from the seven “The financial flows from the rich developed countries in the traditional sense of the Group also require financial flows from the rich countries in the Middle East, and in fact from China.”
Although China industrialized later than many of the world’s largest polluters, Carbon Brief UK During the meeting, it was stated that China has surpassed the European Union and become the world’s second largest historical emitter after the United States.
Internal strife will only further irritate Pacific island nations, e.g. papua new guineawhose Prime Minister James Marape August says It will boycott the Baku meeting, viewing it as a “protest against major powers” that continue to emit emissions but refuse to pay.
Under pressure from activists, Marape eventually sent a delegation.
While many world leaders did not attend or attempted to attend the conference, there were also first-time attendees from Taliban-led Afghanistan. Although the Taliban has struggled to gain international recognition Backsliding on women’s rights and other abuses, Afghanistan is one of the countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
Asad Javed, an assistant professor at the American University of Afghanistan who has studied the impact of climate change on the country’s farmers, said the agriculture-reliant country has been pushed into a “dangerous situation.”
“Decades of war and instability, economic challenges, destroyed infrastructure and an impoverished workforce have left Afghanistan with few resources for climate adaptation initiatives,” he said.
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