By AFP - Agence France Presse
COP29
Developing Nations Criticize $300 Billion Climate Deal
By Nick Perry, Laurent Thomet, and Shaun Tandon
The world approved a bitterly negotiated climate deal on Sunday, but the poorest nations, who are most at the mercy of worsening disasters, rejected the $300 billion-a-year pledge from the rich historic polluters as insultingly low.
After two exhausting weeks of chaotic negotiations and sleepless nights, almost 200 nations approved the controversial financial pact in the early hours of the morning in a sports stadium in Azerbaijan.
But the applause had barely died down when India vehemently rejected the “abysmally poor” agreement, kicking off a storm of criticism from across the developing world.
“It's a paltry sum,” cried India's delegate, Chandni Raina.
“This document is little more than an optical illusion. It will not, in our view, address the enormity of the challenge we all face.”
Sierra Leone's climate minister, Jiwoh Abdulai, said the document showed a “lack of goodwill” on the part of rich countries to support the world's poorest, who face rising seas and more severe droughts.
Nigeria's envoy, Nkiruka Maduekwe, was even more direct: “This is an insult.”
Some countries accused Azerbaijan, an oil and gas exporter, of lacking the will to meet the deadline in a year marked by costly climate disasters and set to become the hottest on record.
But in protests throughout COP29, the developed nations - major economies such as the European Union, the United States, and Japan - were accused of negotiating in bad faith, making a fair agreement impossible.
Developing nations arrived in the Caspian Sea city of Baku hoping to secure a major financial boost from rich countries, many times over the current pledge of $100 billion a year.
Tina Stege, a climate envoy from the Marshall Islands, said she would return home with only a “small part” of what she had fought for, but not empty-handed.
“It's nowhere near enough, but it's a start,” said Stege, whose homeland, the atoll nation, faces an existential threat from rising sea levels.
Nations struggled at COP29 to reconcile long-standing divisions over how developed nations, more responsible for historic greenhouse gas pollution, should provide to poorer countries, less responsible but more affected by the Earth's rapid warming.
The meeting was also marked by the stalling of the promise to “transition” away from fossil fuels, the main driver of global warming.
This promise, one of the main achievements of COP28 in Dubai, was withdrawn from the final Baku agreement.
The 45-nation Least Developed Countries bloc called the outcome of COP29 a “farce,” adding that there had been no progress in reducing warming or delivering enough money to protect the most vulnerable.
“This is not just a failure; it is a betrayal,” the group said in a statement.
The nations agreed to try to limit the rise in temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era. Currently, the world is on track for a devastating warming of between 2.6°C and 3.1°C this century, according to the UN.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he “expected a more ambitious outcome” and asked governments to consider it a starting point.
Developed countries only put the $300 billion figure on the table on Saturday, after COP29 was extended and diplomats worked through the night to improve a previously rejected offer.
Blurry-eyed diplomats, huddled anxiously in groups, were still polishing the final text in the plenary in the final hours before the agreement was approved.
UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband celebrated “a critical eleventh-hour deal for the climate.”
At times, the negotiations seemed to be on the verge of collapse.
Delegates walked out of meetings, fired shots all around, and threatened to walk away from the negotiating table if the rich nations didn't fork out more money.
In the end, despite repeating that “no deal is better than a bad deal,” the developing nations did not prevent an agreement.
US President Joe Biden called the agreement reached in Baku a “historic result.”
EU climate envoy Wopke Hoekstra said the agreement would be remembered as “the beginning of a new era for climate finance.”
The agreement commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries cut emissions and prepare for worsening disasters.
This falls short of the $390 billion that economists commissioned by the United Nations considered a fair contribution from developed nations.
The US and the EU pushed for richer emerging economies, such as China, the world's biggest emitter, to contribute.
The rich nations said it was not politically realistic to expect more direct government funding at a time of geopolitical uncertainty and economic belt-tightening.
Donald Trump, a climate change and foreign assistance skeptic, was elected just days before the start of COP29, and his victory cast a cloud over the UN negotiations.
Other countries, especially in the EU - the largest contributor of climate finance - have seen right-wing reactions against the green agenda, which is not a fertile condition for raising large sums of public money.
The final agreement “encourages” developing countries to make voluntary contributions, which does not reflect any change for China, which already provides climate finance on its terms.
The agreement also proposes a higher overall target of US$1.3 trillion a year to tackle rising temperatures and disasters, but most of this would come from private sources.
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