Baku climate talks run into overtime amid row over climate finance

The developed countries offered no more than $250 billion by 2035 as the New Collective Quantified Goal for Climate Finance (NCQG) despite acknowledging that at least $700 billion would be needed until 2030 to help developing countries.

Climate talks at Azerbaijan’s Baku, scheduled to end on Friday (November 22, 2024), were extended by another day after the latest version of the draft agreement was deemed unacceptable by several developing countries.

The developed countries offered no more than $250 billion by 2035 as the New Collective Quantified Goal for Climate Finance (NCQG) despite acknowledging that at least $700 billion would be needed until 2030 to help developing countries.

Moreover, with no commitment that this would be disbursed to developing countries in affordable terms, several countries and civil society society groups say this is extremely inadequate to counter the challenges wreaked by climate change.

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While closed door meetings are still under way at Baku, sources told The Hindu that delegates representing the European Union, which comprises a bulk of the developed donor countries, deemed the ask of a trillion dollars a year “unacceptably high.”

“We will further engage with Parties to collectively agree final adjustments to the few outstanding yet important issues. We will continue to work hard, inclusively and transparently, to press all sides for the highest ambition outcome possible,” said a statement from the Conference of the Parties (COP) presidency, led by Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan’s Ecology and Natural Resources Minister, late on Friday.

The NCQG refers to money that will be given to developing countries by developed countries to help the former meet their goals to transition away from the continued use of fossil fuels and curb greenhouse gas emissions. They are also critical to help countries adapt and build resilient systems to enable greenhouse gas emissions to be slashed by 43% of the levels in 2019 by 2030, to keep temperatures from rising beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius from pre-Industrial times. Even if all countries fulfilled their stated voluntary commitments, it would as of now only translate to a 2% cut and this year – the latest scientific assessments suggest – carbon emissions will likely increase 0.8% over 2023.

The latest version of the text “...Calls 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 USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035; In this context, decides to set a goal...with developed country Parties taking the lead, to USD 250 billion per year by 2035 for developing country Parties for climate action...from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources.”

“This is a bad deal for the developing world, irrespective of how it is going to be portrayed by the presidency,” said Vaibhav Chaturvedi, senior fellow, Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW). “The $1.3 trillion number is at best a sham. Even the apparent increase in the provision from developed world to developing world of $250 billion annually by 2035 is the same as the $100 billion by 2020 if 6% annual average inflation is accounted for. There is no grant or low cost finance component.”

The NCQG is expected to be an update on the $100 billion per year that developed countries had promised developing ones in 2009 which would be mobilised from 2020-2025. The 2015 Paris COP had committed to an NCQG by 2025.

“This is quite a come down and a highly compromised version of the goal. Not only does this keep the core finance obligation subservient to the notional multilayered goal but weakens it by replacing the role of governments by ‘actors’ and further diluting the sources of core finance by including private funds. The level itself is disappointing and is lower than even what G20 had estimated,” said RR Rashmi, a former Secretary to the Environment Ministry and Distinguished Fellow, The Energy Resources Institute (TERI).

Published - November 22, 2024 06:50 pm IST