by Sophie Mbugua, Baku, Azerbaijan: After tense negotiations, deadlock, and near collapse, the 29th Climate Summit (COP29) successfully bulldozed a $300 billion annual new climate finance goal in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Malawian Evans Njewa, the current chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group, in a statement called it “not just a failure but a betrayal.”

The LDC group further argues that this outright dismissal undermines the fragile trust that underpins these negotiations and mocks the spirit of global solidarity. “The bulldozed New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) is a glaring symbol of this failure.”

The new climate goal is not only a far cry from the $1.3 trillion the poor countries demanded for their climate action, but it also clearly demonstrates the rich countries’ refusal to take financial responsibility for their historic obligations, undermining any notion of justice.

The decision does not provide a clear definition of climate finance. The absence of a clear definition allows developed countries to continue classifying financial aid funds provided to poor countries as climate finance.

Opening up the source of funds to a wide range of public and private, bilateral and multilateral sources complicates future accountability and increases the risk of debt accumulation for developing nations.

The decision also notes the voluntary intention of parties to count all climate-related outflows from and climate-related finance mobilized by multilateral development banks towards achievement of the goal.

The decision also shifts climate financing burdens to developing nations already digging deeper into their national budgets to adapt to climate change and rebuild from huge losses and damages caused by climate change, which they have not caused.

Delay then bulldoze climate finance decisions

I always find the usual delay tactics by developed countries at the UN Climate Summits (COP’s) very interesting. Having attended my first COP in 2015 during the Paris agreement, these climate summits rarely end on the prescribed date. I have been lucky only once to stay till the very tail end. After the final day, the conference area resembles a deserted town. Nearly the entire delegation from developing countries will have left, but there is a significant number of western delegates and journalists remaining.

At this point, most of the sticky matters for the poor nations will often be delayed until the tail end of the COP, when the small team of negotiators from developing countries who are humanly tired are left to battle out. Then, the high-level political decision-making organ takes charge and makes a decision, leaving developing nations with the option to accept or reject the agreement.

The new collective quantified goal (NCQG) is not the only agenda; there was the global goal on adaptation, just transition, means of implementation, global stoketake, mitigation, and Article 6, just to mention a few sticky issues that required thorough scrutiny by the small remaining global south negotiators.

One might wonder if the Global South hasn’t learned a lesson by making sure its reservations extend two days beyond the final day. This raises another question: who is responsible for funding the delegates from the global south to attend these meetings?

This year, the tactics of delay proved effective.

This year at the 29th UN climate summit, the situation remained the same. At the very beginning of the conference, developing nations were clear. They needed $1.3 trillion per year for their climate action by 2030. This is despite the numerous meetings on the NCQG that have been held since the ad hoc work on the NCQG began at the beginning of 2022.

However, developed countries did not announce their quantum until Friday, the official final day of the conference, which resulted in the conference being extended to Sunday.

On Wednesday 20^th (2 days to the official close of the summit), a journalist posed a question about an annual $200 billion climate finance proposal to negotiators of major developing country groups from Uganda, Bolivia, and Kenya. Rumors suggested that the European Union was the source of this amount.

Diego Pacheco, a Bolivian, asked, “Is it a joke?” with a smile that made the audience at the press conference laugh.

On the final day of the conference, developed countries appeared to take the joke seriously, contributing an additional $50 billion to finance a $1.3 trillion annual budget. Ultimately, they agreed to allocate $250 billion annually by 2035. They also decided to extend the timeframe from 2030 to 2035. The primary focus of this goal is mobilization, not provision.

Then nearly two days after the summit official end, COP29 bulldozed a $300 billion annually new climate financing.

The bulk of the needs

Interestingly, the same text acknowledges the needs of developing countries, stating that they require an estimated $5.1–6.8 trillion until 2030, or $455–584 billion annually, to implement their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCS) and an estimated $215–387 billion for adaptation until 2030.

While developing nations will mobilise $300 billion annually, they are calling on all actors to work together to enable the scaling up of financing to developing country parties for climate action from all public and private sources to at least $1.3 trillion per year by 2035.

Both the Paris agreement and the convention itself recognized rich countries’ historical responsibility. Hence, they have a sole responsibility to provide climate finance without shifting the burden to the private sector, other emerging developing countries, or the poor countries themselves. Combating the climate crisis should not add any further debts to poor countries. But this decision opens up poor countries to more debts.

Money exists, but political will to deliver climate finance doesn’t.

The UNFCCC process is a collective global effort to tackle the global climate crisis. Under this framework, the rich owe the poor the means to tackle this crisis.

However, as the rich countries play hide and seek games on providing the much needed climate finance, they are demonstrating their political commitment to providing and mobilizing resources to support military conflicts like the Russian-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine crises.

The USA has provided approximately $64 billion in military assistance since the Russia-Ukraine invasion on February 24, 2022. Further, the USA Department of State says since August 2021 they have provided Ukraine military assistance totaling approximately $31billion from their Department of Defense stockpiles.

In just one year, the USA has spent at least $22 billion on military aid to Israel and related U.S. operations in the region (through September 30).

Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine invasion, the European Union member states have provided close to $133 billion in financial, military, humanitarian, and refugee assistance. The European Union has committed an additional $54 billion until 2027 for the Ukraine.

Time waits for no man. COP30 next year will mark 10 years of the Paris agreement. As the global community talks, the glaciers are melting and sea levels are rising. Small island states like those of the Seychelles say they have experienced more than a 3 mm rise in sea level, threatening the island nation’s dependent on tourism for its survival.

2024 has registered numerous cyclones, severe floods, and heatwaves, among other extreme weather events, not just in Africa but across the globe. By the time nations reach Belem, Brazil, the cost of adaptation, loss and damage, and general climate finance will have doubled or tripled.

This decision at Baku demonstrates a lack of political willingness and a lack of commitment to the diplomatic process by the rich, breaking the fragile trust further. But then it begs the question for poor, why still stay?