Talking more about money than greenhouse gases may have nothing to do with the fight against climate change. Finance seems to belong to a different terrain than CO2. However, although less attractive, the success or failure of the Baku Climate Summit, COP29, is largely settled in the books. “Agreeing on new climate financing is the main priority of this presidency,” declared the president of the summit, Azeri Mukhtar Babayev.
Behind the expression “climate financing”, there is, basically, the money that developed countries (the North) are ready to invest so that poor countries (the South) stop using fossil fuels, it that is to say, reduce their CO2 emissions. and adapt to the damage of the climate crisis. After all, this North got rich by burning almost exclusively coal, oil and gas for decades.
Reducing emissions must go hand in hand with this financing. Otherwise, the countries of the South will not be able to reduce
Pedro Zorilla
— Greenpeace Climate Change Manager
The person responsible for climate change at COP29, Pedro Zorrilla, analyzes that a summit that revolves around finances “can serve to make certain sectors or organizations want to give it less voice because the result seems less ambitious, but that does not ‘doesn’t make sense’. . Reducing emissions must go hand in hand with this financing. Otherwise, the countries of the South will not be able to reduce their spending.”
Zorrilla, who is attending the Baku summit as an observer, explains that these states “do not have available funds to switch to renewable energy and abandon fossil fuels.” Or they may be economically dependent, like Colombia with coal, on exports of this fossil mineral. “Colombia has repeatedly expressed that it wants to abandon coal, but to abandon it it must cover workers in this industry and find new sources of income,” he concludes.
This idea is not exclusive to environmentalists. The UN states that “climate finance is necessary to mitigate climate change because of the level of investment required to reduce emissions.”
Still from the corridors of the COP in Baku, Javier Andaluz, of Ecologistas en Acción, recalls that “the climate fight must advance in all countries and it is difficult to demand that a State abandon fossils if that is the only way to guarantee food.” .” or the education of the population.
Regarding the question of whether this issue reduces the public image of the conference, Andaluz points out that “having a COP on financing highlights precisely the North’s hypocrisy.”
“We thought that after the DANA in Valencia and Albacete, the summit would generate more interest in Spain, but perhaps it is the opposite and the painful effects have distracted attention,” admits Zorilla .
At the heart of the Paris Agreement
The idea of providing money to mitigate climate change was accepted by countries themselves in 2009 – even before drafting the Paris Agreement – who then set a target of 100 billion euros per year for developing countries from 2020. this figure was not reached until 2022.
In fact, the famous treaty concluded in the French capital included this same concept in its articles. And not just anywhere. The heart of the Paris Agreement is found in Article 2. This is where it says that to respond to the “threat of climate change”, we must keep global warming “well below 2° C” and, if possible, limit it to 1.5°C. Then, in this same article, it was agreed to “position financial flows” so as to produce “low greenhouse gas emissions”.
Negotiations in Azerbaijan are expected to focus on securing $1 trillion a year for needed investments in emerging countries.
Report “Increasing Ambition and Accelerating Climate Finance”
— High-level independent expert group on climate finance
In this sense, the task of this COP29 is to obtain a commitment on the new amount to be paid from 2030. The independent High-Level Panel of Experts on Climate Finance declared that “negotiations in Azerbaijan should focus on reaching a trillion dollars. each year for the necessary investments in emerging countries. And 1.3 billion in 2035.
This group, co-led by Amar Bhattacharya, Vera Songwe and Nicholas Stern, calculated that “any investment shortfall before 2030 will exert additional pressure in the years to come. In other words, the less progress the world makes now, the more we will need to invest later. »
For its own benefit: risks for peace
Javier Andaluz also highlights another reason to comply with financial aid to the countries of the South: “We cannot forget that guaranteeing a future for these countries allows us to avoid conflicts that have the climate emergency as their root.” In other words, it directly affects the personal interests of rich states.
In this sense, a group of Security Council countries issued a statement in 2023 warning of how climate change can worsen threats to international peace and security. A year later, last October, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard R. Verma warned that climate change is “increasing the severity of humanitarian crises, which adds to geopolitical tensions.”
The list of possible risks to peace is long, but these are impacts that exceed the capacity of governments to respond, such as transnational migration on an unmanageable scale due to the scarcity of resources such as water. .
However, “here we see that distrust between countries is increasing,” describes Andaluz. “The situation is very tense. “The Northern countries are diverting attention to the inclusion of new donors in the fund, that is, to the question of whether China should contribute money.”
And, as if to agree with him, the European Commissioner for Climate Action, Wopke Hoekstra, called this Monday from Baku for “solidarity” and “responsibility” of countries which have made “enormous progress economic growth over the last two decades” to contribute to this new climate fund. “With wealth comes responsibility,” Hoekstra said.
“Rich countries say there is no money” – says Pedro Zorilla – we think there is money. Maybe that money isn’t in the public accounts right now, but there is money. “One way to achieve this would be to impose a tax on the fossil fuel industry to increase public revenue and to do the same for air and maritime transport. »
