Near the end of last year’s COP in Dubai, UAE, the African nations together wrote a letter to the COP presidency lamenting the lack of urgent language around transitioning away from fossil fuels in the final version of the Stocktake document. The letter said (paraphrasing) “If we drown, they drown. After all, we are already drowning anyway.”
It was a stark statement of the fundamental truth of climate change. No one will escape climate impacts. It is in all of our best interest to cooperate and share resources as we face the existential threat climate change poses.
Practically, that means financially supporting less resourced countries in their efforts to transition away from fossil fuels.
After all, if they drown we all drown. They were already drowning anyway.
COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan was referred to as the finance COP. One of the primary negotiation tracks was the “New Collective Quantified Goal” on climate finance. The “NCQG” is a Paris Agreement-mandated refresh of the original $100bn/year goal for climate finance.
The Third Report of the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance found that the floor of financing needed to meet needs of climate-affected countries is $1.3 TRILLION.
Speculation swirled prior to the start of COP29 about whether that goal would be met, if it was realistic, and what the appropriate strategy would be.
In the end, the answers to those questions are no, no, and who knows.
COP29 ended thirty hours behind schedule, after negotiators barely came to an agreement on a NCQG of $300bn/year.
Not only was this number far below the amount required, the language in the document is ambiguous when it comes to one of the biggest questions about climate finance, or funds that developed countries supply to developing countries to support climate mitigation and adaptation. That question is one of grants versus loans.
Those dependent on climate finance to adapt to climate impacts already occurring argue that finance in the form of loans will further tie those economies to that of the developed countries. When countries have to dedicate resources to repaying debt, they are less able to progress on climate mitigation or adaptation. This dynamic means loans make climate mitigation LESS effective over the long run.
The causes of the near-breakdown in the negotiations are unclear. Developing countries point out that when it comes to fossil fuel subsidies and defense, developed nations have a virtually unlimited supply of money. Developed countries blame Saudi Arabia for blocking mention of a transition away from fossil fuels. The COP presidency offered a scathing critique of western developed countries in a Guardian OpEd.
The reality is that parties can only commit the amount of finance they are able to give. In the US that means we can only commit the amount of finance Congress is willing to appropriate. And in the US in the last decade, just passing the minimum budget needed to fund normal government operations has become a political football.
But just like I tell my children, I don’t care whose fault it is, I just want it fixed.
Pope Francis says in Laudate Deum that the root of the climate crisis is a fundamental spiritual problem in the way humans view money and power. We live with a mindset of scarcity that makes sharing generously with others on the scale needed unimaginable. We in western developed countries amass wealth in an attempt to insulate ourselves from the bad things we imagine are out there threatening to hurt us or our loved ones.
But just like the parable in Luke of the man who builds bigger barns to hoard his unexpectedly fruitful grain harvest only to die the next day, our security is not in sitting atop a pile of capital while others drown. Our security then and now rests in our ability to cultivate a sense of abundance that fosters cooperation, sharing resources fairly, thinking of the needs of the other.
That is nowhere more true than in the dynamics around responding to climate change.
In the next year before COP30 in Brazil there is lots of work to be done.
First up, each country is required to submit new nationally determined contributions (NDCs), or commitments to climate adaptation and mitigation. Those are due in February. There is speculation that the US delegation will release NDCs earlier than that, before the end of the Biden Administration.
Second, the final NCQG calls for private investments to make up for the $1tn gap between allocated climate finance and the total amount needed to avoid exceeding 1.5C.
More finance equals more ambitious NDCs. More ambitious NDCs mean less severe climate impacts. Less severe climate impacts mean less cost required to manage adaptation. The Third Report of the Independent High-Level Expert Group on Climate Finance says that “any shortfall in investment before 2030 will place added pressure on the years that follow, creating a steeper and potentially more costly path to climate stability. The less the world achieves now, the more we will need to invest later.”
COP29 Negotiators reminded us multiple times that climate finance is not charity. It is an investment in a stable climate and a liveable future for every person on the planet, both present and future.
On the disappointing finance outcome from COP29, Bishop Gerardo Alminaza, vice chairperson of Caritas Philippines said in an article in National Catholic Reporter “COP29 has failed to honor its commitments to climate finance, leaving the most vulnerable nations to bear the brunt of a crisis they did not create,” “This neglect is not merely a policy oversight but a profound moral failing.”
Let’s get to work.