“No deal is better than a bad deal!”
That was the chant that rang outside the plenary halls as the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP29) went into its final hours and negotiators struggled to find common ground on climate finance.
Eventually, countries would agree to a $300 billion climate finance target for developing countries by 2035, tripling a pledge that was made and never kept 15 years ago.
The major outcome of COP29 set off a firestorm of criticism from around the world, led by Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
Many negotiators and activists feel it’s a major setback for the climate justice that SIDS have been fighting for decades.
According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the gap in financing for adaptation is upwards of $400 billion every year. Dr James Fletcher, who played a pivotal role in the Paris Agreement, said when it comes to loss and damage financing, that figure could climb to half a trillion dollars every year. Developing countries went to the negotiating table at COP29 asking for $1.3 trillion.
“That is in no way fair. That is not climate justice. What you are saying to developing countries is that we will not give you the level of financing that you need for you to be able to adapt to this climate crisis,” Fletcher told Guardian Media this week.
He went further in saying that the outcome of COP29 may not be realised in the coming years.
“I’m not holding my breath. As woefully inadequate as $300 billion is compared to $1.3 trillion, I don’t even believe we will get $300 billion annually. That’s the reality.”
His statement came after Global North countries failed to deliver the $100 billion pledge that was agreed upon in 2009.
Additionally, he said COP29’s failure to commit to grant financing spells even more injustice for some of the least polluters in the world.
He said that means most of the financing for climate adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage will now be funded by multilateral development banks and private finance, “which means that we now have to increase our debt burden to finance a response to a crisis we did not create.”
Rueanna Haynes, who was a negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), said SIDS countries have been concerned about the “increasingly vicious cycle” linking loss and damage as a result of climate change impacts to sovereign debt.
In an interview this week, Haynes stated the Baku climate finance deal speaks to the need to consider SIDS but does not go far enough to ensure that the challenges SIDS have traditionally faced with climate finance access are addressed.
She added, “We don’t know as yet how exactly this new goal will impact our broader efforts. It’s too early to tell. What we do know is that it is woefully insufficient in comparison to the needs of developing countries. From a climate justice point of view, it completely misses the mark as a headline number. But issues about quality and access are also highly relevant.”
For many of these reasons, Fletcher backs a call for not hosting COPs in countries that have “important oil and gas sectors.”
He also said, “The COP president and the COP presidency play a very important role in ensuring that there is an ambitious outcome and ensuring that the outcomes coming out of COP reflect what it is we are working towards.”
However, as the uproar continued over climate finance, T&T’s lead climate negotiator, Kishan Kumarsingh, offered a different perspective on how small island states can move forward from the disappointment of COP29.
He said, “Any amount of finance that you may get will always be inadequate as long as emissions continue to rise and the impacts of climate change worsen. Addressing the core issue of reducing emissions by those countries accounting for the majority of global emissions, including the emerging economies, is where the solution lies.
You can have all the finance in the world, if you do not have the legislative, institutional, administrative and policy framework and capacity to enable action, whether it’s reducing emissions or whether it is addressing adaptation, which requires finance, then nothing can happen.”
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This story was originally published by the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, with the support of the Caribbean Climate Justice Journalism Fellowship, which is a joint venture between Climate Tracker Caribbean and Open Society Foundations.
