An ‘ambitious and realistically achievable' agreement in Baku seems unreachable at present, write Georgia Gratton and Caroline Varin
Parties at the UN Cop 29 climate summit are tonight considering a third draft for a new climate finance goal, but it is lengthy, fails to bridge long-standing divisions and still lacks a position on the amount to be provided by developed countries.
Agreement on finance is key to ensuring all countries can implement energy transitions and cut emissions in line with the Paris accord. Developed countries agreed in 2009 to deliver $100bn/yr in finance in 2020-25 to developing nations, and Cop 29 is focused on the next iteration of this — the new collective quantified goal.
The draft is riddled with options and brackets — not uncommon in the first week of Cop negotiations. But it still has every opinion given in the past year on offer, so parties have a long road ahead to reach agreement. "We cannot afford to leave too much ground to be covered later in the summit," Cop 29 lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev said this week.
Developed nations have not yet settled on a sum, but are promoting a "multi-layered goal" and want to expand the contributor base. Developing countries are now pushing for sub-targets of $220bn/yr for least developed countries and $39bn/yr for small island developing states, while broadly calling for climate public finance of over $1 trillion/yr, mostly in grant and concessional finance.
EU negotiator Jacob Werksman struck a pessimistic tone earlier this week, saying parties are far apart and that it is hard to see where the landing zone lies.
Parties stuck to their guns at a high-level meeting. "The support goal should be both ambitious and realistically achievable," the US negotiator said — echoing Belgium's representative almost word for word.
Developed countries called for more contributors, including from developing countries in a position to contribute. UN climate body the UNFCCC works from a list of developed and developing countries from 1992 — delineating 24 countries plus the EU as developed — and many of these note that their economic circumstances have changed over the past 32 years.
Parties such as the UK called for increased mobilisation of private-sector finance, through multilateral development banks, whose reforms should be accelerated, while Sweden called for enhancing the mobilisation of domestic finance. But these issues are largely outside Cop's remit, although they might get more of a platform at next week's G20 discussions.
Panama's representative called for trillions, Guatemala said that "finance must be more accessible", with Colombia saying that it is currently "entangled" in development agencies. Zimbabwe told fellow negotiators that it was crucial that developing countries' debt burdens were not increased.
Ministerial progress
Werksman is hoping for some compromise next week, when ministers join negotiations. Parties had in October reached some convergence after a series of ministerial meetings ahead of Cop 29. He pointed to a finance report released this week by a UN-mandated group that, he said, could guide policy makers. Private finance could meet around half of the funds that developing countries need — $1 trillion/yr by 2030 and $1.3 trillion/yr by 2035 — the group said.
The possibility of levies — on shipping and air travel — as well as on fossil fuel producers, is likely to be floated too. Many jurisdictions, including the EU, have previously called for taxes and levies to be imposed to provide further climate finance. Colombia called for increased action on global taxation.
But "that requires very careful consideration before we stunt some of our industries", Egypt's representative said. Tanzania and Marshall Islands delegates reiterated that finance for fossil fuel development should not be part of the goal.
