COP29 triples climate finance to $300 billion a year, India says “disappointed”, “cannot accept”

Completely ignoring the demands of the developing nations for mobilisation of at least 1.3 trillion dollars a year in climate finance, the developed countries managed to force an agreement at the COP29 meeting in Baku, promising to put together just 300 billion dollars a year, that too from 2035.

In an unusually angry statement after the agreement, which was adopted early Sunday without allowing countries to make any intervention, India called the amount “abysmally poor” and “paltry”.

“India does not accept the goal proposal in its present form. The amount that is proposed to be mobilised is abysmally poor. It is a paltry sum. It is not something that will enable conducive climate action that is necessary for the survival of our country,” Indian negotiator Chandni Raina said.

She also objected to the manner in which the agreement was adopted and said the process was “stage-managed”.

“We had informed the Presidency (host country Azerbaijan), we had informed the Secretariat (of UN Climate Change) that we wanted to make a statement prior to any decision on the adoption. However, and this is for everyone to see, this has been stage-managed. And we are extremely, extremely disappointed with this incident… We absolutely object to this unfair means followed for adoption,” Raina said, to loud applause from developing country delegates and a large number of civil society representatives present in the hall.

“I am sorry we are not happy, we are very unhappy and disappointed with the process and object to the adoption of this agenda,” she said.

Despite the objections, which happened after the adoption of the agreement, the deal will stay on as one of the outcomes from this conference, unless it is amended at a future meeting, which is unlikely.

Curiously, China, the largest and most powerful developing country, remained silent all through, giving its tacit approval to the 300-billion dollar figure.

The 300-billion dollars a year is three times the current mobilisation target of 100 billion dollars a year, but well short of the trillion-dollar figure that the developing nations had been pushing for.

Developed countries are under an obligation to raise financial and technological resources to help developing countries fight climate change. In 2009, the developed countries had offered to raise 100 billion dollars a year from 2020, a target that they claim was achieved in 2022. Developing countries contest this claim.

The 2015 Paris Agreement had asked that a new goal on finance (called New Cumulative Quantitative Goal or NCQG) be decided upon before 2025. It does not say from which year the new amount has to be mobilised. Based on a few assessments of their requirements, the developing countries had been asking for the NCQG to be set at 1.3 trillion dollars every year.

The main agenda of COP29 was to finalise this NCQG.

After keeping their cards close to their chest through most of the two-week conference — and during the three year negotiations preceding that — the developed countries finally offered to raise the 100 billion dollar figure to just 250 billion dollars, a proposal that prompted angry responses from the developing countries, including a walk-out from the meeting by some of them on Friday. It had led to the suspension of talks at COP29, and pushed it into the extra day.

Apart from agreeing, after much haggling, to raise the offer to 300 billion dollars and no more, the developed countries also rejected the other associated demands of the developing countries — for the amount to be largely financed from public sources and disbursed mainly in the form of grants or concessionary loans.

The final agreement said the 300 billion dollars would be raised through a “variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources”. There is no specific assurance the money would be disbursed in the form of grants or concessionary loans.

European Union climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, who spoke after the intervention of India and a few other developing countries who supported India’s position, said sealing the finance deal in itself was a “truly exceptional” development, and called it “a new era for climate finance”.

“It is ambitious, it is needed, it is realistic and it is achievable,” Hoekstra said.

But Nigerian negotiator Nkiruka Maduekwe, while supporting India, said the 300-billion dollars figure was “a joke”, and “not something we can clap about”. She said it was “an insult” to the provisions of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Manjeev Singh Puri, India’s former ambassador to the European Union and now a distinguished fellow at Delhi-based The Energy and Resources Institute, said, “It is deeply disappointing that the world couldn’t agree on a goal reflecting at least a modicum of ambition for financing action in developing countries on climate change. India, rightly, underscored this inadequacy and the process of adoption.”

The COP29 meeting finalised a few other agreements, most notably the one on the rules governing carbon markets. It paves the way for the operationalisation of carbon markets, allowing countries to trade in carbon credits.

There were underwhelming results on some other expected outcomes. Saudi Arabia and its supporting partners managed to ensure that the reference to ‘transitioning away from fossil fuels’ that was hailed as a historic breakthrough in the final decision of last year’s climate meeting in Dubai was not repeated in the mitigation outcome this year.

“It is hard to find positive developments at these very tricky negotiations. Baku has given a deal but kept no one happy, everyone has stayed in to retain the spirit of multilateralism,” Aarti Khosla, director of Delhi-based Climate Trends, said.