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The homeowner has impolite to guests. Location is controversial and the agenda is declare not fit for purpose. The COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku began under unfavorable circumstances. It doesn’t help that voters in the world’s largest economy are medium Donald Trump is re-electeda leader uninterested in correcting what he repeatedly called the global warming “hoax.” Trump’s ally in Buenos Aires, Javier Milei, also did not send his country’s delegation home early amid speculation that Argentina could follow the US in withdrawing from the 2015 Paris climate agreement that underpinned the negotiations. .
Despite these difficulties, COP29 shows that multilateralism can still work in an era of economies plagued by inflation and rising geopolitical instability. After tense negotiations that lasted more than a day and prompted vulnerable nations to stage an angry but temporary strike, delegates from nearly 200 countries finally achieved their main goal. meeting by reaching a new global funding deal to help poor countries manage climate change.
the agreement commits rich countries to lead efforts to triple climate finance to developing countries to at least $300 billion per year by 2035, through public finance, bilateral agreements and multilateral efforts. That amount is well below the minimum $1.3 trillion a year that the deal acknowledges should ideally be transferred by 2035, from both private and public sources.
Climate campaigners have compared the results to bandaging a gunshot wound, and several countries have backed India’s condemnation of what it calls “extreme poverty” and meager amounts of money. which this country cannot accept.
But the reluctance of most developing countries to support the deal reflects the political realities that shaped it. That includes the scramble for money in developed countries that are struggling to fund domestic public services and the fact that a better deal is unlikely to be reached at next November’s COP in Brazil, after nearly a year of the Trump administration in power.
In an encouraging sign of how far the COP climate finance negotiations have progressed over the past three years, the Baku agreement also encourages a series of emerging financial reforms aimed at accelerating implementation. Open private climate financing.
Rich countries are working to meet their commitment to mobilize $100 billion a year for developing countries by 2020. And OECD suggests that the amount of private finance raised by public climate finance will only increase from $14 billion in 2021 to $22 billion in 2022.
Multilateral development banks, especially the World Bank, are making efforts measure to address investment barriers such as foreign exchange risk and regulatory uncertainty. Expanding these efforts is critical, as are other reforms that aim to raise the share of private climate finance generated from every dollar of public funding.
The Baku deal also highlights how the quest for more climate cash is accelerating to target activities once considered too fast full of politics to consider, such as international transportation. It encourages governments to scale up “innovative sources of finance,” such as carbon taxes on shipping and aviation.
In an ideal world, these sources would comprise a meaningful global network carbon price. In the real world, where the prospects for such a measure seem more remote than ever, pro-climate action governments are nonetheless aiming encourage Countries have supported carbon pricing to coordinate and scale their efforts ahead of COP30 in Brazil. All of these steps will be necessary in a world that has spent so much time avoiding climate change and now has to grapple with the bill.
