BAKU — In a hard-won agreement reached at the COP29 meeting in Baku, countries agreed on Sunday to an annual financing target of $300 billion to help poorer countries deal with the repercussions of climate change, with affluent countries leading the payments.
The new objective is meant to take the place of the developed countries’ prior pledge to give poorer countries $100 billion annually in climate finance by 2020. That objective ends in 2025 and was achieved two years later, in 2022.
The United Nations climate director Simon Steill praised the pact as an insurance policy for humanity, but underdeveloped countries denounced it as inadequate.
After the agreement was approved, Steill remarked, “It has been a challenging journey, but we have delivered a deal.”
This agreement will save billions of lives and continue to expand the clean energy boom. All nations will be able to benefit from the enormous advantages of aggressive climate action, including higher development, more jobs, and more affordable and clean energy.
However, it only functions as an insurance policy if the payments are paid in whole and on schedule.
With negotiators from almost 200 countries unable to agree on the climate funding plan for the next ten years, the COP29 climate conference in the capital of Azerbaijan, which was supposed to end on Friday, went into overtime.
Delegates from impoverished and small island nations once left the meeting in protest of what they perceived as a lack of participation, believing that states that produce fossil fuels were trying to weaken the agreement.
With negotiators from almost 200 countries unable to agree on the climate funding plan for the next ten years, the COP29 climate conference in the capital of Azerbaijan, which was supposed to end on Friday, went into overtime.
Delegates from impoverished and small island nations once left the meeting in protest of what they perceived as a lack of participation, believing that states that produce fossil fuels were trying to weaken the agreement.
The discussion during the summit centered on the financial obligation of developed nations, whose long-standing use of fossil fuels has contributed significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, to compensate others for the increasing harm caused by climate change.
It also exposed the disparities between impoverished countries suffering from the effects of droughts, floods, and storms and wealthier governments with tight domestic budgets.
On Saturday night, nations also reached an agreement on regulations for a worldwide market for the purchase and sale of carbon credits, which supporters claim may raise billions more dollars for new initiatives aimed at combating global warming, including as reforestation and the use of sustainable energy technologies.
To meet the Paris Agreement’s target of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7F) beyond pre-industrial levels, beyond which catastrophic climate impacts could occur, nations are looking for funding.
The 2024 U.N. Emissions Gap report states that if global greenhouse gas emissions and the use of fossil fuels continue to increase, the planet might warm by up to 3.1C (5.6F) by the end of this century.
What counts as a developed nation?
About two dozen industrialized nations, including the United States, Europe, and Canada, are on the list of states that must contribute. This list was decided upon during the 1992 U.N. climate discussions.
The governments of Europe have called on other countries, such as the oil-rich Gulf nations and China, the second-largest economy in the world, to contribute as well. While it does not mandate it, the agreement encourages poorer nations to contribute.
By 2035, the pact also calls for raising $1.3 trillion in climate finance annually, which economists believe is equivalent to the amount required to combat global warming and would come from all public and private sources.
From the beginning, closing the sale proved difficult.
The triumph of Donald Trump this month has caused some negotiators to question if the largest economy in the world would contribute to whatever climate financing target reached in Baku. Trump, a Republican who will take office in January, has declared climate change to be a hoax and pledged to withdraw the United States from global climate cooperation once more.
In the face of escalating geopolitical tensions, such as Russia’s war in Ukraine and the growing Middle East conflict, as well as rising inflation, Western countries have seen global warming fall further down their list of national concerns.
The dispute over funding for developing nations takes place amid what experts predict will be the warmest year ever. Following such intense weather, climate problems are mounting, with drought in South America reducing rivers, devastating landslides burying villages in Asia, and widespread flooding killing hundreds in Africa.
Developed nations are not exempt. More than 200 people were killed by floods caused by torrential rain in Valencia, Spain, last month. The United States has already recorded 24 billion-dollar disasters this year, which is just four less than the previous year.
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