With just three days to go for the UN’s COP29 climate talks to end in Baku, Azerbaijan, there is serious concern the world is again going to miss the targets for funding climate disaster mitigation. As it is, the Baku summit opened under the shadow of pessimism and distrust. It did not help that in his opening address Ilham Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan—almost half of whose GDP comes from oil and gas exports—described fossil fuels as a “gift of god”. US president-elect Donald Trump has made no bones about pulling out of the Paris Agreement. Two days in, Argentina toed Trump’s line, packed its bags and left the conference.
The demand for richer nations to fund the changeover to green energy and pay for rebuilding from devastating weather events was mooted at the Copenhagen COP summit in 2009 and confirmed at Cancun 2010. The creation of a loss-and-disaster fund of $100 billion a year was agreed but not nearly achieved, thanks to procrastination by the developed world. Two years ago, at the COP summit at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said in a scathing address: “We were the ones whose blood, sweat and tears financed the industrial revolution. Are we now to face double jeopardy by having to pay the cost?”
More frequent and more intense climate disasters—including the recent devastating floods in Spain and a longer season of hurricanes in the US—have brought the climate crisis closer to the homes of Western sceptics. It is in this context that the target for the Climate Fund, now called the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance, has been revised up to $1 trillion a year till 2030; India has demanded the target be upped to $1.3 trillion. However, little progress has been made in Azerbaijan till now. It is hoped that the ongoing G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro will breathe some life into clinching a deal in Baku. Poorer nations have complained that most of the green funds disbursed till now have come as loans that require them to use lender nations’ companies and resources. It is one of the many faultlines that negotiators in Baku are trying to bridge. One thing is beyond doubt: it’s time for the developed world to pay its fair share.
