Following the historic agreement to “transition” to the end of fossil fuels. that it achieved at last year’s Dubai Climate Summit, the COP29 which was inaugurated this Monday in the capital city of AzerbaijanBaku, will talk mainly about moneyspecifically, how to make it possible to get it to the industrialized countries to contribute “more and better” to the Global South. to cope with the ravages of climate change, both in emergencies and in the longer term, in order to adapt to it. This new Climate Summit will have achieved its objective if, by the time it closes on November 22, the financial commitment of the rich world to the poor world stops being counted in millions of dollars a year and leaps into the trillions.
“We came in knowing that this COP is about numbers“said the executive director of the Climate Action Coalition early Monday, Tasneem Essopat a press conference. Industrialized countries are “capable of financing military spending, for the genocide in Gaza or for the fossil fuel industry, but they are not capable of financing the military spending, for the genocide in Gaza or for the fossil fuel industry, but they are capable of financing the military spending. they come and say they have no money. It is absolutely unacceptable“He decried on the first day of a Climate Summit in which in the general atmosphere floats the recent victory of Donald Trump in the U.S. elections and its consequences on the climate fight. At the national level in Spain, this new international climate marathon is taking place two weeks after the disaster of the DANA in Valencia, driven by unprecedentedly high Mediterranean temperatures resulting from global warming. The Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, participates this Tuesday in the political summit before the technical negotiations.
On a more institutional level, this Monday’s opening day was marked by calls for increased funding to countries with fewer resources to enable them to cope with climate catastrophes and adapt to climate change. “This is the moment of truth, it’s not going to be easy. This summit will be an opportunity for development; we can build the bridge, but everyone has to cross it,” said the COP29 president. Mukhtar Babayev. Outside the plenary, the Pope Francis hoped this Sunday that COP29 will be able to agree on “an effective contribution to the protection of the planet”.
From billions to trillions in aid
The agreement to increase -substantially- climate change financing is the agreement that COP29 will seek to establish a New Quantified Collective Goal (NCGS), which in excess of US$100 billion per year. agreed at the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2019, to be updated in 2025. By next year, recipient countries and climate ngos are no longer talking about billions, but about trillions of dollars.
According to the latest preparatory document on this issue for each COP29, the following has been established since a minimum amount of one trillion -million dollars per year to the three trillion demanded by groups such as the Climate Action Coalition or the almost seven billion requested by another counterpart, divided into sub-objectives for mitigation – i.e. avoiding climate change -, for adaptation to it and for the “loss and damage” chapter which, in climate jargon, refers to catastrophes in a more immediate way.
In addition to the how much, it will be necessary to define the “quality” and the “how”. of these subsidies. Those affected and the environmental organizations speak of public funds but also the involvement of private funds.for example, financial institutions, or fossil fuel companies, through the “polluter pays” principle, and also by means of taxes that would increase the resources of the contributing countries, in the style of the extraordinary levy which was introduced in Spain two years ago and which will expire at the end of the year due to the fact that the Government has not been able to find support to make it permanent. On the other hand, it is also expected that when it comes to “scaling up” the amount of aid, it will no longer come in the form of credits or charged to the external debt of the recipient countries, as has been the case up to now, and will instead become grants or soft loans whose repayment does not further sink countries that already have few resources.
“We are on our way to the ruin of the planet.”Babayev has warned about the need to provide financial assistance to countries in Africawhere Greenpeace estimates that the cost of climate change will be 15% of its GDP by 2030. Or in the Pacificwhere the cost of natural disasters linked to global warming has increased eightfold in the last decade and in the last two years has amounted to almost 4.5 billion euros that their countries cannot afford. The financial muscle of the large economies, Spain, for example, where in 15 days the central government has mobilized 14,000 million to help those affected by the DANA, in addition to future resources and those also committed by the Generalitat Valenciana.
After last year’s complicated COP28 in Dubai, the Climate Summit is back on track. in an oil and gas producing country. In addition to last year’s agreement on the the beginning of the road to the end of fossil fuels was agreed last year which will not begin to be substantiated until the national plans that countries will have to present at the COP30 to be held in 2025 in Brazil, this summit aims to weak in terms of objectives to directly fight climate changein the so-called mitigation where, however, sThe EU will continue to insist on. Although the focus is on financing, activists also want to begin to see commitments towards the promised “transition” to the end of fossil fuels that was agreed last year.
Pedro Sánchez, the EU and DANA
In the midst of the crisis due to the Valencia DANA that have climate change at their origins, Sanchez travels to Azerbaijan to participate this Tuesday in the Summit of World Leaders on Climate Action, which will be attended by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyenand its remaining commissioners for Energy and Climate Agenda. The third vice-president, Teresa Riberawho last year shone as one of the mullers of the COP28 agreement as representative of the EU Council Presidency, will be many kilometers away, in Brussels, to pass also this Tuesday the examination’ before the European Parliament to become Vice-President of the new Commission and Commissioner for Competition and Green Transition.
At the moment, Spain has not shown its cards as to what it is willing to offer in financing, although sources close to the negotiations stress that, as part of it, the EU has been increasing its contribution in the last few years. so that other countries can better cope with the threat of global warming. As was already the case last year with the negotiation of the Loss and Damage fund, European governments want not only developed countries to contribute to the new funding targets, but also emerging economies such as China.
In any case, the EU arrives in Azerbaijan with warnings on the high about the effects of climate change and the need to curb global warming, goals that should not be distracted when, he points out, 2024 was the first year in which the temperature exceeded 1.5°C. compared to 1990, the limit of the Paris Agreement. And as an example of the need to act also in the mitigation chapter, the European Commission gave as an example the ravages of the DANA on Valencia and Albufera as a sign that “climate change is here”, in a tweet in which he announced his participation in COP29 to “galvanize the international community to more action to address the challenge of our century.”
🔴 Climate change is here. It is now.
At #COP29 starting today in 🇦🇿 Baku, we will push the international community for more action to tackle the challenge of our century.
Let’s act before climate change blows our future away.
– European Commission (@EU_Commission) November 11, 2024
US low profile in the face of Trump and Taliban’s comeback
If the performance of the European bloc remains to be seen, much less is expected from the United States from the outset. Sources already present in Baku comment that in the “general atmosphere” floats Trump’s recent election victory. and doubts about the country’s turnaround on climate policy when he becomes president again in January.
For now, the U.S. booth is much smaller than in previous years, COP29 will not be attended by its president. Joe Biden will not go, just as he did not go last year.
The maximum representation will be by his Climate Envoy, John Podestawho at a press conference has stated that “it is clear that the next U.S. Administration will attempt to turn the tide and reverse the progress on climate”, although he added that “the economics of the transition to clean energy has taken hold”. “I don’t think it’s reversible. It can be slowed down, maybe. But the direction is clear,” said Podesta about the path already taken to fight climate change. For this reason, he ruled out a return to a fossil fuel model like that of “the 1950s,” despite Trump.
Those who will be present at the Climate Summit in Azerbaijan will be the Taliban. Three years after taking power following the withdrawal of the United States, the Taliban government of Afghanistan and the reimplantation of an Islamic regime that condemns, annuls and violates the human rights of women, will officially break its international isolation and will send its director of the National Environmental Protection Agency, Mawlawi Matiulhaq Khalis, to “discuss Afghanistan’s vulnerability and the problems it faces due to climate change.” Kabul is “fully prepared” to engage with the international community, he affirmed.