Row over who will pay $1tn climate fund drags Cop29 talks past the deadline

Michael Greenstoneprofessor in Economics

It is basic economics (and fairness) that people compensate those that they harm,

said Michael Greenstone, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, comparing the $300bn target to “a pint glass that now has a couple of splashes of water”.

Targets will need to adjust for inflation over time,

Amar Bhattacharya, the executive secretary of the UN’s independent high-level expert group on climate finance and co-author of the study, said before they were agreed

So, the absence of inflation adjustment in Cop29’s promises removes a couple of drops but the real story is how empty the glass is.”

He added

The incoherent process yielded an incoherent commitment, just a small fraction of the necessary financing for developing countries. The $300bn per year committed – which includes private finance to be leveraged – is barely 12% of the estimated financing needs for developing countries, without even accounting for inflation,

she said

Like any insurance policy - it only works - if premiums are paid in full, and on time."

As Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UNFCCC stated

Our islands are sinking. How can you expect us to go back to the women, men, and children of our countries with a poor deal?"

The chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, Cedric Schuster, said

Tasneem Essopsouth African politician

This has been the most horrendous climate negotiations in years due to the bad faith of developed countries. This was meant to be the finance COP, but the Global North turned up with a plan to betray the Global South, ... Betrayal in Baku: developed countries fail people and planet."

Tasneem Essop, executive director of a non-governmental organization called Climate Action Network, wrote in a statement titled

When some individual developed countries speak of righteousness and morality regarding climate issues, it is, in fact, all about political manipulation behind."

Their ... Li said

Developed and developing countries entered the negotiations far apart. At one point on Saturday, the talks appeared to be on the brink of collapse, before numerous closed-door meetings brought a deal closer…. Under a compromise, rich nations eventually agreed to commit $50 billion more than called for in a draft agreement on Friday,

said a Bloomberg report

The lack of long-term commitment and consistency in actions from wealthy countries has amplified the sense of 'betrayal' from the developing countries,

Sun noted

Early in the negotiations it became clear that certain western voices would not shift,

he added

If we do not begin cutting methane and other emissions, the amount of money will never be enough to deal with the climate change impacts that are headed our way,

added the lecturer at the American University’s Center for Environmental Policy

While US$300 billion is not a trivial amount of money per year, if we could compare it with, say, the estimates for fossil fuel subsidies that countries are paying – that’s basically US$7 trillion a year,

said Mark Howden, director of the Australian National University’s Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions

There will hopefully be further stepping up in the next COP of these emissions reductions,

said Howden

So, we're paying huge amounts to dig up these fossil fuels and to emit them into the atmosphere, and we're prepared to only pay a very small proportion of that in terms of compensation for the damage that's done,

he told CNA938 on Monday (Nov 25).

That’s why, overall, our carbon dioxide emissions this year are likely to be the highest on record,

he warned

There are dozens of other natural systems that are stressed to the point that they will become net-warming contributors,

he said

Clearly, you’ve got a situation where there's a whole bunch of people who are seeing the damage that climate change is doing, and will do more of, in the future,

he said

China held, with the United States, a summit on methane and yet, three years after promising a methane reduction plan, (there have not been) methane cuts,

he said

We can choose to be proactive about climate, and the time for being proactive is rapidly shrinking,

said Ruth Townend, a senior research fellow at the London-based think tank Chatham House who attended the conference