The COP29 Climate Summit stretches negotiations beyond the planned limit. The figure of 250 billion euros in economic aid that rich states must provide to impoverished countries proposed by the president of the summit, Mukhtar Babayev, has fallen like a bomb: “Is it a joke?” various delegations have aired this week. Friday.
The draft written offer admits that financing for impoverished countries to confront the climate crisis must reach $1.3 trillion a year from 2035 from both public and private sources. But it estimates the amount borne by developed countries at 250,000 million. In 2009 it was agreed that this amount would be 100,000 million starting in 2020 and it was not possible to add that amount until 2022.
The island countries allied in the Aosis group have summarized their position thus: “The proposal seems like a question to the parties about how low they can go.” The African countries have concluded, even before attending a plenary session where they will present their opinion, that such an amount “will lead to an unacceptable loss of life in Africa and endanger the future of our world.”
It almost seems like a strategy by the COP presidency to set an initial goal so low that anything else that comes out in the following hours, no matter how small, feels like a success.
Javier Andaluz
— Head of Climate Change at Ecologistas en Acción
“This proposal should not pass the filter of small island countries and Latin America. They cannot assume this,” reflects the head of Climate Change at Ecologistas en Acción, Javier Andaluz, from Baku. All in all, Andaluz points out that “this almost seems like a strategy of the COP presidency to set an initial objective so low that anything else that comes out in the following hours, no matter how small, feels like a success.”
For Pedro Zorrilla, from Greenpeace, “the main flaw in the draft financing objective is the figure. It is very low compared to what is necessary. “It would be similar to what was set in 2009 if inflation is applied.”
The draft calls on “developing countries to make additional contributions” to “supplement” the fund allocated to rich states. It is a call for China – and even India – to contribute money even though they are officially on the list of developing states.
The dispute between poor countries that need financing and rich countries that demanded more decision when it comes to cutting CO2 emissions has been the protagonist of this summit. Once we have reached this point, the summit has exceeded its theoretical closing time. It is so common for negotiations to be extended each year that it is assumed that something like this will happen when the editions are rushed. All delegates and observers in Baku consulted estimate that this summit will last at least until this Saturday, November 23. They do not dare to predict the maximum it will reach.
Nothing new about cutting fossil fuel use
In the lead up to the draft proposal on funding, what has disappeared is any specific mention of fossil fuels: the oil, coal and gas whose use causes the greenhouse gas emissions that cause the climate crisis.
Both in the section on the Mitigation Work Program and in the document that must provide continuity to the General Balance of the Paris Agreement, there is no direct reference to the abandonment of fossil fuels. Saudi Arabia, on behalf of the Arab Group, has repeated that it would not accept any industrial sector being singled out “like fossils,” they said. Even the president of Azerbaijan himself, Ilham Alyev, called these fuels a “gift from god” on the first day of the COP. And he rejected the criminalization of countries that extract and sell them (such as Azerbaijan or Saudi Arabia).
The proposals of the summit presidency refer to the paragraphs (without repeating them) of the Dubai agreement that did call for “moving away from fossil fuels” for the first time in the history of the COPs. But nothing more.
The idea of including more specific and ambitious guidelines on moving away from oil, coal and gas to reduce gas emissions is that these guidelines would force countries to draft more ambitious national climate plans due next year. . Whether the objective of these summits can be met depends on these plans – and their fulfillment –: containing global warming of the planet to 1.5ºC by the end of the century. And with it, the most severe damage from climate change.
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