This year, the Climate Summit sponsored by the UN faces a thorny question: who will pay, how much and how to help developing economies reduce their carbon emissions and adapt to the worst impacts of rising global temperatures. Therefore, the COP29 which opens this Monday in Baku (Azerbaijan), which will bring together representatives from almost 200 countries, has been named the “financing summit”.
Countries committed through the Paris Agreement not only to stop global warming –which favors extreme weather events–, but to financially help developing countries, which have barely contributed to climate change but suffer its ravages hardest. Since 2020, the aid commitment has been 100 billion dollars annually, although they only began to be achieved in 2022. But it is necessary to update the objective for 2025, according to the established rules. And the new amount of aid on which the estimates move is one billion annually, as demanded by African countries and small island states from 2030.
The quantitative leap is great. That is why there is also negotiation about who should contribute to the funds, an idea that has already stalled at several climate summits. Traditionally, industrialized countries have done this, with the European Union being the largest contributor. But now, the EU argues, they should start contributing to the large emerging economieslike China, as well as the Gulf States, or it will be difficult to reach the requested figure. The Asian giant and largest emitter of greenhouse gases is opposed.
The third financial key has to do with the mechanisms through which to mobilize money. Currently, 69% of financing is provided in the form of loans, something that developing countries criticize only exacerbates inequalities. For this reason, the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, has been trying since 2022 to make the idea of a tax to oil and gas energy companies. According to his calculations, it could contribute 210 billion dollars annually.
Absences
Aside from money, the fight against the increase in temperatures derived from the emission of greenhouse gases is still present. Current policies would lead to about 3ºC of warming about the pre-industrial era, very far from the ‘safe thresholds’. And for now things are not going well: in 2023 emissions they grew again at a global level, up to 1.3% annually, even above the increase that occurred last decade, when it was 0.8%.
It is foreseeable that some countries will begin to present new targets for emissions cuts. Governments have until February to do so and try to correct the course of global warming. However, the geopolitical climate in which COP29 is being held works against it. To begin with, due to the re-election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, a key actor, who already in his first term activated the mechanism to exit the Paris Agreement. Although Joe Biden’s team will still be at COP29, any issue they agree on will not bind the new administration.
Furthermore, the summit begins with important absences, which does not help negotiations. US President Joe Biden, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will not attend. Neither will French President Emmanuel Macron, German Olaf Schulz and Indian Narendra Modi.
All this at a time when the war in Ukraine, the conflict in the Middle East and inflation have displaced interest in climate change. This is demonstrated by the absences from the summit, but also by the recent failure in Cali, Colombia, when countries had to renegotiate how to protect nature and the meeting concluded without an agreement. Something that makes us fear that this year there will be no significant progress at the Climate Summit.
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